Sunday, 17 November 2019

https://idsa.in/africatrends/crisis-management-in-south-sudan-aahmed#.XdEktyj2Ff4.twitter

A lesson from crisis management in South Sudan

Africa Trends, IDSA, Jan-June 2019

South Sudan appears to be on finally be on the mend, following the revitalisation of the peace agreement that addressed its first bout of civil war that began in December 2013. This positive development is an appropriate juncture to revisit the crises in the country from a lessons-learnt point of view. Robust mandates by the Security Council authorise missions to “use all necessary means” to deter forceful attempts to disrupt the political process, protect civilians under imminent threat of physical attack, and/or assist the national authorities in maintaining law and order.”1 This use of force would willy-nilly be the order of the day in case the political capacities of the mission are not up to the mark in terms of prevention and tackling of political impetus to instability. This lack would leave the mission with little else to cope with than robust response by its military component. This implies that robust mandates need to be implemented by providing strong political divisions in the substantive side of the missions at headquarters level. The article below relies on personal experience of the author to make the case that the lack of political capacities in the UNMISS led in some measure to its inability to cope with the succession of crises that beset South Sudan, with an eminently avoidable premium then being placed on robust peacekeeping by its force component.
Three crises are covered here to argue that the drift in UN peacekeeping towards ‘robust’ peacekeeping2 can be contained and reversed by upgrading the political capacities of UN missions and mandating peacemaking assistance for parties to conflicts impacting the mandate in the host nation. The first was the localised crisis of rebellion by the David Yau Yau led Murle in Jonglei province in 2012-13.3 The second was the national crisis of mid-December 2013 which eventuated in a recently stabilised civil war between the majority Dinka and the largest minority the Nuer.4 The third was a spike in the civil war that occurred in July 2016 triggered by the return of the former vice president Riek Machar to Juba leading up to a renewed outbreak of ethnic fighting.5 The recommendation, stemming from the experience of crises as part of the UNMISS, is for enhanced political mediation capacities in the substantive side of missions. This would enable missions to discern, prevent, cope with and end conflicts that potentially impact, retard and set back mandate delivery by missions, thereby avoiding an undue premium being placed on the use of force by the force components under the questionable tenets of the doctrine of robust peacekeeping.

The Murle crisis

This was a mini-crisis that nevertheless tested the crisis management structures of the UNMISS, in particular, posing a challenge for its protection of civilians (POC) capacities. The David Yau Yau rebellion had as a backdrop the repair of relations between Sudan and South Sudan following the signing of the nine agreements in September 2012 following their border war earlier in the year. The security aspect of the agreement was on discontinuation of the support for proxies by both sides. The Murle tribe had aligned with the Sudanese in the civil war prior to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005. Juba decided the time was ripe to demilitarise the Murle as also assert its new-found sovereignty over Murle inhabited areas in Jonglei.
It proceeded to do so in early 2013, with a view to wrapping up operations before the onset of rainy season by mid-year. The resulting fighting led to death of five Indian peacekeepers in a Murle ambush near Gumurukh in April. President Salva Kiir allowed for a window of opportunity for the David Yau faction of ‘Cobra’ Murle warriors to return to the mainstream by announcing amnesty in end-April. The Murle, for its part, rebelled, taking over the politically important Boma town, dealing a blow to the government in May. The Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA) retook Boma, dispersing the Murle, who then posed a threat further north in the area of Pibor. This forced the march of the White Army, comprising of armed Nuer youth, who attacked the Murle – for a second time following their earlier attack the previous year at Likongule in 2012.6
Not only had the UNMISS to prove responsive to the fighting, but also provide protection to the Murle population. The population had disappeared into the proverbial African ‘bush’, making it difficult to do Tier II POC, i.e.the military protection leg of POC. The mission’s Tier I POC response – the political leg of the three tiered POC doctrine (the third being humanitarian access)7 - was in establishing a link between the government and the Murle forces in the bush. This was undertaken by the Force Headquarters, laying the foundation for talks between the government and the Murle under aegis of Bishop Paride Taban, the head of the famous Kuron peace village in neighbouring Torit. Eventually, the talks resulted in the Murle reconciliation with the government in early 2014,8 after the outbreak of the national Dinka-Nuer crisis of December 2013, with the agreement being signed in mid- 2014.

