https://www.indianewsstream.com/kashmir-unsolicited-advice-for-pakistan/

Kashmir: Unsolicited advice for Pakistan

Pakistan was likely foxed by India’s speedy conversion of Kashmir from being a status with a special status to a mere territory of the Union. Its intelligence agencies were perhaps mulling over New Delhi’s information war offensive when India struck with the momentous action.

Not that rumours were not aplenty that could have alerted the Pakistanis to expect a surprise, including a setback on the Article 370 front. Nevertheless, it was only on India revealing its hand that Pakistan got into response gear.

Pakistan now requires a sober, ‘diplomacy-first response’. This is to make a virtue of a necessity. Imran Khan while addressing parliament rhetorically asked whether under the circumstance he was expected to attack India, knowing well the adverse power equations and that India would likely have taken the preparatory steps militarily prior to the announcements in its parliament. Also, Pakistan’s economic health is best indicated by its borrowings from the monetary fund and its being under scrutiny by the task force on terrorism financing. Such straits permit little leg room for any other response. This could persist till its diplomatic energy culminates on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly late next month.

Islamabad is no doubt keeping watch for an Indian misstep in handling the blow back from the people in Kashmir, who have been kept in a lockdown state for the past week. The much-feared aftermath of Friday prayers in the Valley reportedly led to a score of casualties from pellet gun discharge. There are further occasions that can yet witness escalatory spiral: the forthcoming Eid, Pakistan’s independence day (to be celebrated in Pakistan as a day of solidarity with Kashmiris) and India’s independence day, followed by yet another Friday.

It awaits bad news with bated breath. It would enable Pakistan a foot in the door. It can help it frame its case at the UN. It can help legitimize its reversion to proxy war that had of late been substituted by an indigenisation of the insurgency. Reactivating its proxy war to earlier levels may require creation of a crisis situation, under cover of which Pakistan could seek to pump in jihadis and material to fuel the fire. Doing so would also help the Pakistan army divert jihadi energy and angst onto India, rather than have it contend with it in within Pakistan.

Jihadis, impatient with a diplomatic response, may want to have a go at India to avenge the Indian act. How Pakistan manages to stave off the jihadis while its diplomatic action unfolds and how it thereafter deploys them would determine if the risk India has run of a regional conflagration was worth it.

Ideally, India would prefer the Pakistani state fight off the jihadis on its own turf, rather than have them exported to India. This has the benefit of keeping Pakistan off balance in internal strife, even as India consolidates the new status of Kashmir. Towards this end, India appears to have a strategy in place. It has begun well in keeping rhetoric and triumphalism low key, thereby keeping international attention off Kashmir.

If it manages to keep the lid on within Kashmir by handling protests with restraint, India might just get away with its gambit. It has sensibly promised a reversion to statehood when this blows over, incentivizing a deflation in Kashmiri anger. It has enough time as the diplomatic prong of strategy plays out on both sides to put in place a militarily deterrent posture, limiting any scope for Pakistani conversion of the ongoing insurgency into yet another round of proxy war.

If under the circumstance, Pakistan proceeds with a shift from the diplomatic prong to a quasi-military prong of strategy, it will likely suffer a reverse. Though generating a crisis on the line of control would serve to crystallize international attention, the pressure may well fall on Pakistan – quite as it did during its Kargil caper. Pakistan would be falling into an Indian trap with Doval’s masterly fingerprints all over it.

Consequently, Islamabad needs to reassess the efficacy of the military-intelligence response option altogether. What then would be a sensible policy for Pakistan?

The jihadi angst can be expected to be in proportion to the possible violence in Kashmir. If civilian casualties in India’s handling of the blow back of civil society are kept limited, then the non-state actor interest within Pakistan of the developments in Kashmir shall wane. If Pakistan can take some credit in helping India keep these casualties limited through intervening imaginatively, Pakistan would save itself the bother of both fighting off jihadis so bestirred as also of any compulsion to act militarily itself.

How can such a situation be brought about?

As mentioned, a quick succession of events is coming during which the situation might flare up. India, perceiving as much, has required its paramilitary to be cautious in the use of force as also has them intimately supervised, with the national security adviser seemingly camping in Kashmir to keep a lid on any over-reaction. Pakistan can help defuse the situation by urging restraint on the Kashmiris. It can use the air waves to this end, as also plug the message through its subterranean channels.

If its public intervention manages to tamp the feared backlash from people, a self-reinforcing loop would be set up in which few casualties will result in lesser energy with which the Indian state will be challenged, resulting in turn in fewer casualties. Pakistan would have the dividend of taking the credit for averting a possible blood bath in Kashmir; gaining a foot in the door for the future; and demonstrating its ability to influence and shape the environment within Kashmir.

To be sure, such action could help bail out India from a difficult situation – a Jallianwala 2.0 or even a Bijbehara 2.0 would take the sheen off India’s action. India can do with some help to preserve itself from a hit-wicket. Pakistan can then swing itself back into the reckoning. With neither state having torn up the bilateral agreements that posit bilateral talks, Pakistan can then pressure India to talks. Its privileging of diplomacy and ditching of the terrorism option would be stark.

