https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/18021/CAA-NRC-Those-Who-Voted-for-this-Regime-Need-to-Wake-Up
UNEDITED version
CAA-NRC: Those Who Voted for this Regime Need to Wake Up

The entry into the library and mosque of a university campus in New Delhi by the police and its proceeding to beat students, including women students, is a plunge by this nation into the dark. The ostensible reason given is that resort to stone throwing and arson by anti Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) processionists led to the police attempting to round up anti social elements.

Contrary to the police version, videos on social media indicate that the police set fire to the buses as a precursor to their heavy handedness that followed on campus. At the time of writing the police were shown on national television vandalizing vehicles on the campus of Aligarh Muslim University where sympathetic demonstrations broke out in solidarity with their student colleagues in Jamia Millia Islamia. This makes it easier to suspect the police version of events in New Delhi. 

The credibility of the police has never been high. It took a deep dive recently with a commissioner of police claiming that the law had done its duty while explaining the ‘encounter’ in which the police killed four alleged rapists in Hyderabad. Even if the police version is true, for the police to enter into a university campus in the national capital and rough up students in their search for the anti social elements who resorted to violence is the regime going overboard.

Only a perception of impunity in the armed police could have led to such high handedness. This can only be a result of their action being taken under orders. This line of thought begs the question: Whose orders?

By now it is evident that the regime is incapable of following through with implementing its hard-nosed, ideology-driven decisions with any finesse. The economic fallout and consequences on livelihoods of demonetization and Goods and Services Tax decisions is now fairly evident. The surgical strikes failed to deter the Pulwama terror attack. The Balakot aerial attack failed to hit its intended target. It is equally clear that no F-16 fell out of the sky in the aerial duel that followed. Kashmir is waiting to explode with each passing day of lock down adding to the potentially calamitous consequences when it does. The outcome of the register of citizens’ exercise in Assam can be visualized from the condition of detention centers there.

And now we have its failure to anticipate the anti CAA sentiment in the north east and in the Muslim communities across the country. Needing to divert attention from over reach and to delegitimize the emerging blow-back, it has resorted to its time-tested Gulf of Tonkin tactics. (The reference is to the incident engineered by the United States to enable and legitimize its intervention in the Vietnamese civil war on the side of its lackeys in the mid sixties.) Using the arson and stone throwing as excuse it has tried to paint the counter to the CAA in dark colours. It has already conditioned the media to loyally depict any violence as Muslim initiated and perpetrated.

The intent is to reinforce its narrative on the CAA cum National Register of Citizens (NRC) – its twinned answer to fool-proof homeland security. The Muslims objecting to the CAA-NRC pose a threat because they have much to hide, including some 20 million illegal infiltrators, in their mohallahs and qasbas. Tough handling at the outset of the demonstrations would help deter and divide Muslims. Else they may heed calls for non-cooperation by the community against the CAA-NRC. Besides, the strong arm would need to be much in evidence in case the ‘termites’ are to be accorded a burial at sea in the Bay of Bengal; Bangladesh, having cancelled the visits by its home and foreign ministers last week, being in no mood to welcome them back.  

The necessity of firmness is easy to swallow for believers; they believe anything including that their prime minister is a graduate. The wider public has also been worked on for over a decade during which the notion of convergence between terrorism and Muslims was fostered by the media and fanned by the strategic community. Perpetrators of the black operations that depicted Muslims in poor light were set scot free and at least one now graces parliament. Therefore, the expectation in the security minders who passed on the orders for mayhem on campus was that the rationale would be swallowed.

As with other implementation failures of misconceived policies, this time the regime has come up short. It has been exposed by the swirling social media clips that have found their way into mainstream media coverage of the incidents. Accountability is not with the khakhi clad superiors of the communalised armed police. They have received their marching orders and - being supine - have in carrying these out, have botched it.

Despite its inauspicious rollout of the CAA-NRC, the question still needs answering: whose orders? The deep state, comprising national security minders, is merely a link in the chain of command. Who does the deep state answer to?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at a mega rally the same day on the campaign trail in Dumka, Jharkhand, is a dead give-away. Modi in his inimitable style said that it is possible to make out who those setting the nation on fire are by the clothes they wear. This is of a piece with his long standing dog whistle politics. In a piece of immaculate coincidence the demonstration in Okhla unfolding even as he delivered his address in early afternoon, culminated in arson a little while later, with the nearby campus being invaded by the police shortly thereafter.