The December 2013 crisis

The second crisis was a national level crisis in which South Sudan spiraled downwards into a civil war. The early warnings of this were apparent, when Riek Machar9, the vice president, was stripped of his additional charge and later removed from the position by mid-2013. He wished to contest for elections, which was not taken well by the president. The power play between the two culminated in the conduct of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM) convention in mid- December without Machar and supportive leaders attending the second day of the convention on 15 December.10 That evening fighting broke out in the barracks of the SPLA in Juba, which spread to civilian areas of the town by next morning. In the forenoon, UN camps in Juba were inundated with internally displaced Nuer from surrounding localities, victims of a civil war outbreak that was to consume the rest of north and east South Sudan, areas of inhabitation of Nuer over the remainder of the year. The SPLA split along ethnic lines and the major cities – Bor, Bentiu and Malakal – changed hands several times, resulting in rounds of ethnic killings.
The UNMISS military was overwhelmed with its POC duties in camps in and adjacent to UNMISS bases, even as the rest of the mission went into crisis management mode, sending away to safety all but the minimum essential staff. At the outset of the crisis, the Indian peacekeepers lost two members protecting the Dinka who had taken refuge in their camp at Akobo from a Nuer mob. In the course of the event, the Nuer killed some of the 36 Dinkas who had taken shelter at the camp.11 The Nuer White Army bestirred yet again and at the turn of the year posed a threat to the national capital, Juba.
The political side of crisis management was taken over by the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which sent in foreign ministers in the first round of peacemaking prior to Christmas, followed by a higher presidential level delegation after Christmas. It appointed three interlocutors, who proceeded with shuttle diplomacy between belligerents over January 2014, cobbling together a cessation of hostilities agreement signed off on 23 January. Thereafter, parlays covered a monitoring and verification mission. A final agreement – Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS) - was signed in Addis Ababa in August 2015,12 even as ceasefire monitoring was undertaken by IGAD with assistance from UNMISS under a Joint Monitoring Evaluation Committee (JMEC).13 The UNMISS mandate was redefined, removing from its purview the multi-dimensional aspects and multi-sectoral support to the government, and limiting it to the core functions of POC, protection of human rights and humanitarian assistance.14

The July 2016 crisis

The ARCSS implementation led up eventually to the return of Riek Machar, the leader of the SPLM-in-Opposition to Juba in July 2016. During his meeting with the president on his return, there was an outbreak of fighting between the security details of the two principals. The resulting escalation led to Machar fleeing Juba once again and a renewed bout of ethnic bloodletting. This was the second national level crisis, which though brief, resulted in several hundreds of thousands leaving South Sudan over the following months as refugees. This round of the crisis witnessed the infamous ‘Terrain’ hotel incident in which UNMISS was allegedly less than responsive to calls for assistance from the activists of the humanitarian workers against a violent attack including and sexual assault by an SPLA outfit on them. A fallout of the incident was the removal of the UNMISS force commander, a Kenyan, leading to the withdrawal of the Kenyan battalion by its national authorities in protest. The very fact that an entirely predictable crisis recurred on UNMISS watch a second time suggests a deficit in UNMISS political capacities. Early warning was very much there in the manner the ARCSS was signed, with the signing being spread over several days as Kiir procrastinated and the manner the SPLA delayed the arrival of Machar’s security detail to Juba prior to his move.
The political side of the crisis management was once again with the IGAD and resulted over time with a revitalised agreement, the Revitalised ARCSS (RARCSS) in June 2018. This was made possible by better relations between major IGAD members, Sudan and Uganda, who were seen to be on opposite sides of the South Sudanese civil war. In the first round of the national crisis, Ugandan troops had intervened on the side of Kiir, at the invite of the national government. Sudan for its part had been restrained, as its erstwhile proxy forces had returned to South Sudan the previous year in wake of the September 2012 raft of agreements.
The revitalisation of the ARCSS was affected under threat of targeted UN sanctions. The UNMISS ground level input for the talks was through the Special Envoy of the Secretary General based at Addis Ababa. The improved relations all round, including better internal stability in the other major IGAD members and Ethiopia being under a new and reconciliatory administration, provided the backdrop to the return of Riek Machar to Juba for a second time; but this time without a problem. The RARCSS is, at the time of writing, under implementation, though behind schedule, with elections coming up three years on.