It can tacitly encash any good will its gesture of persuasion of Kashmiris to desist from violent unrest may have elicited in India’s national security establishment. Under the circumstance, India would be hard put to avoid talks that it is committed to.

The most significant advantage is in preserving Kashmiri lives that would otherwise be lost to little purpose. Naya Pakistan would truly have arrived in a fresh light. India, having been let off the hook it has willfully mounted, can use the hiatus in violence to initiate the promises Narendra Modi made to Kashmiris. India’s tacit reciprocation to Pakistan’s gesture would enable it to defuse the jihadi enterprise directed against it by enabling Pakistan to fob off the jihadis by showing progress on the talks front.

Clearly, imaginative solutions are called for. Both states can do with stepping back and reappraising muscular policies. A win-win outcome is not impossible to salvage given that both claim to be New, Naya Pakistan and Naya Bharat. Counter-intuitively, the current Kashmir imbroglio is an opportunity to demonstrate their respective turn of a new leaf.

https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/17389/War-Dead-Ahead

War: Dead Ahead

The happenings in Parliament over August 5-6 indicate that a reasonably robust strategic assessment preceded it. Emboldened by a conclusion that Pakistan was unlikely to chip in with a military counter, Jammu and Kashmir ceased being a state of the Indian Union. Knowing strategic assessments cannot cover all the bases, the Modi government nevertheless chose to run the risk.

It is arguable that the risk may end up a tad too much in relation to the dividend. The timing of the move that resulted in pilgrims, tourists and migrant workers being hastily assisted out of Kashmir points to the dividend being the preening opportunity for Narendra Modi on Independence Day. Events may yet prove the risk unpardonable.

Since the Indian government has a professional hand on its foreign policy rudder, it is implausible that India was stampeded into going the distance on a ruling party’s manifesto promise on Kashmir merely because the president of the United States fantasised that India had invited him to mediate on the Kashmir issue.

However, since the offer came as part of Trump’s appeasement of Pakistan, in order to get Pakistan to deliver up a tamed Taliban to the negotiation table with the Afghan government, India feared that Pakistan may displace it from America’s bed. Since it cannot reinsert itself into consequentiality in Afghanistan, it settled for the second best choice: spoil the party.

This is reminiscent of the post 9/11 situation in the region. Even as Pakistan under Musharraf did a smart about turn on its Taliban policy and jumped into bed with the US, India felt left out in the cold. The head start it had taken over Pakistan through the Jaswant Singh-Strobe Talbott talks was overtaken by events. Taking advantage of a terror attack on Parliament, it launched a mobilisation, converted later into coercive diplomacy when the tanks failed to fetch up for the attack timely.

The upshot was a diversion from Bush’s so-called global war on terror. This was a hit-wicket of sorts, since it allowed the Pakistanis an alibi to turn the other way as the Taliban slipped past the Durand line to fight another day. The rest as they say is history.

The trajectory of American withdrawal (which it is nothing but) is such that Pakistan is set to stabilise its western front. After doing so over the year, it may revert its gaze to the east, where it has been somewhat uncharacteristically reticent over the past few years.

The statistics from Kashmir have it that the percentage of locals killed has moved from two thirds to over three quarters. Given the fighting capacity of the locals, evident from their lifespan with guns being less than a year, Pakistan would have had to reignite its proxy war. Its outstretched hand, after its military got its civilian side on the same page, has received a snub from India.

A resumption of its proxy war – which it had lately projected as indigenisation – was in the offing. India in attempting to preempt this has only hastened the timeline.

Thus, India appears to be aiming to hit two birds with one stone: gain domestic mileage over its Kashmir gambit, useful at a time when the economy is downhill, and, second, to complicate Pakistan’s return from the doghouse. It could yet turn out that India has bitten off more than it can chew. The first is easy to see. The second is in India’s engineering a condition in which the Pakistani establishment is set against the ‘good terrorists’, who would be out to outflank the establishment in case it proves a reluctant actor.

The Naya Pakistan thesis privileges non-military options, but the terror base might not be persuaded of it. India’s intent may have been to set off internal strife in Pakistan. This is not for the first time. India’s last effort was undercut by the Pakistan army when it used the judiciary to depose India’s targeted pointsman in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif. Then India attempted to engineer a civil-military disjuncture but its bear hug of Sharif compromised the intent. This time round it hopes to set Pakistan’s home grown jihadis against their minders, its army. This may force the Pakistani military’s hand.

While Musharraf warded off jihadist pressure, the greater threat he faced was being bombed into the stone age. But India is not quite the US.

And it is not over the hump within Kashmir. Already two deaths are reported and a score injured over the last two days. One of the dead is a teenager drowned on being chased by the central armed police. It took merely one death to ignite the 2010 outrage, that of the teenager Tufail Mattoo. The repeated advisories to its forces on restraint suggest it is well aware that a second Jallianwala may yet occur.

The presence of the national security advisor on the ground is indicative. He best knows that the paramilitary rushed in comprises low quality and ill led troopers, many fed on the polarisation that the ruling party’s ideology has spread across the cow dust belt from where most of its members originate. Pressed into Kashmir in a hurry, it can be surmised they would not have the situational awareness, empathy or confidence to take on the opposition, whether civilian-centric or insurgent. Another Bijbehara might result.

