https://www.indianewsstream.com/a-suggestion-for-india-on-the-afghanistan-peace-talks/

A suggestion for India on the Afghanistan peace talks

Some ten years back, India scared off Richard Holbrooke, a legend in cracking heads as a mediator, when he tried to manage the external security environment as a prelude to getting on with his mandate from President Obama to get the Taliban to the talks table. Central to his conflict analysis was the role of the regional players, India and Pakistan, in the conflict. Believing that he had been put to it by Pakistan, exercising its nuisance value through its hold over the Taliban, even Manmohan Singh’s relatively weak government in its second term, managed to fob him off. His failure perhaps led partially to a heart attack that soon claimed his life.

The United States (US) has learnt its lesson, though often and as recently as this week at Davos, the US reiterated its interest in an India-Pakistan engagement over Kashmir. This was at the behest of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan in his meeting with Trump, the subtext being that since Pakistan is playing along with the US gameplan for an exit in Afghanistan, it needs to be obliged by the US leaning its on strategic partner, India, to cut them some rope on Kashmir. Reflexively, India – as earlier – has declined any role for third party assistance with its problem with Pakistan.

This latest regional spat apart, the tenth round of talks between the US and Taliban proceeds in Doha. Currently, the culmination ceremony of the previous round having been cancelled by Trump inimitably through a tweet last September, the talks have resumed. Whereas earlier the pressure over talks was for talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, President Trump settled for talking directly to the Taliban as precursor to arranging talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

The Taliban had in September balked at the presence of the Afghan government, who they consider American puppets, at the signing ceremony that was to be held at Camp David. At the time of writing, the Taliban has offered to let off the Americans as they prepare for departure, even as they wind down – but not by much – their targeting of government forces. It is not known if the previous sequence of talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government at Oslo would follow this round of talks with the US, if successful.

For its part, India is wary of the talks. It’s long-held, if unrealistic, position has been in favour of intra-Afghan talks being Afghan-owned and Afghan-led. It thinks that US departing would be premature as it would lead to a power imbalance between the Taliban, which is supported by Pakistan, and the Afghan government, that is rather unsteady on its feet. For the reason that the Afghan government is fragile and propped up by external powers, including India through its military training program, political and donor support, the Afghan-led process has not gotten off over the past decade.

The eternal hope has been that the military training, among others by India, US and the United Kingdom, would finally get the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) up to speed to whittle the Taliban. This has proved wishful. Instead, it is to the Taliban’s credit that the threat of spread of the Islamic State in has been contained and pushed back. Knowing this, India is in an internal debate to the extent it needs touching base with the Taliban, though up-front it awaits the outcome Trump’s viceroy for the region, Zalmay Khalilzad, is to serve up soon.

To the extent that a settlement with the US buoys the Taliban in its talks with the government, the Taliban would drive a hard bargain. The Afghan elections process that began late last year is as yet incomplete. While there are reports of the ANSF perking up at long last, making gains in some six districts recently and taking on at least half the burden of bombing the Taliban by air, it is uncertain if this late surge on its part can compensate for the gain in Taliban’s image from having fought the superpower to a standstill and agreed to its departure with dignity, if not surrender as such. The understanding is that Taliban was much in its element in fighting off an infidel, external foe, and would not like to pursue a fight with their fellows, now that the US is out of the equation. It would put it afoul of their own kin and ethnic cousins on the other side. Besides, some reports have it that some fighters are exhausted and were enticed by the 2018 Eid ceasefire. Thus, the possibility of asymmetric talks with Taliban holding the upper hand is tempered somewhat.

This should mitigate India’s concerns somewhat, assuming these were genuine. It cannot be said with any certainty anymore if India’s heart beats for the Afghans. India in Modi’s regime has adopted a self-consciously hyper-realist perspective on national security. By this yardstick, an unsettled Afghanistan is in its better interest since it keeps Pakistan preoccupied to its western flank, thereby providing India with some breathing space to reconcile Kashmir to its new reality within India. Unsettled Afghanistan provides India a proxy war arena - to counter Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir - both within Afghanistan and, from Afghanistan, a handle into Pakistan’s ethnic cauldron. Its power-centric national security approach places India as a spoiler in the ongoing peace process in Afghanistan.