Modi’s home minister during his performance in parliament warned that the NRC was coming. The CAA is but stage setting. The Muslim community is left with little recourse but peaceful demonstrations by its articulate members – its students – to register its reservations. The two – Modi and Shah - responsible for setting off the counter to the CAA-NRC are out to manage the pushback with the only methods they know: Kashmirisation of the rest of India, to borrow a phrase.

That the counter has acquired such dimensions owes to the urgency and significance of the juncture. The government for its part is not averse to the rigour of the counter since it helps it project the necessity – in its narrative – of the CAA-NRC double whammy and paper over the widening cracks in the economy.

The take away from witnessing the aftermath of the first act of its folly is that the largely Hindu support base of the ruling party needs to wake up timely. Only a shifting of the sands below the feet of the Chanakyan duo will enable institutions play their part in the system of checks and balances that constitutes democracy. The accountability for controlling Modi-Shah is with those who elected the two. The agent-principal relationship that underpins democracy implies that Hindu brethren who voted Modi into power need inclusion in the answer to the question: on whose orders. They can yet make amends

https://thebookreviewindia.org/art-of-new-age-war/

ARMY OF NONE: AUTONOMOUS WEAPONS AND THE FUTURE OF WAR
By Paul Scharre W. Norton & Company, 2018, pp. 448, R1549.00

The book’s cover has appreciative lines by Bill Gates, who–as the cliché goes—needs no introduction, and Lawrence Freedman, who may need an introduction only for those from fields other than strategic studies, being the doyen of the field. Since Gates knows technology and Freedman focuses on war, their recommendation places the book on the frontline of technology and war.

It is no wonder that at the time of writing of this review, the headlines have it that the army’s Jaipur-based South Western Command is organizing a seminar at Hisar to get to grips with Artificial Intelligence and military operations. The media reports the seminar organizers modestly acknowledging that though the military has taken note of the advances abroad, including China, it is never too late to catch up. Clearly, here is the book to help them tank up.

Even so, a headline alongside says that India is going in for another 1000 plus armoured personnel carriers. This underlines a well-known trait in most militaries—apparently more pronounced in the Indian one—that it is easier to get a new idea into its head than to get an older one out. So long as the three services are busy throwing governmental largesse—set at $130 billion over the coming ten years—on platforms such as fighters, ships and tanks, it is unlikely India will ‘catch up’ this decade. From what Scharre informs through his 446-page book, it would be too late.

Paul Scharre is a good guide into an esoteric subject since he makes intelligible a formidable array of technologies that go into the making of autonomous weapons—weapons he describes as not having a human in the loop for their firing. The science he covers would interest sci-fi aficionados. The book itself is meant for practitioners, though it is written in a style that would attract armchair strategists too. It is meant for those into defence technology, specifically defence scientists and the fledgling defence industry.It needs being read by those working on national security policy to challenge the military’s laundry list of twentieth-century hardware. The book must be made compulsory reading at the military academies and staff colleges, perhaps figuring on the next update to the ‘Golden 100’— an army headquarters compiled list of ‘must read’, ‘should read’ and ‘could read’ tomes. One way to focus young military minds on its contents is to make it part of promotion and competitive exam syllabi.

An additional target audience of the book is the think tank community. Though the military glossies have been a dime-a-dozen for over a decade now, there is little cutting edge content. Technology has ample coverage, since the arms industry is out for a piece of the defence budgetary cake. However, missing is deep-end thinking presented by Scharre such as on the ethics of such weaponization. One doubts there is an equivalent project at any of the plethora of Delhi’s think tanks to the one Scharre tenants at Washington’s independent and bipartisan Center for a New American Security: its Ethical Autonomy project.