Then, of course, there is Imran Khan’s scenario in which another Pulwama sets the two countries back at the brink.

The strategising that preceded the initiative must have reckoned with a possible Pakistani military backlash. This could have been conventional had the Pakistanis been agile. They have by now missed the bus. Instead, they have another three months before the snows to plug the proxy war gap that includes proxy fighters and material. This has been anticipated by India, best evidenced by the leaked advisory that required the railway security staff to stock up for three months in expectation of unrest.

The increased deployment of the paramilitary has perhaps been accompanied by the shifting of troops towards the Line of Control – as pointed out by a former corps commander and prominent figure now on the strategic circuit.

The counter-infiltration posture strengthening would not permit a repeat by Pakistan of a Kargil like situation, in which it prolonged the insurgency by inducting jihadis through India’s disruption of its own counter-infiltration grid in reacting to the Kargil intrusion. Proven infiltration methods will prove to be of limited efficacy.

Consequently, Pakistan would require generating a crisis, under cover of which it could push in jihadis with the wherewithal. This could be as early as after the usual India-Pakistan joust at the UN General Assembly and prior to snows setting in, or as late as the following spring, by when Talibani assets will also be available for redeployment as necessary. It may yet provoke preemptive action by India, using the tried and tested route of a black operation so as to be able to seize the initiative.

Nothing can be put beyond the Modi-Shah-Doval combine any more in light of its presiding over dead or likeminded institutions.

The preceding strategic analysis indicates that the prime minister’s evocation of a fantasyland in Kashmir after demoting it to union territory status is pure chimera. India’s preparations for a disaster ahead, evident from the blackout in Kashmir, shall prove a self-fulfilling prophecy. After the Gujarat pogrom, encounter killings of Muslims, the stalking scandal, decimation of the opposition, demonetisation, a black operation (in this writer’s view) at Pulwama and the Balakot-Naushera setback, Modi is perhaps persuaded by an invincible self-image. This may yet turn out to come with grave cost for Indian security and regional stability.

But by then he would have had his historic Independence Day speech behind him.

http://kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=93488#

The military’s ethical imperative in the here and now

The Indian military is noted for its professionalism. A significant aspect of professionalism is adhering to military ethics. Military ethics mean sensitivity to and adherence of the soldierly Dharma. Dharma is not easily translated into English, but can for our purposes here be taken as social obligation devolving on an institution on account of its societal mandate. Members of institutions are to abide by the code, making for a personal duty. The approximation of the military to the ideal is an indicator of professionalism. Professionalism is itself a product of expertise of the military in provisioning security for society and the state; it’s stepping up to fulfill its advisory function on account of its expertise; and the corporate interest accruing from military needs, in turn predicated on its mandate.

The reputation of the Indian military being such it is easy to see that it scores high on adherence to the military dharma or code of military ethics. The credit for this must go to the military leadership through earlier generations. The inter-generationally transmitted traditions, values, attitudes, conduct and behavior have withstood the test of times, crisis and conflict. Consistently the military has rated high in societal esteem, both anecdotally and in socio-metric surveys. They have been sorely tested by the changes in society and political culture of late. Even so it is taken as one among the few institutions, such as the higher judiciary, left with reputation and dignity intact, while peer institutions ranging from the Election Commission, the Central Bureau of Investigation, national universities etc have succumbed.

With this introductory standard setting view of the military’s record thus out of the way, it is important to record that the military too unfortunately appears to be doddering, if not quite being on its last legs yet. There have been sorry episodes in the past when its members have not measured up or it has fallen short as an institution, for instance in the VK Singh ‘date of birth’ case as far as individual shortfalls are concerned and, institutionally, in privileging corporate interest (reputation) over military justice, in cases as Machil and Pathribal. However, lately these ‘aberrations’ are multiplying in frequency and severity, and therein lies the necessity of this article as reminder on the centrality of professional military ethics in maintaining the military’s professionalism.

The gravamen of the argument here is that the military’s dharma referred to cannot countenance a military lying to its client, the Indian nation, even if put to it by the intermediary government. The ultimate principal in a democracy are the people. The government is an agent. An agent cannot ask its instrument, the army, to lie to the people in a democratic setting. Instances of lying (dealt with below) are at hand, indicating an unacceptable and costly slippage.

In the military’s eye perhaps there is a hybrid war on with Pakistan, of which of information war is an intrinsic part. Information war entails being economic with the truth where necessary. This is fair enough if the target of mis/disinformation is the opposite side. It cannot be that the target is the Indian nation itself. Believing otherwise is to take a step in ending democracy in which the people preside over an accountable, elected government. The government cannot usurp more powers than it has been delegated by the principal, the citizen-voter. Lying upsets the chain of accountability, since the citizen is deprived of the measure to exact accountability. 