If its national interest is all that drives India these days, then there is another route by way of which it can bring this about. The national interest it wishes to further is perhaps to see that Pakistan does not get its way in Afghanistan, and having got its way there, turns on India yet again in Kashmir. India may also want to preserve its space in Afghanistan, by propping up hitherto allies and seeing its donor aid not go down the drain. Indian national security minders need to be persuaded that this national interest can be obtained without trying to outpoint Pakistan by jinxing the peace talks. 

There are two visits to Delhi. Trump is visiting in end February and the council of heads of government of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), being chaired by India this year, meets in autumn. The latter would bring four other heads of government with an interest in Afghanistan together: Russia, China, Pakistan and India. India could take a measure of where the Afghan peace talks are going when Trump is here and present a plan - outlined below – that would make India part of the solution rather than the problem as the US seems to see it currently.

 The plan proposed here is to that India make a pitch at the SCO for a meeting of minds on the peace process. Since Afghanistan’s membership is pending with the SCO, it could champion this. Already, the SCO has a contact group on Afghanistan that can in the interim work on supporting the peace talks in Afghanistan.

Just as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, a peace process is only as good as its implementation. The SCO as a continental organization is best positioned to undertake such support. This would be in keeping with the United Nations Charter and with its best practice of outsourcing peace initiatives to regional organizations with capacity, interest and will to take these on. The political heft of China and Russia can help with Security Council endorsement of an SCO initiative. China and India have the financial capacity for helping with peace building. Evan as the Americans wind up their military presence, they need to be around with rebuilding the country they brought to dust. It would not be entirely outlandish to suggest a peacekeeping operation under SCO aegis, including troops from China, India and Pakistan, among others as Muslim states and other South Asian states. 

Pakistan’s advantage in its hold over the Taliban would be moderated thus. In any case, while Taliban is beholden to Pakistan, it remains an autonomous player. India’s financial largesse would be much needed at a stage when the Taliban can dispense with political support and would not any more need the military support of its erstwhile sponsor. India can thus outflank Pakistan, without antagonizing that state. And, who knows what habits of cooperation interfacing in an Afghan peace process may instill between these two states?

https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/18172/The-Crisis-in-the-Indian-Deep-State
http://kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=98483 20 Jan 2020

Unedited version

The crisis in the Indian deep state

The deep state is familiar to Indians as being associated with the Pakistan army and its intelligence agencies running of the state there. Recently, President Trump’s fulminations against an American deep state alerted Indians to the phenomenon that it is not one confined to military dictatorships next door but sister liberal democracies also suffer likewise.

To the usual suspects from the marginalized, alternative strategic community, this is not news. However, most Indians were surprised when the opposition Congress party tacitly averred to an Indian deep state in its press conference on the arrest of Jammu and Kashmir police officer Davinder Singh.

In real time, the heavy artillery was deployed for damage control with the lapdog media and long-known intelligence name droppers, like Praveen Swami, being put to what they are best at – obfuscate and putting out a sanitized narrative.

In this official narrative, Davinder Singh succumbed to the usual blight of the police, the inducement of pelf, by taking to ferrying militants – terrorists if you will. He was apprehended by the Kashmir police red handed. Regime apologists quickly had it that there was little to it than a cop gone rogue.

The alternative narrative had it that their suspicion of an Indian deep state existing, if not thriving, stood vindicated. The alternative narrative is worth reprise in order that Indians take a measure if national security is at all well served by the deep state.

In the instant case, the alternative narrative it that there is much more to the parliament attack than met the eye of the courts. Davinder Singh’s role was one such. Afzal Guru in a parting statement in writing had indicated that Singh had put him to aid one of those killed in the parliament terror attack. That this lead had not been investigated thereafter only hardened suspicion. The Kashmir police’s seeming ignorance of the accusation in its press conference on Singh’s arrest only serves to reinforce.