Observations

The brief overview of the crises above reveals that the UNMISS was not an active participant in the political track of conflict management, left to cope with the outcome and consequences of the crisis. In view of the norm of impartiality, it did not mediate the talks in the localised Murle crisis. In the higher order crisis, the UN took a backseat, deferring to the regional organisation, IGAD, the control of the talks. This was perhaps to enable the regional states to sort out their differences and power equations that had provided the backdrop to the onset and continuation of the civil war. The African Union backed this arrangement, confining itself largely to addressing the human rights consequences. The five years that went into the peace process and the setback it received midway in the July 2016 crisis indicate the complexities confronting peace processes.
However, it is for consideration whether the availability of enhanced political capabilities in UNMISS could have prevented the turmoil in first place. The first special representative of the secretary general (SRSG), Hilda Johnson, was an expert on the region, with strong ties with all political actors dating to her involvement with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) formulation and its implementation in her official capacity with the Norwegian government that had an intimate role in the peace process.15 The political affairs division head was from the region and a distinguished diplomat of an IGAD member state, Ethiopia. The UNMISS therefore had the political heft, but its political affairs division, that could have provided the staff support for facilitation of the political process was undersized. The UNMISS civil affairs division had a country-wide presence but was engaged in reconciliation at the grass roots level. The UNMISS interpreted its mandate as supportive of the government and therefore precluding of a peacemaking role, unless asked for by the government. As a result UNMISS was on the sidelines of the resolution efforts in the Murle crisis, at best acting as a facilitator with a logistics backup. It was not quite up to taking on peacemaking in the national crises.
The upshot of the deficit in UNMISS’ political capacities was the continuation internal instability in the country. The impact was on the military component’s conduct of peacekeeping in that a more robust stance was required of it. UNMISS was a Chapter VII mission and therefore it was unexceptionable for use of force considerations to figure in the discussion on options for the UNMISS to address insecurity.
However, in case UNMISS was to undertake peacekeeping robustly, deploying the force at its command, this would have vitiated its operating environment. It was already under considerable strain with the government restricting its access and coverage of areas at will. If the UNMISS military component had adopted a robust peacekeeping mode, it could have ended up at cross purposes with the non-state actors challenging the government, i.e. the Murle in the 2013 crisis and the Nuer in the larger crises. Even so, there were calls for more robust peacekeeping. An Indian deputy force commander was able to bring moderation into the responses. But the attitude and preference of the military staff officers from western countries, who had done tenures in Afghanistan and Iraq, was for more robustness.

Conclusion

The lack of political capacity in the mission to address challenges as they emerged resulted in a vitiated security environment calling for robustness in the use of force. The corollary is that had the political capacities been up to the mark in the UNMISS ab-initio, there would have been a greater preventive and peacemaking effort on the part of the UNMISS. Hilde Johnson in her book on the crisis prelude and aftermath16 recalls the inquiry by Riek Machar prior to leaving Juba at the crisis outbreak if he could seek shelter in a UNMISS compound. If the UNMISS had had some political role, it could have considered the request favourably, taking it up with the government. As a counter-factual it can be hazarded that it could, through such action, have nipped the crisis in the bud. This could have been subsumed under its Tier I POC responsibility. However, during these instances, UNMISS was handicapped; thereby making insecurity more likely and making robust peacekeeping as the default response option for the UNMISS. The gravamen of the argument here is that to the lack of UNMISS political capacities can be attributed – inter-alia - the deterioration in the security environment in South Sudan.
Therefore, it is imperative that the political capacities in UN missions be commensurate with the likely political tasks the mission is to perform, alongside allowing for a capacity to undertake Tier I POC at a minimum and peacemaking in case of higher order political disruption involving the national elite. It is worth recalling that the Independent High-level Panel on Peace Operations in its land report, colloquially called the HIPPO report, has said as much:
Lasting peace is not achieved nor sustained by military and technical engagements, but through political solutions. The primacy of politics should be the hallmark of the approach of the United Nations to the resolution of conflict, during mediation, the monitoring of ceasefires, assistance to the implementation of peace accords, the management of violent conflicts and longer-term efforts at sustaining peace…..Whenever the United Nations has a peace operation on the ground, it should lead or play a leading role in political efforts prior to and during peace processes and after agreements are reached. Absent a major role in supporting a peace process, the success of a United Nations mission may be undermined.17
The work for the Department of Peace Operations is thus amply clear. It must privilege the substantive side in its thinking as it approaches mandate making. This would ease the work of peacekeepers and contain the thrust in recent years towards a militarisation of peacekeeping under the cover of robust peacekeeping. That this is in hand is evident from UN missions such as in Somalia having a mediation role and capacity.18 The implication for India as a leading troop contributing nation, that is skeptical about the direction peacekeeping is taking while moving away from traditional peacekeeping and the increased propensity for use of force in peacekeeping, is to urge the UN to strengthen the mandate of the missions to undertake some political roles. This would help India repay the sacrifice of seven Indian peacekeepers in South Sudan.
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Friday, 15 November 2019

https://southasianvoices.org/fallout-of-article-370s-withdrawal100-days-on-indian-militarys-false-optimism/


Fallout of Article 370’s Withdrawal inKashmir: The Indian Military’s False Optimism?