This is a step further than merely the technology or the operational usage of the weapon. It is engagement with the ethics of and ethical use of such weapons when fielded. The current state of the art is semi-autonomous weapons, requiring human sign off on targeting. Apparently, only the Israeli Harpy drone has so far crossed the line into being autonomous. Armed drones have over a dozen states in pursuit of the technology. That there is much for ethicists here while the technologists are still at it is evident from the recent killings by a semi-autonomous drone strike of 30 Afghan civilians out nut picking on a Hindu Kush hillside. If and since things can go wrong even with a human in the loop, what more can go awry when the human is at best with a kill-switch? On this count some 3000 robotics experts have already called for a blanket ban on autonomous weapons.

This is the key area Scharre engages with. He takes his time building up to the climax, traversing the technology and its operational use, before getting to in Part VI on whether and how strategy and ethics informs policy choices. The take away is that a weapon ban is wishful and fielding of such weapons is inevitable. Consequently, engaging with how these would relate to international humanitarian law is necessary in the here and now. The international community is taking its usual leisurely course at the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons meetings, even as developments overtake speeches made. In early 2018, there was a drone attack by Syrian rebels on a Syrian air base that also housed Russians, with Russians shooting down the intruding drones. By late 2019, ten drones targeted Saudi Arabia’s premier oil facilities temporarily putting a proportion of its oil production out of action and setting the region closer to a war between regional rivals, the Saudis and Iran.

The book is therefore an important one, with its significance likely to be remarked on more in retrospect some twenty years on. Scharre has wrapped up some ten years of work into its covers, beginning with methodically and readably outlining the technology: robotics, artificial intelligence, neural networks, cyberspace, bots etc. In the later parts, ‘The Fight to Ban Autonomous Weapons’ and ‘Averting Armageddon’, he comes to the meat. Thus the first three quarters of the book would interest the tech savvy, while the last two parts can be expected to detain policy wonks and academics. This ‘something in it for every-one’ aspect of the book comes from his background: an infantryman having served in both of America’s wars this century: Iraq and Afghanistan; and later as the director of the technology and national security programmme at his think tank. This review cannot but in closing reiterate Scharre’s sobering words:

‘No piece of paper can prevent a state from building autonomous weapons if they desire it. At the same time, a pell-mell race forward in autonomy, with no clear sense of where it leads us, benefits no one. States must come together to develop an understanding of which uses of autonomy are appropriate and which go too far and surrender human judgment where it is needed in war. Weighing these human values is a debate that requires all members of society, not just academics, lawyers, and military professionals. Average citizens are needed too, because ultimately autonomous military robots will live—and fight—in our world.’

https://www.epw.in/journal/2019/47/strategic-affairs/approaching-kashmir-through-theoretical-lenses.html

Approaching Kashmir through Theoretical Lenses

By its early August actions that rendered Article 370 vacuous, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has thrown down the gauntlet in Kashmir to Pakistan. The adoption of this hard-line position by India flies in the face of the theory in both the contextual fields, security studies and peace studies. This article examines India’s newly adopted position on Kashmir in light of the two theoretical lenses to conclude that India’s action lacks a strategic rationale.

While the security studies framework informs of the dangers stemming from India’s action, the peace studies lens offers a lifeline to help India walk back. It is hardly likely that the government will turn any time soon to peacemaking, prescribed in both disciplines for conflict resolution. Disregard for the political prong of strategy implies that the antecedents of India’s Kashmir decision are located instead in the ideology of cultural nationalism. The corollary is that the problem in Kashmir—and with Pakistan—cannot be addressed without first politically and democratically addres­sing the problems arising due to majoritarianism.

Security Studies Lens

Over its post-Cold War evolution, security studies has gone on from a “statist, power-centric, masculinised, ethno-centric and militarized worldview of security” (Ken Booth qtd in Horrigan et al 2008: 1896) to a position that nation states cannot be secure if its citizens are insecure. It is apparent from the constitutional initiative in Kashmir that this shift in theory has not quite registered with India’s security managers.