Both cops of Delhi’s special cell who were the face of the parliament attack investigation died separately under suspicious circumstances. Rajbir Singh who had a reputation as an encounter specialist - short hand for custodial killer - died while engaged in a corrupt deal. The other, Mohan Chand Sharma, likely stopped friendly fire at another badly-executed alleged custodial killing in the infamous fake encounter at Batla House. 

The sense that there is something to hide is furthered by the National Investigative Agency (NIA) readying to take over Singh’s case. The agency has acquired the reputation so far that it only helps cover up tracks of majoritarian terrorists.

This brings one to the second piece of evidence in this narrative of the deep state. The NIA has let off Naba Kumar Sarkar, aka Swami Aseemanand, for his self-confessed participation in acts of majoritarian terror in the Mecca Masjid, Ajmer Dargah and Samjhauta Express blast cases. It’s looking the other way in the Malegaon blast case has helped one well-known terrorist to be elevated to parliament by the ruling party.

A sister agency, that sports the moniker ‘caged parrot’, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), has not pursued the case that Justice Loya was engaged in at his CBI court when he died in suspicious circumstances. It dropped the charges that allowed Home Minister Amit Shah to walk free in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter killing. The cops involved under DG Vanzara include a rapist-murderer, testifying to justice being ill-served for Sohrabuddin’s wife killed alongside.

The alternative narrative has it that Sohrabuddin’s killing had to do with covering up any links to the political murder of a former home minister of Gujarat, Haren Pandya. Pandya was said to have spilled the beans to human rights organizations on the right wing conspiracy behind the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat. The rest, as they say, is history with the then chief minister rising to becoming a two-time prime minister today.

In the alternative narrative, this political journey from the province to Lutyen’s Delhi is the clinching evidence. The start of the journey was littered with Muslim bodies, including that of a nineteen year old girl supposedly killed in encounter with terrorists out to gun down the provincial chief minister allegedly presided over the pogrom.

Modi’s tough-on-security image took form then. A poor security situation in several terror attacks in the mid 2000s helped. The adverse security situation itself was one conjured up with magnification of terror attacks, not only by several perpetrated by majoritarian terrorists, but by the media ceding its investigative faculties.

Even the terror attack of singularly horrifying proportions, Mumbai 26/11, has an underreported underside. That the Hemant Karkare-led heroes of the anti-majoritarian terror investigation were suspiciously shot dead in the attack is a pointer. Outspoken testimony of a retired inspector general of the Mumbai police with several leads to the contrary has not made a dent in the popular narrative that solely has Pakistan at its cross hairs.

Clearly, the conjuring up of the image based on a misleadingly poor security situation could not have been without help from within the security establishment. In those years, a Congress-led government was in power.

This points to a deep state, furthering an agenda outside that of the state, yet from within its confines: in this case manufacturing of a security situation to help midwife its chosen champion to power.

The choice of Modi for the role was made easier by the corporate sector falling in line by the end 2000s.

In the popular narrative, the security situation was vitiated by Pakistani complicity and an internal hand, whether of Kashmiris in that benighted state or of Muslim sleeper cells in the Indian hinterland. This keyed into the Hindutva narrative of Muslims having external loyalties and helped consolidate a vote bank from among majority Hindus behind Modi as the Hindu Hriday Samrat.

It is probable that the twinning of the Pakistan and Muslim minority security predicaments of the Indian state gave rise to the deep state. The eighties and nineties saw their aversion to Pakistan’s interference in India’s internal security. They were less than enamoured by India’s hapless reaching out to Pakistan through the nineties. They finally got their act together as a right wing government took the helm at the turn of the century. It gave them the space necessary for putting together a hard-line counter to Pakistan, with their professional expertise in intelligence operations to the fore – of which the parliament attack is epitome.

With the reins passing on to the UPA in the subsequent decade, these denizens – comprising at various junctures busy bodies from groups within the national security complex with extensions into their respective retired fraternities – went dissident. The term deep state was apt for the period.