On August 5, the Indian government did away with the special status enjoyed by Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) under Articles 35A and 370, bifurcating the state into two union territories. This change was fraught with military consequences: in the short term, an internal rebellion and an external crisis with Pakistan, and, over the long term, a proxy war punctuated with periodic crises with Pakistan and the rekindling of an insurgency in Kashmir.
It can be reasonably surmised that the Indian government’s decision to run the risk of making this move was in part due to the Indian military’s confidence in its ability to manage the consequences over both the short and long term. Speculating on the military’s input in this decision based onrecent doctrinal developments, this article argues that the military may have dangerously over-reached.
Setting the Stage Militarily
In retrospect, it is easier to see that the government’s move in J&K was long in the making. At the subconventional level, the military conditions were created by the killing of more than 700 militants over the past three years in a concerted campaign. This containing of the insurgency created the enabling conditions in areas other than south Kashmir for the political initiative to withdraw Article 370. To an extent, it was also aided by Pakistan restraining its support to the insurgency in Kashmir as part of the “Bajwa doctrine” of reaching out to India, taken forward by Imran Khan through his peace overtures after taking over as prime minister.
With regard todealing with a potential Pakistani response to any Indian moves in Kashmir, theIndian military presumably planned to resort to its recently-established toolkit, primarily consisting of surgical strikes—conducted by land in September 2016 following the Uri terror attack and by air at Balakot in the aftermath of the Pulwama bombing.Even if India’s Balakot aerial strikes did not hit the target—assome have argued, citing lack of evidence on the efficacy of the strikes—the deterrent was restored from the Indian point of view because India’s very decision to conduct the aerial strikes and to target mainland Pakistan demonstrated its willingness to accept elevated risk.
India has continued to hone its conventional deterrent over the yearsto prevent a Pakistani provocation, but the timing of recent Indian moves indicates that the military had a post-Article 370 scenario in mind. The latest initiative was the test-bed exercises this summer of integrated battle groups (IBGs) of the Western Command,part of operationalizing the Cold Start doctrine (India’s limited war doctrine that aims to conduct multiple shallow, offensive, punitive ground offensivesin Pakistan). This makes for a closer coupling between the subconventional and conventional levels. Alongside, the army chief’s deterrence messaging to Pakistan has been that he had forces on hand for following up on the air strikes at Balakot. After the post-Pulwama crisis subsided, the navy had also let on that it had deployed its nuclear submarines to the North Arabian Sea (hinting at the inclusion of its nuclear-armed submarine).The intent behind showcasing and citing Indian conventional preparedness was to stay a Pakistani conventional responseto India’s constitutional initiatives in J&K.
At the nuclear level,India has been attempting to influence Pakistan’s nuclear first-use decision by projecting ambiguity regarding its own no first use (NFU) pledge. After the nullification of Article 370, this was done through the Indian defense minister’s remarks about the NFU pledge being contingent on circumstances in the future. India was likely hoping to temper Pakistan’s “full spectrum deterrence” nuclear signaling that it could respond with tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) to any Indian forces crossing the International Boundary (IB). The idea of introducing ambiguity about the pledge appears to be to deter Pakistan from reaching for TNWs by implicitly holding out the threat that doing so would release India from its NFU pledge.
For his part, the Indian army chief has taken care to remind Pakistan that its notion of nuclear first use goes against the theory of strategic weapons employment. India has maintained that although IBGs are designed to operate across the IB, their limited objective of shallow strikes ismeant to be well below the threshold that would warrant a nuclear response from Pakistan. With this, the Indian army chief hopes to widen the window for IBG deployment by influencing Pakistan against using nukes at an early stage in the conflict.
While  details of IBG operational employment are necessarily under wraps, in case of a reprisal scenario they could be to administer a quick blow across the border from a standing start – so the term ‘cold start’ - and retrieve to own side before Pakistan gets its act together. In case Pakistan escalates, then their role expands to link the subconventional level with the conventional. How the wider conventional faceoff will play out without provoking Pakistani nuclear redlines is a challenge for both armies set to continue till the two independently arrive at the conclusion that the risk is not worth running.