Let’s take a stark example. The army has joined lied to the citizens of this republic only last week. It is by now self-evident that the military’s take on a heightening of the Pakistani proxy war at a press conference in which a threat to the Amarnath Yatra was highlighted was a lie. It completely contradicted the earlier release of statistics that there were no infiltration attempts and no infiltration this summer. It is difficult to believe that merely the recovery of a cache of military hardware could lead to the overreaction of cancellation of the yatra, induction of several thousand troops and the lock down that followed. Clearly, the military was playing handmaiden to the government in shaping the environment for its questionable constitutional initiatives in parliament. The moot question is whether, and to what extent, a military can play along with a ruling party’s political and ideological agenda.

It bears reminding that the shaping of the environment was being done for a blatantly political action of the government, putting in place the conditions for fulfilling its manifesto pledge of scrapping of Articles 370 and 35A. This would naturally have had security implications that the government’s security minders were sensible enough to apprehend. But for them to have the military play out a charade as preparatory actions is up for debate. As to whether the military was in the know as to what was intended is not consequential. In case it was in the know, it was participant in a political act, losing its apolitical sheen. If not, then it had no business putting out a lie and should have told off its political minders.

The security threat levels were magnified by the corps commander. He lent the authority of his uniform to his task. There was no duty of obedience that mitigates this. Taking cue, retired colleagues – mostly his predecessors in the chair he occupies – took his thesis forward on national television that a national security threat had developed. This was then justified to clamp down in Kashmir and to undertake illegitimate constitutional initiatives of questionable legality.

If the corps commander was put to it by superiors, it implicates the northern army commander. It is well known that he in turn is in the run for elevation as army chief, for which reports have it the government has started its scrutiny of potential candidates. The army commander had in an earlier instance at the end of elections got into an unnecessary public debate with his retired predecessor on the definition of the post-Uri ‘surgical strikes’, holding the untenable position that these were unprecedented. If the army does not stick to the straight and narrow military ethic, it opens itself up to speculation over personal interest – as brought out in this paragraph. This damages its corporate interest in maintaining an apolitical reputation in a democratic setting.

Clearly, there is an institutional loosening on the ethics front. The tone and tenor on this was set early in the tenure of the army chief when he tacitly justified the ‘human shield’ episode. Poetic justice caught up, with his blue-eyed boy caught in a case of sexual exploitation and abuse. The army chief’s example has not been lost on the commanding general in Badami Bagh. He has recently made unilateral doctrinal innovation in promising to ‘eliminate’ those holding the gun, whereas the doctrinally-compliant term used so far has been ‘neutralise’. The latter assumes multiple ways, including non-kinetic, for removing a militant from the fight. The former does not. Threatening citizens is as bad as carrying out the threat, especially so as the youthful ‘threat’ – by the corps commander’s account – lasts merely a year on the run.

This is the situation on the ethical front as the army contemplates the backlash that the constitutional initiatives are likely to attract. Best-evidenced by the preparations made, these have been made with full knowledge that the outcome could be bloody. Future research will reveal the input of the military into the decision. For the moment it can be conceded that the military was perhaps not asked for an opinion. This is in keeping with the manner the military is kept out of the decision loop on national security matters historically. Sensibly, it has kept out of frontline population control to follow, for which the paramilitary has been pumped in.

The army must keep watch on the paramilitary who are likely to trigger happy, particularly since the army commander appears to have been placed in charge. A photo depicts him chairing an overview meeting, indicating the pecking order. Where that leaves the adviser home is moot. In short, the army can yet redeem itself in a sensitive and empathetic response to the reaction of the people to the mischief being played with their destiny, for which it must exercise firm control over the paramilitary. It needs mention that the paramilitary are not known to be imbued with any ethos of societal obligation. It should not take another information war – as is playing out on television screens now – to sweep under the carpet what might unfold after Friday prayers, Eid prayers and on ‘Independence’ Day. Over the longer term, the army must make its information war and hybrid war thesis compliant with its role and status in a democratic polity and society.

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http://www.milligazette.com/news/16753-what-5-august-spells-for-indias-muslims

http://kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=93404

What 5 August spells for India’s Muslims

It would be a gross mistake to see the 5 August happenings - in parliament and scrapping by presidential order of Article 370 - as yet another attack on Kashmiris alone. It is instead the latest assault by the right wing on Muslims. Indian Muslims have borne the brunt over the past five years with the micro terror of lynchings substituting for ‘riots’ – more appropriately ‘one-sided mass violence’ – of the earlier era. Kashmiris suffered much more, but that has been taken as their self-invited suffering for their sub-national inclinations. It would be an error to believe that they have finally got their comeuppance. They are targets of a demonetization and nuclear break out levels of arbitrary decision making.

The happenings of 5 August need reframing. It is part of the Hindutva project, engraved in the manifesto of the political front of the Hindu right. If and since, the Hindutva project is wholly anti-Muslim, its nuances – such as actions against Articles 370 and 35A – are to be seen as part of the wider whole. Any expectation that the Hindutva project is anything but anti-minority is chimera, designed to make its saleable. Its core, heart and soul is unmistakably anti-Muslim. By this yardstick, doing away with special status of a Muslim majority state and reducing the only Muslim majority state to just another Union Territory – albeit one with a legislature – is but another blow to Indian Muslims and Muslim India. It is the religion of Kashmiris – not their ethnicity - that has prompted such constitutional violence against them. The Kashmir question is here on an Indian Muslim one, as it always was; only earlier we were unable to see it as such and acknowledge it for what it was.