More narrowly, the theory in security studies on countering insurgency has it that an insurgency needs containing and rolling back militarily even as one is working towards a political solution alongside, in light of the understanding that insurgency is a political problem (Anthony 2008: 903). This understanding informs India’s counter-insurgency doctrine, which sensibly acknowledges the limitations of military action while sotto voce calling for political solution:

Since conflict termination and their (conflict) political resolution are the ultimate end states sought, such conditions, besides enabling the initiatives by the economic and informational elements of national power to consolidate, also facilitate initiation of political dialogue for a negotiated settlement. (Army Training Command 2006: 20)

The second theory of relevance is deterrence, which in this case is directed at the proxy-war angle of insurgency in order to stay the hand of external sponsors and supporters. Deterrence theory is not only about punishment to affect the calculation of expected gains of the adversary, but also about incentivising restraint on its part with positive inducements to make the expected utility of limiting or ending proxy war acceptable to the aggressor (Huth 2008: 1259).

India has largely approached the 30 years long insurgency in Kashmir through the security framework. It has deployed a military predominant template—though with a political prong of strategy alongside—aimed mostly at conflict management rather than conflict resolution. Counter-insurgency operations have continued alongside India’s conduct of periodic elections for furthering mainstream politics and deploying a series of interlocutors for progressing political dialogue with separatists. Its policy towards Pakistan has oscillated between engaging it to aggressive pursuit of its international isolation diplomatically, and strategic proactivism on the Line of Control (LoC) and beyond. India’s doctrinal changes, military restructuring, acquisitions, military exercises and its demonstration of resolve in conducting the surgical strikes by land and air, indicate a heightening of deterrence assertion. This is necessary to keep Pakistan from escalating either through terror provocation or in the face of India’s reprisal strikes following such provocation.

Its political prong has been limited by the conflict management framework. While the reports of the working groups from the late 2000s were partially implemented, the report of the three interlocutors appointed in the face of the 2010 unrest in Kashmir was largely ignored, as have reports from civil society initiatives such as that of the Yashwant Sinha-led Concerned Citizens Group. Of the 2010 report, the then home minister lamented rather late in the day that he ought to have implemented it (Business Standard 2018). No wonder, one of the three authors of the report, Radha Kumar, has written, “Astonishingly, the Indian government has never failed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when it comes to Jammu and Kashmir” (Kumar 2018: 341). The secrecy surrounding the work of the last interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma gives rise to suspicion over the nature of his input into the questionable constitutional initiative in August.

Since its August manoeuvre, the clampdown in Kashmir, deterrence messaging to Pakistan, diplomatic offensive and military deterrence signalling through capability upgrades, such as acquisition of the Rafale aircraft, and restructuring of the apex military by moving towards a chief of defence staff system, are indi­cative of a hard-line set to be prevalent in the foreseeable future. The role of political initiatives in counter-insurgency repertoire stands attenuated.

Currently, civil society in Kashmir appears to have taken to the non-violent route of non-cooperation (Sundar and Ramakrishnan 2019). The fallout of egregious violence, such as the reported playing of cries from the torture of militants on public loudspeakers (Wire 2019), can only add to the alienation. It is apparent that Kashmir remains fertile for heightened insurgency in case Pakistan ups its proxy war. For now, Pakistan has been constrained by its economic troubles and privileging of the conflict termination efforts in Afghanistan.

Since Pakistan has always projected Kashmir as a key national interest, a resumed proxy war at a higher tempo is a plausible future. This means a return to the past but at a higher threshold of danger for the region. India’s defence minister’s recent reference to nuclear doctrine remaining unchanged (Singh 2019), a remark made apropos nothing in particular other than in the context of the crisis, renders the nuclear overlay over future crises unmistakable. The dangers are stark from a recent study that puts the figure of dead from a nuclear war at 125 million (Toon et al 2019).

Peace Theory Lens

The field of peace studies has the theoretical oeuvre that can be profitably applied in conflict situations such as in Kashmir. Conflict is taken as the contestation, often involving violence, arising over an incompatibility. Resolution is predicated less on absence of violence—“negative peace”—than on addressing root causes by delivering social justice, taken as “positive peace” (Stephenson 2008: 1537). This can be done by the stakeholders by non-violent means through peacemaking techniques that include negotiations. The peace studies framework—conflict prevention, peacekeeping, peacemaking, peacebuilding and reconciliation—is a useful alternative heuristic, since it emphasises peacemaking by addressing the interests and needs of stakeholders.