However, for now, even though India is seeking a decoupling of the conventional and nuclear levels of conflict, Pakistan has constantly reminded India—and the international community—of the intersection between these two levels. Pakistan did this again even recently with Prime Minister Imran Khan explicitly drawing attention to this linkage at the UN General Assembly. This doctrinal interplay between the two states in the aftermath of theevents of August 5thus indicates the risk of war – nuclear war – that India has run with its J&K decision.
Did the Gamble Work?
Three months after August 5, it may appear that India has largely been able to manage the consequences of its J&K decision, but the respite is only likely to be through the winter.
India has tidied over the immediate term byextensive paramilitary deployment in early August under the ruse of heightened proxy war by Pakistan as well as through communication restrictions on Kashmiris and detentions of political leaders. What also worked in India’s favor was terror financing and money laundering watchdog the Financial Action Task Force’s appraisal of Pakistan in October. FATF has determined Pakistan would remainon the grey list till February or be put on the blacklist if it does not make progress on the action plan. This suggests that pressure to clean up its act for the FATF decision and its dire economic straits may have precluded Pakistan from attempting heightened proxy war or conventional war at least until next summer.
However, India’s August 5 move could backfire over the long term (next summer and beyond), both within Kashmir and vis a vis Pakistan. For one, reports of considerable human rights violations in Kashmir, such as the detention of juveniles, suggest a deepening of the suppression-alienation cycle—in fact,civil society activists returning from Kashmir report that people in the Valley have launched a civil disobedience movement. These satyagraha tactics can be expected to continue till the Supreme Court announces a decision on the petitions challenging the voiding of Article 370 but if that decision does not go the way of the Kashmiris, a renewal of the insurgency can be expected. In addition, with Prime Minister Khan indicating that support to Kashmiris is an obligation under the doctrine of jihad (struggle), Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir—even if largely indigenized—is set to persist.
Unease from the heightened contest could see India delivering on its promise of a robust response. Reassured by the recent acquisition of ammunition stocks at ten days intense-war rate, inclusion of the Rafale into its inventory, conversion of mechanized formations into IBGs, and restructuring of its apex military under a new chief of defense staff system, India may seek a way out through limited war.
Since it takes two to keep a war limited, it remains to be seen if Pakistan’s ‘new concept of  warfighting’ doctrine gives it the confidence to take on an Indian conventional attack without resorting to its nuclear arsenal tocompensate for its conventional disadvantage. ByoperationalizingCold Start and simultaneouslyflexing air and naval muscles, India unwarily is leaving Pakistan with little recourse other than putting a premium on its nuclear capability. This in turn leads to buffeting of India’s NFU.  
By indulging in a game of ‘chicken’ – the one who veers off between two cars speeding at each other is ‘chicken’ – India hopes to cow Pakistan down, confident that Pakistani nuclear nonchalance regarding tactical nuclear weapons introduction into a conflict is more for projection than carrying out at the crunch. The onus to keep of the escalation accelerator is thus transferred to Pakistan, the foreseeable consequence of not doing so being explicit to Pakistan. This placing of all the regional eggs in the basket of Pakistan good sense is an overstretch, an instance of Indian strategic credulity.
In short, the likely assurance of the Indian military on itsability to manage the consequences of the decision to remove the special status of J&K, whichpresumably emboldened the government to undergo its Kashmir initiative, has upped the possibilityof war.The extent of danger is evident from a timely study that found that some 125 million people could perish in a subcontinental nuclear war. The government – on which rests the onus of the political decision – should have been more circumspect in its Kashmir decisionmaking, irrespective of the advice received from the military apex.
The Indian military’s periodic recourse to deterrence signaling is attributable to habits formed in the India-Pakistan cold war. Fortunately for it, the possibility of war has receded not due to its deterrence posturing, but by the sagacious recourse to civil disobedience by the Kashmiris. This has dampened for now both Indian repression and jihadi ardor supportive of Kashmiris in Pakistan. How the Indian security forces manage Kashmiri satyagraha will determine the temperatures in the subcontinent out to next summer.