Consequently, this is a battle that Kashmiris should not be left out in the cold to fight isolated and singly. It needs Muslim India to stand up on their side, not for selfish existential reasons – for our turn is next, if not quite ongoing – but for principled and strategic reasons. If the Hindutva juggernaut is out to erase the ties that bind us to this land – the scrapping of Article 370 is little else – then, next is the National Register of Citizens looming large over the rest of us non-Kashmiri Muslims. As being witnessed in Assam today – yet another fight in which Muslim Assamese and Bengalis fight a lonesome battle to figure in their register of citizens – we shall be required to prove our identity as Indians. It should not be that the same wolf pack that consumed Gujarati Muslims, goes at the Kashmiris. If allowed to do so, it would be for India’s Muslims to be decimated piecemeal. This time round, as the first step, the community – or multiple communities that constitute the wider Indian Muslim community – needs to reprise its selfhood.

Needless to say the ensuing struggle – jihad if you will – can only be through the peaceful and legitimate means. It would be to play into the hands of the right wing government to challenge it with any other instrument; especially since it has taken care to strengthen its hands by making changes in anti-terror laws with the intention of using these strengthened laws against Muslims (after all there are no Hindu terrorists). A hark back to the non-cooperation movement might be useful for strategies and tactics to adopt. Gandhian tactics succeeded in gaining us independence and could do the trick to keep us free.

Waiting for a political lead would be naïve. The political opposition does not exist. It has been well said that the 2014 and 2019 elections constitute as much of a setback to the community as did 1857, Partition and Babri Masjid. It devolves on the community to rely on its own resources and bring these to the fight, particularly legal, intellectual and inspirational. In reimagining the community, it takes a leaf out of the right wing repertoire in which its votaries view themselves unapologetically as a Hindu majority. They have brought resources to the table to engrave their agenda on polity and society. They have also been at it for over half a century. This is where any emulation needs to end, since going beyond would be to emulate the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and thuggery. There is also no call to emulate the opaque and centralized strategizing of the Sangh Parivaar that has led to this pass. On the other hand, the freedom movement might have a better model.

There is little doubt that the regional dimension of the decision will kick in over the near term. Pakistan – apprehensive of the Hindutva project and its intrinsic concept of Akhand Bharat – would no doubt take a view. It would be apprehensive that the foot in the door it has in Kashmir would be prised loose by what it would see as India’s unilateral and arbitrary action. The action – to it – would be to trash two bilateral agreements that India has only recently referred to as the base of its interface with Pakistan on the Kashmir question – the Simla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration. India’s haste is no doubt an over-reaction to the reference by the United States’ President Trump’s offer to mediate. India in effect is signaling that there is no dispute to mediate since Kashmir - now subsumed in India through a revised constitutional embrace - is now history. Pakistan cannot be expected to stand idly by. In 1965, when the sadar e riyasat and wazir e azam nomenclature was removed, Pakistan was stampeded into a war over Kashmir. This time round the constitutional action is much more severe.

Besides strategic reasons for Pakistan action, its army and government would be wary of being outflanked by extremist forces in case of inaction on its part. Therefore, it would likely take action, including military action. Reports have it that the Pakistan army had heightened its actions over the past week, with a few unclaimed bodies of its border action team being illustrative. It would be bidding for crisis intervention, particularly by its new found friend, Trump. A crisis is not unlikely, one which the government has taken care to cater for by rushing paramilitary into Kashmir. These will likely relieve the troops who will then be available to deter any Pakistani adventurism. Depending on Pakistan reaction, troop movement elsewhere in India can be expected.

Indian Muslims have their obligation cut out in a near term crisis or conflict scenario with Pakistan. It needs no elaboration what that would be. However, there is an internal fight that shall and must follow. We need to keep our powder dry for that. There are two lines of action: one is Kashmir centric and can only play itself out in the courts. Any human rights transgressions need a nation-wide community action in conjunction with the liberal and activist spectrum. The second is to appraise realistically the country-wide national register of citizens’ bogey that is currently held out as a Damocles sword over the head of the community. A collective view must be forged, whereupon - if so decided – a non-cooperation movement needs being launched messaging explicitly to the right wing: ‘Thus far and no further.’ Its voter base should be addressed to progressive withdraw the mandate it has unwittingly given the ruling party by voting it out of power in provincial elections between now and 2024. Surely they too must find that a mandate for governance and development is being misinterpreted by the ruling party as carte blanche for substituting substantive democracy with procedural democracy.

This columnist had five years back on these very pages (‘The pebbles ahead in Mr. Modi’s comfortable ride’, 16-31 Dec 2014; ‘Whither Modi, and, at one remove, India?’ 12 Nov 2015) brought out that it is in the second term of the ruling party that it would unfurl its agenda full throttle. The mistake this columnist in the analysis was in assuming that rational and secular Hindus would show Modi the door electorally. This was to be the case, but for the allegedly black operation at Pulwama in February turning the tide. (This writer is unafraid to be counted among conspiracy theorists on this score.) Given that there are five years to get to the next hustings, Indian Muslims cannot lie doggo as was the recommendation for Modi 1.0. They require instead to band with their disaffected Hindu counterparts and proactively take the necessary steps to democratically displace Modi from power.