In Kashmir, the incidence of violence has been of an order that has overshadowed peace initiatives and their potential. As seen earlier, though there has been a peace prong to India’s Kashmir strategy, it has proven ineffectual. While elections have enabled mainstream political activity, its high point was in the mid 2000s in the meetings of separatists with the home minister and prime minister (Dulat 2015). Externally, there was considerable engagement with Pakistan forged by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and carried forward by its successor, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Neither the internal nor external efforts went the distance because the UPA government was ineffectual in the face of the domestic right-wing opposition and its refrain in the strategic community.

Buoyed by a majority in Parliament, the NDA government, early in its first term, attempted to gauge the potential for peace by its outreach to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Its subsequent actions do not lend confidence that its peace overtures were aimed at resolution as much as to perfunctorily tick the peace outreach box before moving on to legitimise power assertion as a twinned Kashmir–Pakistan strategy. The long-standing ideological plank against the special status of Kashmir led to a denial that Kashmiris have a historical claim to autonomy dating to promises made during its accession.

The peace studies framework offers an opening for a step back. Conflict prevention is an ongoing process even in the midst of conflict. For instance, if the current-day clampdown in Kashmir is seen as setting the stage for a renewed and heightened insurgency, then such conflict analysis can be taken as early warning for conflict prevention measures as called for in the civil society reports after visits to Kashmir (Drèze 2019). Some measures are release of detainees, investigation of juvenile detentions, withdrawal of restrictions, return of the communication network and restoration of state human rights supervisory commissions (Print 2019).

Cognisance of the peacekeeping peg of the framework helps to foreground the rule of law and that all security forces’ actions should be guided by professional conduct in good faith. That operations can be envisaged since peace enforcement—the use of force—is not absent in the peace framework. The reduced violence for now is the result of the overweening presence of the paramilitary with implications for surveillance, privacy and freedom of movement of women in parti­cular. Even if direct violence is absent—negative peace—indirect or structural violence precludes positive peace as the ill-trained and ill-led instruments of suppression remain on site with their propensity for direct violence corresponding to frustration levels from protracted deployment.

The major insight from the peacebuilding theory is that development is not appropriate as a top-down imposition nor can it be undertaken in the face of continuing instability. The enabling conditions need to be set first by peacemaking. Under the circumstance, peacemaking would imply getting the people to reconcile to their insecurities since the government’s move amounts to a shifting of the goalposts. A peacemaking agenda under the circumstances is at best a return to the earlier privileges under the defunct Article 35A and a return of statehood. These can be made possible by adding another clause to Article 371 as enjoyed by several other states.

However, the August action disembowelling the mainstream political groups has fused all shades of political opinion into a separatist front. Also, the right-wing government would be loath to consider concessions from its present-day position of strength. Having put in place a bureaucrat as lieutenant governor to further development, without creating the enabling conditions through a political outreach, the government’s intent is clear and the outcome easily predictable. The desirable end state of dignified return of Kashmiri Pandits to the valley as the ultimate indicator of reconciliation is unthinkable.

In relation to Pakistan, the Kartarpur Sahib initiative unfolded in the most testing of times for interstate relations. At the event, Prime Minister Narendra Modi likened it to the fall of the Berlin Wall (Modi 2019). Though Pakistan has heightened its anti-India rhetoric as part of its diplomatic offensive post India’s Article 370 move, there is a silver lining. Pakistan’s India policy, the eponymous “Bajwa doctrine” (Abi-Habib 2018), attributed to its army chief now on a three-year extension, is predicated on reaching out to India. While it may be intended to cool tensions in order that the Pakistan economy is stabilised, it provides an opening that India could exploit if it chooses to change tack to peacemaking.

India’s record on peacemaking is patchy. Even as its August initiative unfolded, the impact on the fragile peace process in Nagaland was palpable since the Nagas were reportedly holding out for a separate Constitution and flag, both of which were wrested from the Kashmiris (Scroll 2019). However, peace initiatives have also had a chequered outcome (Roy 2012). It is not clear if India is at all persuaded by the tenets of conflict resolution theory.