However, in the Modi years, with the doyen of the dissidents in the UPA years, Ajit Doval, being rewarded with the national security adviser chair, the deep state has gone mainstream. This is their victory of sorts, but also one of their antagonists, the Pakistani deep state counterparts, who are counter-intuitively perhaps happy that India has now come to resemble them all the more.

The apprehension of Davinder Singh suggests that there is now an alternative deep state, wary of the workings of the erstwhile deep state now ensconced in power.

Singh’s apprehension is likely their preemption of yet another plot in the Pulwama mould, this time to spring the Modi government out of a tight spot it has got into with the counter citizenship amendment act protests in time for it to retrieve from precarity faced with the Delhi and West Bengal elections.

http://kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=98358

An Army Day resolution for the new chief

On taking over as the chief of defence staff, General Bipin Rawat was asked about his often figuring controversially in headlines for some or other political intervention by him. His latest was his decrying of the counter citizenship amendment act protests. He had this to say in reply: “We stay far away from politics, very far. We have to work according to directions by the government in power.”

On the face of it, this is as uncontroversial a statement as can be. The military keeps a distance from politics and is obedient to the government, irrespective of the ruling party in power. The new army chief, General MM Naravane, in his interaction with the press on taking over, when asked about military politicization asserted as much, saying, “I totally disagree. We are totally apolitical. It is a misperception of a few people which is totally incorrect.”

However, in light of precedence of military’s parochialism prominently featuring Bipin Rawat all through his army chief days, interrogating whether the military retains its pristine apolitical status is necessary. The plethora of political interventions by General Rawat, and his counter-part air force chief, BS Dhanoa, does not need reiteration here. These cannot be summarily dismissed.

General Bipin Rawat’s statement has clues as to whether the suspicion that there is more to politicization of the military than mere difference of perception holds water. The statement can well be interpreted to mean that though the military maintains a distance from politics, any action that smacks of intervention in politics is in obedience to directions of the government in power.

Such an expansive interpretation of the military’s idea of duty of obedience to the civilian political leadership calls for interrogation. While it does have to answer to the civilian political leadership, it can reasonably be understood that the duty of obedience does not extend to illegal or illegitimate directions.

On this, General John Hyten, head of the United States’ nuclear weapons related Strategic Command, clearly set the gold standard in a modern, democratic civil-military relationship, stating in the context of President Trump’s inconsistent decision making:

I provide advice to the president, he will tell me what to do,”… “And if it’s illegal, guess what’s going to happen? I’m going to say, ‘Mr. President, that’s illegal.’ And guess what he’s going to do? He’s going to say, ‘What would be legal?’ And we’ll come up with options, of a mix of capabilities to respond to whatever the situation is, and that’s the way it works. It’s not that complicated.

This means a military needs to have (and does have) an internalised yardstick against which it measures the legitimacy or otherwise of its marching orders. In case the departure from the constitutional letter and norm and past practice is inexplicable and unwarranted, the military instead has the obligation to revert to the civilian master with its reservations and the two together are to arrive at a via media, whereby the civilian will prevails and the military does not overstep any constitutional line.

In effect, the constitutional straight and narrow is the yardstick. The military brass has acquired its stature in the national scheme so far by its adherence to this. Even Bipin Rawat’s public gaffes through his tenure so far has not shifted the normative goal posts. On the contrary, he has been upbraided for transgressing the constraints on political speech and behavior by a senior of the veteran community, Admiral Ramdas.

The military is not obligated where directions fail the appropriateness test. Whereas the duty of obedience is primary, it is not sacrosanct or unconstrained. The military leader has to apply his mind to received instructions and act as per the mandate in relation to the Constitution and - normatively - in relation to the nation.

In other words, in case a military receives instructions to make political statements, it really ought to politely fob these off. With time, deterrence against illicit action and mutual respect would set the relationship on even keel. The military needs to stand up for its constitutional obligation and tradition of apolitical and secular ethic, reminding political masters when necessary not to ask of it anything it cannot deliver on.

This is predicted on a dialogue between the two tiers – civilian and military – wherein the political tier respects the military’s space and the military does not attempt transcend it and resists attempts to prevail over it to act otherwise. Needless to add, such a ‘pull and push’ would require to be done discreetly within the corridors of power, so that the relatively delicate democratic edifice is not buffeted unduly.