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https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/india/politics-the-improved-situation-in-kashmir-is-but-a-mirage-4280951.html

The improved situation in Kashmir is but a mirage

A trite observation from peace studies theory has it that the propensity for rumour mongering in a society corresponds to levels of instability and stress. By this yardstick the rumour storm kicked up on the departure of national security adviser Ajit Doval after a recent two-day visit to Kashmir is a clear indicator that Kashmir remains on the edge. The grapevine has it that keeping Kashmir on edge is the precise intention of the national security establishment that Doval heads.

The rumours were set off by the orders for a 100 paramilitary companies, comprising some 10,000 personnel, to move post-haste to Kashmir. Alongside, there were alarmist social media leaks of instructions that presumably filtering down the hierarchy from security meetings held by Doval.

Using the opportunity, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti whipped up apprehensions over an impending threat to Article 35A, which devolves definition of a permanent resident of the state on the provincial legislature. Her fears were accentuated by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) suddenly flying out its local politicians over to Delhi for a core group meeting.

Mufti urged a joint front of mainstream Kashmiri political parties. In the event, her National Conference (NC) counterparts were more restrained. Conspiracy theorists kicked in, providing an election-related rationale.

They have it that the BJP wishes to grab a few seats in the Valley, which when toted up with its clean sweep of the Jammu region would end up having it — supported by the smaller, newer parties, namely Sajjad Lone’s People’s Conference and Shah Faesal’s People’s Movement — to install a Jammu-origin Hindu Chief Minister in Kashmir.

The BJP has been canvassing for membership in the Valley and put upcandidates in the largely voter boycotted parliamentary elections. It also won municipal seats by default since the mainstream parties stayed away.

Though at the end of the BJP core group meeting, the BJP leaders from Jammu dispelled any threat to Article 35A — stating that it was sub-judice with the Supreme Court, the threat remains. The BJP carried the day in the Rajya Sabha in its second attempt on the law against instant triple talaq, though it initially did not have the numbers. This may make it more venturesome on other ‘Muslim relevant’ matters as Uniform Civil Code and on the J&K special status, dear to its core constituency.

As a counter-strategy, an unlikely joint front between the mainstream parties would help not only keep the chief ministership within the Valley but would also keep the BJP out. Such a front is not impossible, given that its tentative shaping up last November had scared the governor into dissolving the Assembly.

To keep the BJP down, voters would require stepping up to the booths in reasonable numbers, lest their no-show helps the BJP grab the cake. The conspiracy angle is that a restive situation in Kashmir would instead keep voters away, magnifying, in the first-past-the-post electoral system, the impact of the few BJP supporters who show up.

Since the violence indices put out periodically by the government indicate improvement in the security situation, keeping the pot boiling for a while longer is in the interest of the ruling party. This explains the scare mongering with the security apparatus.

The statistics may delude the government that it’s hardline — illustrated by the National Investigation Agency raids and Enforcement Directorate investigations — has paid off. There has been no bandh call by separatists since April; none — for the first time — even during the late-June visit of the Union home minister. Infiltration attempts and infiltration numbers are down to zero.

An interpretation can instead be that the figures are evidence of Pakistani tactical restraint, a preparing of the ground for Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s recently-concluded visit to Washington DC. The trip elicited the typically Trumpian claim — later decisively trashed by India — that Prime Minister Narendra Modi requested him, at the G20 summit at Osaka, to intercede as mediator.

Pakistan is tacitly demonstrating its control of the tap. It is to incentivise India to talks, now that it has gone some distance in switching off the tap. Of the numbers killed, over 80 per cent are now of locals, with Pakistanis mopped up largely being left-over infiltrators.

Trump’s end-game in Afghanistan, currently playing out, has implications for Pakistan’s future policy. Pakistan will likely stay its hand till the elections in J&K, in order to up the numbers of voter footfalls at polling booths and stay any constitutional action on India’s part.

If India, deluded by triumphalism, passes up the opportunity for talks, the presence of rumour mills as an indicator of continuing instability suggests, Pakistan will likely find Kashmir a fertile locale for renewed conflict. Though the governor has put a lid on rumours, the paramilitary numbers may then prove sorely required.

https://thewire.in/security/kargil-vijay-diwas-indian-army-integrated-battle-groups

Kargil Vijay Diwas: 20 Years on, Has The Army Learnt its Lessons?

The Indian Army’s Cold Start doctrine is in large measure a product of the Kargil War and is only now getting its milk teeth. The concept of integrated battle groups (IBG) was finally tested 15 years after it was thought up, during military exercises this summer in the Exercise Kharga Prahar of 2 Corps, a strike corps of the Western Command. This was not without hiccups as the test bed exercise was postponed by a month, owing to the latest India-Pakistan crisis. 

Media reports have it that the exercise being successful, the Army now has a force made potent with higher degree of firepower and mobility to add to India’s response repertoire, without triggering nuclear redlines. More IBGs would be in the offing, with up to eight finding early mention in the strategic literature put out by the cottage industry that grew up around Cold Start over the past 15 years.