In Conclusion

The survey here through the two theoretical lenses of the constitutional knifing of Kashmir in early August suggests that the initiative was not anchored in either field. The strategic studies lens reveals a heightened insurgency and proxy war ahead. On the other hand, the peace studies lens—in particular its peacemaking insights—informs of pathways back from the brink. A power-oriented government can hardly be expected to be sensitive to theory when the impulse for its action lies outside the precincts of strategic rationality and within the ruling party’s cultural nationalist ideology.

References

Abi-Habib, Maria (2018): “Pakistan’s Military Has Quietly Reached Out to India for Talks,” New York Times, 4 September, viewed on 9 November, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/world/asia/pakistan-india-talks.html.

Anthony, James J (2008): “Guerrilla Warfare,” Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict, Lester Kurtz (ed), Oxford: Elsevier Inc, Vol 3, pp 901–14.

Army Training Command (ARTRAC) (2006): Doctrine for Sub Conventional Operations, Shimla: ARTRAC.

Business Standard (2018): “Regret Not Acting on J&K Interlocutors’ Report: Chidambaram,”
13 December, viewed on 3 November, https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/regret-not-acting-on-j-k-interlocutors-report-chidambaram-118121301147_1.html.

Drèze, Jean et al (2019): Kashmir Caged: A Fact-finding Report by Jean Drèze, Kavita Krishnan, Maimoona Mollah and Vimal Bhai, National Confederation of Human Rights Organisations, 14 August, viewed on 20 October, http://www.nchro.org/index.php/2019/08/14/kashmir-caged-a-fact-finding-report-by-jean-dreze-kavita-krishnan-maimoona-mollah-and-vimal-bhai/.

Dulat, A S (2015): Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years, New Delhi: HarperCollins.

Horrigan, Brenda L, Theodore Karasik and Rennison Lalgee (2008): “Security Studies,” Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict, Lester Kurtz (ed), Oxford: Elsevier Inc, Vol 3, pp 1892–1900.

Huth, Paul K (2008): “Military Deterrence and Statecraft,” Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict, Lester Kurtz (ed), Oxford: Elsevier Inc, Vol 3, pp 1256–65.

Kumar, Radha (2018): Paradise at War: A Political History of Kashmir, New Delhi: Aleph Books.

Modi, Narendra (2019): “P M Modi’s Address to Nation Following SC Verdict on Ayodhya,”
9 November, viewed on 15 November, https://www.narendramodi.in/pms-address-to-the-nation-547268.

Print (2019): “3 Rights Panels among 7 J&K State Commissions Wound Up Ahead of Bifurcation,” 23 October, viewed on 10 November, https://theprint.in/india/3-rights-panels-7-jk-state-commissions-wound-up-bifurcation/310234/.

Roy, Biswajit (2012): War and Peace in Junglemahal: People, State and Maoists, Kolkata: Setu Prakashani.

Scroll (2019): “Breakthrough in Naga Peace Talks as NSCN(IM) and Government Reach an Agreement,” 31 October, viewed on 4 November, https://scroll.in/latest/942268/breakthrough-in-naga-peace-talks-as-nscn-im-and-government-reach-an-agreement.

Singh, Rajnath (2019): Tweet, 16 August, viewed on 1 November, https://twitter.com/rajnathsingh/status/1162276901055893504?lang=en.

Stephenson, Carolyn (2008): “Peace Studies, Overview,” Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict, Lester Kurtz (ed), Oxford: Elsevier Inc, Vol 3, pp 1534–48.

Sundar, Nandini and Nitya Ramakrishnan (2019): “Go Back to India and Cover Every Statue of Gandhi So that He Doesn’t Have to Face This Shame: Kashmiris Mark the 150th Anniversary of Gandhi’s Birthday with Satyagraha,” viewed on 7 November, http://nandinisundar.blogspot.com/2019/10/go-back-to-india-and-cover-every-statue.html.

Toon, Owen B et al (2019): “Rapidly Expanding Nuclear Arsenals in Pakistan and India Portend Regional and Global Catastrophe,” Science Advances, viewed on 8 November, https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/10/eaay5478.