Admittedly, this is a tall order, since, as Anit Mukherjee suggests in his new, eponymous book – The Absent Dialogue – dialogue is absent within the ministry. His finding reinforces Bharat Karnad’s colourful portrayal of the prime minister’s disdain for the anglicized military leadership, of the brass unavailable for discussion after sunset since they are presumably at the bar.

The last resort is of course for a military commander to resign. Civil-military theory has it that the civilian has the ‘right to be wrong’ and, in the agent-principal linkage, the civilian leadership is answerable to the electorate. It is for the electorate to punish the civilian leadership for wrong decision making. All a military professional can do under the circumstance is to resign.

This responsibility is not unknown to the military brass. Both socialisation and a professional military education underscore the importance of democratic civilian control, with its limits also forming part of the military acculturation. Exposure to civil-military relations (CMR) theory is part of military curriculum for higher ranks. The military is also cognisant of the place of tradition in military culture. Learning from peer militaries is also constantly ongoing. There is a hiatus of a year at Delhi’s Tees January Marg where those destined for apex ranks are exposed at the defence ministry controlled National Defence College to India’s democratic mores and practices.

In his rumination on his responsibility of the US’ nuclear arsenal, John Hyten, went on to say, “I think some people think we’re stupid. We’re not stupid people. We think about these things a lot. When you have this responsibility, how do you not think about it?” Basically, he underlines the extensive training and military professional education that prepares the brass for their jobs. In India’s case, an officer while getting to general rank spends a minimum five years in class rooms. This enables political sensitivity and knowledge of civil-military relations red lines.

The good sense in a professional distance from politics is as brought out by a former vice chief, Vijay Oberoi: that in a system of democratic alternation in government, the military can seamlessly transfer its loyalty between dispensations irrespective of who is elected to power. If and since political parochialism is not within the remit of the military, any insistence by the temporal political masters on this must be determinedly sidestepped by the military.

There are bureaucratic ways to ‘shirk’ – a Peter Feaver phrase - dodgy tasking. General Panag in an advisory piece for the new army chief recommends resort to cryptic military phrasing when interacting with the media, so as not to stray into political turf. This indicates that situations can be tactfully handled. The brass has over three decades of human relations management experience before getting to flag rank.

The unfortunate tendency today is in personalisation of power, an example is in the manner Narendra Modi supervised the annual conclave of director generals of police with a regimen that included yoga with Modi in the lead. The effect on policing in the national capital and India’s largest state is self-evident in the handling of the counter citizenship amendment act protests there.

Reminding the military of this verity at this juncture is timely in that there is a change of guard at 5 Rajaji Marg, the residence of the army chief. It is heartening to note the spoken reputation of General MM Naravane, the new incumbent. Any indoctrination residue from his schooling at a prominent right wing run school in Pune cannot but have been washed off in his close to four decades of imbibing and practice of military mores.   

Going forward, the onus is on the military to stockade itself within its professional space. Adoption of a prickly posture – reminiscent of a porcupine – may send the message and deter the regime from abusing its authority over the military. Naravane has begun well by drawing attention at his first Army Day press conference to the preamble of the Constitution, which is echoing across the land today in student protests. It remains to be seen if he is prepared for a personal cost for better serving national security. 

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https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/politics/politics-the-iran-us-spat-has-resonance-for-the-region-4810501.html/amp

The Iran-US spat has resonance for the region

The latest international crisis sparked off by President Donald Trump’s whimsical decision most likely made while golfing at his lush Mar-a-Lago resort to ‘get General Qassem Soleimani’ reinforces some of the lessons from our home-grown regional crisis of last year. The good part is that the crisis some reckoned heralded World War III subsided as quickly as it heated up prime-time, if at a tragic cost of a passenger full Ukrainian airliner.

What the crisis spells is that what passes for peace is being taken as war in strategic circles. Such wars that are not quite wars have acquired the moniker Gray Zone.