The Air Force having stolen a march over the Army with Operation Bandar, its aerial surgical strike at Balakot, the IBGs would enable the Army to get back into the reckoning of retaliatory options in Pulwama-like situations. The army’s option of surgical strikes along the Line of Control (LoC) had been exhausted in the wake of the Uriterror attack. 

The wheel appears to have come full circle since Kargil. The Army continues to make itself relevant to the nuclear age. 

At Kargil, the Army’s political masters had proved reluctant to unleash it across the LoC, let alone follow Lal Bahadur Shastri’s precedent of crossing the international border in the 1965 war. The Army was then organised into strike crops with war strategies dating to Exercise Brasstacks in the late eighties. The Kargil War revealed that the advent of nuclear weapons had rendered these war concepts dated.  

Sensing as much soon after the war, India’s then Army chief, General Ved Malik, spied a window between the sub-conventional level and the nuclear level in which the Army’s conventional advantage could be leveraged in limited war. Even as thinking got underway, India was stumped by the terror attack on the parliament, and deterred itself from chancing its strike corps in reprisal. 

Cold Start was thought up in wake of Operation Parakram, a coercive diplomacy after the parliament attack. A newly-minted Army doctrine, colloquially called “cold start”, was adopted. Even while the doctrine was put through the paces in Army manoeuvres over the following years, the political level did not feel confident enough to rely on it in response to the dastardly 26/11 Mumbai terror attack. 

Though the Army geared up structurally – including by raising a new corps and a command for the Pakistan front – it could not assure against escalation since the lumbering strike corps persisted as the mainstay of its organisation for the western front. Finally, with the elevation of Bipin Rawat as Army Chief, the Army took ownership of cold start and delivered on the promise of IBGs. 

It is not as if the Army lacked punching power in the interim. The Army took care to keep in readiness a combat command – an armoured or mechanised brigade – in rotation, ostensibly under training, in the desert sector. Others that had been staged forwardfrom bases in the hinterland closer towards the border as part of early Cold Start restructuring, were also held on a short fuse.  

It appears that the arrangement was unsuitable since the force on training was usually ad-hoc, comprising combat groups from different formations; thereby compromising cohesion. The other earmarked formations were mostly in peace time mode, resulting in invoking less confidence in a shifting of gears from cantonment soldiering to combat in short order. This is a perennial bane of the Indian military. 

Knowing its organisational culture best, the Army had taken its time readying itself in the prelude to both the 1965 and 1971 wars. In 1965, the summer was well spent in Operation Ablaze, triggered by Pakistan’s forays into Kutch at one end and into Kargil in the other, prior to the war. As for the 1971 war, the story of Manekshawseeking in his inimitable style time to prepare, using the then-impending monsoons as excuse, is by now folklore, though there is no documentary evidence to support the claim.

Assuming that it had. in 1971. exorcised the demons from its resounding defeat in the 1962 war, the Army went somnolent only to be rudely awakened in the early phases of the Indian Peace Keeping Force sojourn. Shifting gears into intense combat took time and casualties, leaving a few hundred civilians Tamil dead. 

History repeated itself in the Kargil War. The then Army chief Ved Malik, to his credit, accepts to being surprised by the occupation of the Kargil heights by the Gilgit Scouts by the end of winter. As the Army scrambled to ascertain the extent of the intrusion, it had the option of using reserve formations to evict the intruders. 

At a commemorative seminar by a service think-tank (attended by this author), the then military operations head, N.C. Vij, let on that they alighted on 8 Mountain Division, then deployed on the counter insurgency and counter infiltration grid in Kupwara sector, for the task. He gave out that the Division Commander, Mohinder Puri, inspired confidence. Presumably, the leader of Northern Command’s reserve formation, 6 Mountain Division, missed out on history for this lack.

This is a curious reason to give. 

Mohinder Puri had in a war game — made famous after the war for uncanny similarity to Pakistan’s plan then unfolding but unbeknownst to the war gamers — played the part of the enemy commander. He had, in his plans, bitten off the Kargil heights. The cost of choosing him over his counterpart for his perspicacity was reflected in the immense instability encountered in counter insurgency and in the anti-infiltration grid by the moving out of the 8 Mountain Division from the northern reaches of Kashmir. 

Pakistan was quick to exploit this gap by pumping in the jihadists, who then proceeded to launch fidayeen attacks over the next few years, till they were finally wrapped up by the additional troops deployed for Operation Parakram. 

Admittedly, 6 Mountain Division, being based in Bareilly with its brigades to Uttarakhand, would have had a delayed arrival. Yet the time taken for moving in, familiarising with, acclimatising to and the eventual launch from the region could have been profitably used for reconnoitring, prepositioning artillery, softening the ill-prepared Pakistani sangars with firepower and planning a concerted battle. 

In the event this was not done. The whole story of this critical decision remains untold, since two protagonists — the commanders of the Srinagar Corps and Northern Command — are no more. 

There is little accounting for the lives lost. Then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, was lauded for the decision not to cross the LoC. The responsibility for loss of lives must also be his, especially since the military did not fully buy into the decision.