Wire (2019): “In Kashmir, Army Relays Tortures on Loudspeakers, Slaps UAPA on Stone-pelters,” 31 October, viewed on 5 November, https://thewire.in/rights/kashmir-fact-finding.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tpumdaiwivz8drp/South%20Asian%20Security%20A%20Vantage%20Point_book.pdf?dl=0

Preface and Acknowledgements

In this book compilation I have put together my book chapter contributions to various edited
publications in order to get the perspectives presented under one set of covers. Taken together,
they strengthen the liberal perspective in strategic studies. I have been in my writings that are
of shorter length, such as commentaries, opinion pieces and analysis, been a votary of the
liberal world view and have tried to make the liberal case when discussing issues in matters
of regional and national security. I have compiled the eight hundred and more such pieces in
eight other books. I have also put together my articles and essays published in peer reviewed
journals into a book. This book contains my chapter length works, tackling the same themes I
have engaged with consistently – nuclear and conventional doctrine; counter insurgency; India-
Pakistan equations; Kashmir etc.
I recommend these chapters be read alongside my other writings to gain a measure of why
and how the liberal position has advantages for a continental sized country like India and for
the South Asian region of which India is a major part. I trust the student community, academic
peers, fellow former practitioners, and interested readers in India and Pakistan, will find the
effort useful.
I thank the editors of various volumes in which these chapters were included for giving me an
opportunity to present my views. This shows they were already keen on the point of view finding
a place in their edited work, which is to their credit. It is befitting that the Asokan tradition stays
alive and well in India, that is otherwise inundated with writings drawing on and inspired by the
Chanakyan tradition.
I would like to thank the team at CinnamonTeal, lead by Queenie Fernandes, for her overseeing
the production into book for my many books with the publishing house.
I have dedicated this book to my son. I hope his generation benefits from any good coming out
of the book in terms of furthering peace and harmony in India and South Asia.
7

CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgements 7
Indian Army’s Flagship Doctrines: Need for Strategic Guidance in Harsh Pant (ed.),
Doctrine Handbook, Routledge, 2015, ISBN-978-1-138-93960-8
9
Does India think Strategically? Searching Military Doctrines for Answers in
Happymon Jacob (ed.), Does India think strategically?, Australia-India Institute,
2014, ISBN 9350980398
26
Indian Strategic Culture the Pakistan Dimension in Indian Strategic Culture: The
Pakistan dimension in Krishnappa, Bajpai et al. (eds.), India’s Grand Strategy:
History, Theory, Cases, Taylor and Francis, 2014, ISBN-978-0-415-73965-8
50
India’s Nuclear Doctrine: Stasis or Dynamism? in Brig. Naeem Salik (ed.)
(forthcoming), India’s Habituation With the Bomb - 1998-2018
71
The Nuclear Domain: In Irreverance in Mohammed BadrulAlam, Perspectives On
Nuclear Strategy Of India, And Pakistan, Kalpaz Publications, Delhi, India, 2013,
ISBN-9788178359632
93
Nuclear Doctrine and Conflict in Krishnappa and Princy George (eds.), India’s
Grand Strategy 2020 and Beyond, IDSA, Pentagon Security International, 2012,
ISBN-78-81-8274-657-2
112
AFSPA in Light of Humanitarian Law in Vivek Chadha, Armed Forces Special
Powers Act: The Debate, IDSA Monograph Series No. 7, 2012, ISBN-978-81-7095-
129-1
120
Countering Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir: Debates in the Indian Army in
Maroof Raza (ed.), Confronting Terrorism, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2009, ISBN-
978-0-670-08369-5
131
Applicability of Sub-Conventional Operations Doctrine to Counterinsurgency in
Assam in Bhattacharya, R. and S. Pulipaka (eds.), Perilous Journey : Debates on
Security and Development in Assam, New Delhi: Manohar, 2011, ISBN-978-81-
7304-904-0
152
UN Peacekeeping Operations: Leveraging India’s Forte in IDSA Task Force, Net
Security Provider: India’s Out-of-Area Contingency Operations, 2012, ISBN-978-
93-82512-00-4
173
India 2030: With History as Guide in Lele, A. and N. Goswami (eds.), Asia 2030:The
Unfolding Future, New Delhi: Lancer 2011, ISBN-1-935501-22-4

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.