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Thursday, 14 November 2019

http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=96325#


Military consequence management in Jammu and Kashmir

On 5-6 August, the Union government did away with the special status enjoyed by Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) under Articles 35A and 370 bifurcating the state into two union territories. The changes were fraught with military consequences in terms of, in the short term, an internal rebellion and an external crisis with Pakistan, and, over the long term, proxy war punctuated with periodic crises with Pakistan and an insurgency in Kashmir. It can be reasonably surmised that the government’s choosing to run the risk owed in part to the military’s confidence in consequence management over both the short and long terms. Speculating on the military’s input to the decision, based on military doctrinal developments, this article argues that the military may have dangerously over-reached.
Setting the stage militarily
In retrospect it is easier to see that the government’s move in J&K was long in the making. At the subconventional level, the military conditions were created by the killing of over 700 militants over the past four years in a concerted campaign. At the subconventional-conventional level interface, India resorted to surgical strikes – by land in September 2016 following the Uri terror attack and by air at Balakot in the aftermath of the Pulwama car bombing. Other modes of quick retaliation are available, such as missile strikes - reportedly readied the day following Pakistan’s quick rejoinder to India’s Balakot aerial strikes over southern J&K at Rajauri-Naushera. The common sense now is that administering these in case of Pakistani provocation rekindles India’s conventional deterrence of subconventional threats.
India’s test-bed exercises this summer of integrated battle groups (IBGs) of Western Command were part of operationalising its ‘cold start’ doctrine. That these are now better configured, cohesive and primed for launch makes for a closer coupling between the subconventional and conventional levels. For its part, the air force received its first Rafale aircraft on Air Force Day. Its crisis-time air chief, Air Chief Marshal Dhanoa, had rued their absence in the air scuffle over southern J&K when the Pakistani air force breached Indian air space to assert their deterrence credentials.
Even so, escalation remains a possibility. This explains the army chief’s deterrence messaging to Pakistan that he had forces on hand for following up the air strikes at Balakot. After the crisis abated, the navy let on that it had deployed its nuclear submarines, hinting at inclusion of its nuclear armed submarine that had only last year completed its first operational patrol. Another information war line has been the repetitive references to Pakistan occupied Kashmir by all and sundry.
At the nuclear level, India has been attempting to influence Pakistan’s nuclear first use decision making by projecting ambiguity regarding its own no first use pledge. The latest has been in the defence minister’s remarks that the pledge was contingent on circumstances in future. The idea appears to be to deter Pakistan from reaching for tactical nuclear weapons by implicitly holding out the threat that it’s doing so would release India from its pledge.
For his part, the army chief has taken care to remind Pakistan that their notion of nuclear first use goes against the theory of strategic weapons employment. Since IBGs are designed to operate below the assumed nuclear threshold of Pakistan, he seems to be indicating to Pakistan that pulling down their nuclear umbrella to cover a low conventional level militates against the notion of nuclear weapons as weapons of last resort. He hopes to thereby widen the window for IBG employment. While a decoupling of the conventional and nuclear levels is sought by India, Pakistan – on the contrary - constantly reminds India and the international community of their intermeshing of the two levels.
Consequence management prospects
The immediate term has been tidied over by the extensive paramilitary deployment in early August under the ruse of heightened proxy war by Pakistan. Reports of considerable human rights violations, such as detentions of juveniles, suggest that once the scale of the lockdown is apparent, a deepening of the suppression-alienation cycle shall set the stage for the long haul. It is learnt that the Kashmir Police has been largely disemboweled and the central reserve police rules the roost. As to what this implies for the gender factor in conflict situations will only be known when Kashmiris are free to speak sometime down line. With a largely north Indian male force under an indifferent leadership it can be reasonably be hazarded that the invasion of privacy and social spaces is a double whammy on Kashmiri women.
India has in retrospect apparently rightly discerned a window in which Pakistan has been forced to stay its hand. There was the financial action task force appraisal of Pakistan continuing on the grey list or otherwise in its consideration in October, which, in the event, has maintained a status quo. The requirement to keep its nose clean in the interim has removed any incentive for Pakistan to go down the proxy war route immediately. Since it is up for review in February, it would likely continue to be more circumspect for longer. Pakistan would not be averse to this untypical behavior since the Kashmiris in the interim have launched a satyagraha of sorts. Not wanting to upset the apple cart, Pakistan has a ready excuse to lay-off. 
Pakistan’s dire economic straits have in any case precluded its generation of a crisis or resort to conventional war. In 1965, it had taken to war though the provocation was minimal. This time it has hidden behind a lot of smoke, without a fire. This exposes its determination to fight till the last Kashmiri. It has as another excuse India’s immediate term handling of internal security in Kashmir in which there has been a perceptible fall in lives lost; thereby releasing Pakistan from any need for military predominant action. India’s adoption of a diplomatic stance that its action is an internal matter not impacting the LC (and implicitly the disputed status of Kashmir) has enabled the Pakistan military to play along saying that it never recognized Article 370 in any case. Therefore its removal does not ostensibly warrant any action on its part.
It begs the question as to why Pakistan maintains an army if it cannot respond to what has so far been taken as a premier national interest. The answer is equally obvious in the well known fact that its parochial interests far outweigh national interest. India’s national security minders have evidently read its neighbouring military rather well. This is easy to explain in light of India’s Pakistan obsession and the two sides being birds of the same feather in a manner of speaking.
Perhaps Pakistan’s hopes are over the long term - summer and beyond. It is clear that not only is the constitutional initiative unpopular within Kashmir, but the manner of its implementation has likely extended the life of the insurgency. The changes cannot be taken as a ‘political solution’, creating the conditions for extension of development to the region as projected by the government. Consequently, insurgency is liable to beset India into the reckonable future. With Imran Khan indicating that support to Kashmiris is an obligation under the doctrine of jihad (struggle), its proxy war – even if largely indigenised – is set to persist. For the record, Imran Khan paddled back on this tall talk fairly quickly.
Perturbations from the heightened contest over the long term could see India delivering on its promise a robust response. Reassured by recent acquisition of ammunition stocks at ten days intense-war rate, inclusion of the Rafale into its inventory, conversion of mechanized formations into IBGs and restructuring of its apex military under a new chief of defence staff system, India may seek a way out through a limited war from the cul-de-sac of its political decision backfiring. At a time of an economic downturn, a diversionary war may have internal political utility, even if it does not quick start the economy.
Since it takes two to keep a war limited, it remains to be seen if Pakistan’s ‘new concept of war fighting’ doctrine - dating to General Kiani’s tenure early this decade - gives it confidence to draw back its nuclear awning that compensates for its conventional disadvantage. India operationalising cold start and intent to simultaneously flex air and naval muscles appears instead to leave Pakistan with little recourse than putting a premium on its nuclear capability.
In short, the assurance of the military on consequence management that presumably emboldened the government in its Kashmir initiative upped the possibility of war. The extent of danger run is evident from a timely study that has it that some 125 million people could perish in a subcontinental nuclear war. The military needs answering how it’s proactive and robust handling a heightened proxy war and insurgency over the foreseeable future can be kept non-nuclear.
While for now the need for success of the Kartarpur corridor outreach by Pakistan to Sikhs and the FATF scrutiny appear to have kept the peace, it remains to be seen if the Pakistani military can sustain its reticence in interfering in Kashmir. At some point, the cultural pendulum will swing in which it will be asked by those currently besieging Islamabad to shed its uniform for the burkha. Therefore even if it is conceded that the Indian national security establishment has got the Pakistan army right, the long haul may yet test this judgment. Even so, both militaries have - thankfully – been let off the hook by the outbreak of the Kashmiri satyagraha.