From the recollections that have surfaced so far, there is no record of political leadership pressuring for quick results. Such political pressure would have been plausible since Vajpayee’s was a caretaker government looking ahead to elections, having lost a parliamentary floor test by a single vote earlier in the year. If there was no pressure, the military leadership’s decision to destabilise the counter insurgency grid for quick results is missing an accounting. 

Looking ahead, if the reserve division was unready then, there are lessons for IBGs. 

The compulsion of delivering on the substantive side of the mandate is weighed down by frills that accompany peacetime soldiering. That these need pruning is evident from chiefs periodically riling against them; the naval Chief’s missive to his command on reduction of “unnecessary ostentation” being a recent example. 

This peace time culture is accentuated by its extensive engagement in low-intensity conflict operations, which – in light of Indian manpower advantages – are only intermittently challenging and in limited areas at that. It gives the Army a self-image of a well-blooded force. 

A limiting, tactical-level focus instead ossifies talent for other facets of professionalism. The commentary attending the Kargil War anniversary makes clear that the elements of operational art and strategic acumen – indicators of professionalism – were missing. 

The IBG initiative owes to a failure to work the cultural changes intrinsic to mechanisation dating to the eighties. Manoeuvre warfare is fluid, relying on Auftragstaktik or decentralised, mission-command tactics based on directive control. If the Army had measured up to mechanisation, there was little reason for shifting to preconfigured IBGs for periodic “mowing the grass” operations. 

Doctrinal and organisational changes are essential, but so is a cultural shift. The latter is not in evidence, with IBGs symbolising both the failure and its acknowledgement. Twenty years since Kargil, it remains true that the more things change the more they remain the same. 

Salute, April-May 2019 issue

Consequences of operational decisions
https://salute.co.in/consequences-of-operational-decisions/

A trial balloon was floated recently in the media that the government has asked the army to dispense with services of the commanders of the bases that were attacked by terrorists. Three bases found mention in the media report: Uri, Nagrota and Sanjuvan. Rightly, the army has reportedly pushed back, citing the negative effect on aggressive leadership any such move is likely to have.  

While the veracity of the report is not known, the media source being largely credible, it bears reflection as to what the political minders and bureaucratic henchmen imagined when they sought to prevail on the army to take such action.

It is well known that the military has to be on perpetual alert in counter insurgency beset areas, whereas the insurgents/terrorists have to be lucky but once. Therefore, for a base to be attacked as part of an ongoing insurgency/proxy war is only par for the course. It is the immediate reaction and response that is consequential in determining the showing of the outfit attacked.

By this yardstick, it can be argued that even the seeming setback suffered in the Uri terror attack needs moderating. The deaths of a dozen jawans owed not so much to terror action but to an accident resulting from the situation in which the tent they were sleeping in burnt down. The three terrorists were neutralised with just about double the number of own dead, which is reasonable considering that terrorists are no pushovers themselves and their advantage of surprise had first to be negated.

The army transferring of the commander out of the area then was therefore justified, but going any further now would amount to being stampeded by an unrealistic expectation in the minds of civilian desk warriors in Delhi.

They need reminding that friction is endemic in conflict. Friction is the military equivalent of Murphy’s law. As Clausewitz illustrated it, all actions in conflict zones are akin to walking in water. Its effects must be factored in when envisaging operations and their consequences. The fog of war serves to compound fluid situations.  

This phenomenon is true for crisis also. The heightened tensions can result in unintended and inadvertent actions, such as in the unfortunate case of fratricide in which an air force missile unit shot down an own helicopter at Budgam. The friendly fire incident owed to the spike in tension and uncertainty – the fog of war – resulting in the tragedy, an instance of friction.

Though the air force is  considering legal action against the involved officers and weapons handlers, it bears reminding that the situation was one of an ongoing armed attack. Insisting on standard operating procedure implementation is fine, but the human element in combat needs taking into account in any such consideration. The air force must not be overly zealous in attempting to impress its political minders by taking legal recourse in relation to an operational action.

If this advice is valid for the air force that lost air men in the accident, it holds doubly true for the army when confronted with unreasonable demands on how its handles its internal inquiry systems. It needs maintaining its autonomy and having military considerations prevail. 

It is strange that this suggestion has been bandied when there has been no accountability in relation to the Pulwama incident. Pinning of responsibility would have reckoned with at least two heads to have rolled of the Indian Police Service brass, namely, the ones who planned the convoy that was targeted and the intelligence supervisors who missed the car bombing in the offing.

Protecting internal turf is a command responsibility. The army chain has let the government know that the necessary action has been taken. Any further push by civilians is therefore only intended to push the military into a corner and keep it there, in a travesty of civil-military relations. Appropriate democratic civil-military relations entail the military professional sphere being off limits to political muddling.

The theory that has it that civilians are always right even when patently wrong is viable only in states where civilians have a modicum of sensibility for what the military domain implies. The idea broached of sacking commanders instead has fingerprints of amateurs all over it.

Fortunately, the brass shot down – for now - the sentiment likely originating in the national security bureaucracy that over-lays the defence sector these days. Only by standing up will the military continue standing tall.

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