• 1. United Nations, “Principles of peacekeeping,” at https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/principles-of-peacekeeping (Accessed on April 11, 2019).
• 2.Mona Ali Khalil, “The world needs robust peacekeeping not aggressive peacekeeping”, Humanitarian Law and Policy, May 15, 2018, at
  
  https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2018/05/15/world-needs-robust-peacekeeping-not-aggressive-peacekeeping/ (Accessed on April 11, 2019).
• 3.Human Security Baseline Assessment (HSBA) for Sudan and South Sudan, “David Yau Yau’s Rebellion”, Small Arms Survey, at http://www.smallarmssurveysudan.org/fileadmin/docs/facts-figures/south-sudan/armed-groups/southern-dissident-militias/HSBA-Armed-Groups-Yau-Yau.pdf (Accessed on April 9, 2019).
• 4.Douglas Johnson, “Briefing: The crisis in South Sudan”, African Affairs, 113 (451), April 6, 2014, pp. 300–309,
  https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/113/451/300/135552 (Accessed on April 11, 2019).
• 5.Country Report, “South Sudan Conflict Update July 2016”, Armed Conflict Location and Dataset, at http://www.acleddata.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/ACLED_Africa_Country-Reports_South-Sudan_July-2016_pdf.pdf (Accessed on April 8, 2019).
• 6.Richard Gordon, “In the eye of the storm: An analysis of internal conflict in South Sudan’s Jonglei State”, Feinstein International Center, Working Paper 11, March 2014.
• 7.United Nations, “Protection of civilians’ mandate”, at https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/protection-of-civilians-mandate (Accessed on April 11, 2019).
• 8.“Amid South Sudan Fighting, One Rebel Leader Seeks Peace”, Voice of America, January 7, 2014, at https://www.voanews.com/a/south-sudan-unrest-yau-yau-rebel-jonglei/1825224.html (Accessed on April 7, 2019).
• 9.“Riek Machar Teny”, Sudan Tribune, at http://www.sudantribune.com/+-Riek-Machar,400-+ (Accessed on April 10, 2019).
• 10.“What Triggered the Kiir-Machar Rift in South Sudan?,” Voice of America, January 9, 2014, at https://www.voanews.com/a/what-triggered-the-kir-machar-rift-in-south-sudan/1826903.html (Accessed on April 6, 2019).
• 11.Jugal Purohit, “43 brave Indian soldiers held back 2000-strong mob in South Sudan. These two brave hearts died in the conflict”, India Today, December 23, 2013, at https://www.indiatoday.in/india/north/story/bodies-of-peacekeepers-killed-in-sudan-to-be-brought-to-india-today-221674-2013-12-23 (Accessed on April 10, 2019).
• 12.IGAD, “Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan”, August 17, 2015, at https://unmiss.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/final_proposed_compromise_agreement_for_south_sudan_conflict.pdf (Accessed on April 6, 2019).
• 13.Zach Vertin, “A Poisoned Well: Lessons in Mediation from South Sudan’s Troubled Peace Process”, International Peace Institute, April 2018, at https://www.ipinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/1804_Poisoned-Well.pdf (Accessed on April 5, 2019).
• 14.UNMISS, “Background”, at https://unmiss.unmissions.org/background (Accessed on April 11, 2019).
• 15.Hilda Johnson, Waging Peace in Sudan, The Inside Story of the Negotiations that Ended Africa's Longest Civil War, Sussex Academic Press, January 2011.
• 16.Hilde Johnson, South Sudan, The Untold Story – from Independence to Civil War, IB Tauris, London, June 2016.
• 17.United Nations, “Report of the High-level Independent Panel on Peace Operations on uniting our strengths for peace: politics, partnership and people”, at https://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2015/446 (Accessed on April 8, 2019).
• 18.UN Assistance Mission in Somalia , “Political Affairs and Mediation Group”, at https://unsom.unmissions.org/political-affairs (Accessed on April 10, 2019).