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Monday, 11 November 2019

a blow for peace

writings of ali ahmed, PhD (JNU), PhD (Cantab), with due acknowledgement and thanks to publications where these have appeared. Download books/papers from dropbox links provided. Follow on twitter: @aliahd66 Other blog-www.subcontinentalmusings.blogspot.in. Former UN official and infantryman. Visiting professor at the Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Jamia Millia Islamia.
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Saturday, 2 November 2019

https://www.newsclick.in/why-pak-spin-doctors-are-zooming-gen-rawat


Why Pak Spin Doctors are Zooming in on Gen Rawat

UNEDITED VERSION 

The ISPR gets it almost right


The Inter Services Public Relations has gone overboard in its taking down of India’s army chief by a peg or two. They attribute three infra-dig issues to General Bipin Rawat: one, provoking war by overhyping fire assaults as surgical strikes; two, acting with an eye for the electioneering advantage of his political masters; and, three, damaging the professionalism of India’s military which they term as gone ‘rogue’ under Rawat.
Their invective was prompted by Rawat wading into a developing media story last weekend on the results of a fire assaults on Pakistani terror launch pads. The media influenced by ruling party spin doctors on election-day blew up the fire assaults as a ‘surgical strike 3’ as Maharashtra and Haryana went to polls.
Rawat’s weighing in on the casualties inflicted, prompted an otherwise sympathetic scribe in a quasi-nationalist website, The Print, to caution against the army aping the Pakistan army’s ‘lying’ ISPR. The reporter in his opinion piece goes on to make the link between polling and Rawat’s intervention, which was not lost on anyone following Indian security affairs over Rawat’s tenure.
It appears that the ISPR and attentive observers share two of the ISPR’s observations: firstly, the timing and overhyping of the latest round of fire assaults suggests an election-related agenda; and, secondly, this is not professionally edifying for the Indian army.
The ISPR goes a step further in apprehending a personal motive for the army chief’s behavior in implying that in aligning his political antenna to the prevailing political winds, he is auditioning for the vacancy opened up by the prime minister from the ramparts of the Red Fort, that of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS).
Whereas the ISPR’s earlier response to the fire assaults of 20 October was the registering of mild disappointment, they upped the rhetoric a few days down the line, provoked perhaps by the army chief’s reference in the week to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) being controlled by terrorists.
PoK has become one of the army chief’s  favoured themes, considering the his last reference to the area was when he boasted that only a word from its political masters held the army back from seizing the area. Clearly, the army chief has gotten under the skin of the ISPR leading to it getting personal in its rhetoric.
There is a plausible explanation for the army chief’s periodic forays in the media against Pakistan. Such a strategy has roots in the army’s new doctrine, released in an understated form late last year and lodged in a nondescript corner of the army’s web pages. It dwells on hybrid war, characterizing even peace time – such as now between India and Pakistan - as a time of ‘hybrid war’. It takes the fabled military thinker, Clausewitz’s dictum ‘war being politics by other means’ rather seriously to mean politics is war by other means.
Under its tenets, Pakistan’s proxy war amounts to its hybrid war which India must respond to appropriately. The shift from the earlier strategic restraint to strategic proactivism under the Modi regime enables the army to use the interregnum of peace to condition, deter and degrade Pakistan as necessary. Psychological warfare or information operations constitute the main ‘line of operations’ in peace time.
The army chief’s utterances in relation to Pakistan could – at a stretch - be sympathetically rationalized in this light. It cannot be that the army chief takes himself seriously on PoK though. 
The assumption that Indian army can militarily take over PoK is easy to concede. Besides the reserves meant for the northern theater, it has additional forces available having just put its mountain strike corps through its paces in the eastern sector. It has the requisite air lift – thanks to the easier foreign military sales route with the United States - to bring the integrated battle groups meant for the China front to bear on the Pakistan front. One of its divisions is close at hand, at Pathankot. Alongside, to keep Pakistan from reinforcing PoK, it can credibly threaten a reprise of 1965 War - when it threatened Lahore by opening up the Punjab front in response to Pakistan’s armoured thrust towards Akhnoor. It has, through test bed exercises this year, also created two integrated battle groups in the border sector of southern Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), presumably poised to prise off Pakistan’s Sialkot bulge.  Assuming it manages surprise, it can be taken at its word that it can bite off a chunk of PoK.
However, Bipin Rawat should know that the moot question is whether it can digest it. If Indian security forces find Kashmiri stone throwers a problem – prompting an unprecedented now three month long lock down - after thirty years of countering insurgency in Kashmir, it can be surmised that PoK will prove indigestible. India noted at the non-alignment forum recently that Pakistan is the ‘contemporary epicenter of terrorism’. Extrapolating from what terrorism backlash did to the forces of the respective coalitions in Afghanistan and Iraq, it can be inferred that PoK will be inhospitable, necessitating reeling back of Indian forces. This will buoy the terrorists; quite like the Hezbullah’s – if pyrrhic – victory claim on departure of the Israelis after their venturing into southern Lebanon in 2006.
Consequently, as in 1965, a war initially confined to PoK may require escalating horizontally southwards along the border. India came close to doing so on the two other occasions it fought on the western front – in 1947-48 and the Kargil War. A recent report on denial of access to the relevant papers regarding the first war with Pakistan which cover India’s deliberations over attacking mainland Pakistan in 1947-48 is evidence. At the twentieth anniversary of Kargil War, the then army chief, General Ved Malik, revealed that he had remonstrated with Prime Minister Vajpayee against openly saying India would limit the war to Kargil sector, lest if and when it became necessary to expand the war due to possible difficulties in Kargil, India might have foreclosed its option of escalation.
The army may indeed have limited objectives in PoK, restricted to some shallow objectives along the Line of Control (LC). These could be enemy posts that are so sited as to provide infiltration and observation advantages to Pakistan. The army’s intent may be take-over these in the next surgical strike. Since the other surgical strike forms – raids and aerial strike – have already been tried out, salami slicing on the LC could be tried next. The aerial strike turned out escalatory as Pakistan struck back and the Pakistani army is perhaps ready to beat back raids. Missiles – that were readied for firing off in their aftermath – do not provide the necessary asymmetry with Pakistan, since Pakistan is no push over in that field. That leaves land operations – more than a raid but less than an invasion.
The army’s repeated references to PoK could be to not only prepare the domestic space for a border skirmish, but also to spell out to Pakistan that the intent is not quite a border war. In case of Pakistani counter attacks succeeding and riposte attacks elsewhere, scope for escalation remains. Even so, it is not easy to see how the redrawn LC will be stabilized. If merely with a lockdown the Security Council met informally behind closed doors on the Kashmir question for the first time in fifty years, a border war that threatens at some step of the escalation ladder to go nuclear will entail a Security Council return to where the Council left off sometime in the late fifties in its mediation role on the Kashmir issue. An operational level gain end up a strategic level disaster.
By keeping up the din over the year on Pakistani villainy, the army chief – perhaps knowing better - may be indulging in information war of sorts. But in doing so he opens himself to credibility of the third accusation of the ISPR – of compromising Indian military professionalism, specifically its advisory function.
The fallout of the army chief’s bellicosity is in conditioning Indians into a war mania, potentially spiraling war pressures at the next crisis. Besides, if he does indeed believe his rhetoric, he would be misleading his political masters on the advisability of a PoK caper by Indian forces. The defence minister and the minister belonging to Jammu in the prime minister’s office have already bought into that line. The prime minister in his Diwali foray to Rajauri also appears persuaded.
The by-now well-known propensity of the national security honcho, Ajit Doval, and his boss, Narendra Modi, for unbridled haste in action (remember demonetization, surgical strikes, Balakot etc), indicates they may lend an ear. A repeat of Ranjit Singh Dyal’s late August 1965 taking over Haji Pir is of course possible, if the Doval-Modi duo is willing to risk (nuclear) war. Their running of the risk early this August through backing Amit Shah’s constitutional shenanigans over Kashmir does not lend confidence over war avoidance. Having chimed up on PoK so many times, India has laid for itself a commitment trap.
Finally, is the ISPR right on the army chief’s personal motives? The thought cannot be disregarded in light of the political utility to the government’s strong on defence image of the periodic grandstanding by its army chief. The ruling party has all through its tenure capitalized on military actions, best evidenced by the surgical strikes and the aerial strike figuring extensively in electoral campaigning. The danger is in an ambitious generals catering to its political need by lending the credibility of his uniform and office to its claims. The ISPR spots such a general in India’s army chief. It is best left to the general to himself introspect. Perhaps, for the benefit of all, including the general and of national security, it might be best for the general to be kicked upstairs into to the CDS chair, where as a general without an army he could serve his political masters best without compromising the army.
Even so, the ISPR must be called out for what it is up to. It is an equal participant in ‘grey zone’ warfare of today. The verbal jousts over PoK are information operations by both sides testifying that both have read the 2014 book, Peter Pomerantsev’s  This is Not Propaganda. For its part, the ISPR is trying to provoke a loss of confidence in the army chief, the prospective CDS. For credibility, such (dis)information efforts partially approximate truth. While being clear eyed of the ISPR’s motives, it must be acknowledged that the ISPR has unfortunately got it somewhat right.


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