Just as one has been ongoing between Iran and the US since Donald Trump turned on his policy of ‘maximum pressure’ on Iran, the state of relations between India and Pakistan must be seen as a gray zone war.

Gray zone war entered into the regional lexicon with the army’s adoption of a new doctrine in late 2017. Faced with an escalation in the proxy war by Pakistan in Kashmir, the army had shifted to robust retaliation through surgical strikes. The aerial surgical strike of last year pointed to an inter-services endorsement of the doctrinal imprimatur.

The trend has been taken forward with the integrated battle groups, the new fangled organization for the new kind of war, awaiting a ministerial nod. For its part, the air force’s determination to be part of the action is spelt out by its former chief, ACM BS Dhanoa, indicating its readiness in his news making now and then from retirement. Not to be left behind, the navy recently sailed its air craft carrier into the Arabian Sea in response to joint Sino-Pakistan exercises off the Pakistani coast.

The key take-away from the latest international crisis and the regional crisis is that national security establishments are constantly engaged in a game of bluff, which when and if called they have to be ready and capable to deliver on in quick-time. Even as they do, each is to be mindful that the ensuing violent exchange does not acquire a life of its own.

Their actions while provocative enough to announce a telling threat to the other side must be amenable to control and reversal, thereby allowing the other side to step back without loss of face. Both sides have to pretend to be willing to chance war while wishing the other side does not call their bluff.

Gray zone war also posits that bellicosity in people be kept alive in order that in case push comes to shove the side can up the ante. Orchestration of a war sentiment in people helps transmit to the other side that that you mean business.

Iran has been a reliable bogey for the Americans now for forty years. Within South Asia, there is little love lost between the two protagonists, with the people on the two sides manipulated into reflecting the suspicion, if not hate, of the other side.

However, in the latest crisis, Donald Trump overplayed his hand. Beset with impeachment, he kept alive his appeal to his base. The opportunity arose with a spiral starting with the loss of an American civilian contractor to missiles fired by an Iran-allied Iraqi militia. Subsequent US air strikes accounted for over-a-score militiamen, forcing Iraqi militias to in turn penetrate the ‘green zone’ in Baghdad to get at the American embassy there.

This seeming upping-of-the-ante, at the behest of Soleimani, the Iranian conductor of the Shiite militia in the region, led to Trump’s crossing the line. The Iranians responded with over two dozen missiles hitting two American bases in Iraq without drawing blood. Making a virtue of a necessity, the Iranians announced they were merely sending a message, not one drenched in blood.

This has resonance of the in-region crisis, when the Pulwama car-bomber set off the aerial strike by India at Balakot, which was followed soon enough by a Pakistani riposte at Rajauri-Naushera. Neither side struck respective targets. The Pakistani claim that they never intended to hit Indian military targets is plausible as the Indians missed Balakot, their claim otherwise disproven since.

Both crises witnessed bold, if not reckless, action by all sides. While neither crisis escalated, the contextual conditions giving rise to both continue in place. This guarantees future crises without guarantee of similar de-escalation, while assuring a higher threshold of violence.

The Iranians may well draw the inference that nuclearisation is their only option left. After all, rhetoric is all Donald Trump deploys against nuclear-armed North Korea.

Within the region, the Pakistani prime minister - and by extension its deep state - has it that India may not await the next crisis, but, enabled by a permissive gray zone environment, manufacture one through a ‘black operation’. The recent arrest of a decorated Jammu and Kashmir police officer with two Hizbul Mujahedeen militants, adds to credibility of such fears.

The key take-away from the two crises is that it is best to post-haste get out of the Gray Zone, .

 especially because, while Iran and the US had Iraqi territory to spar in, India and Pakistan don't have such luxury.

REPOSTED FROM SIX YEARS BACK IN LIGHT OF
https://thewire.in/politics/india-citizenship-amendment-protests-struggle-observations-from-the-past

http://www.milligazette.com/print/issue/1-15-march-2013/6

Afzal Guru: The Man Who Knew Too Much

A wit’s answer to the question that is set to become an eternal one: ‘Why did they hang Afzal Guru?’, reads: ‘Afzal Guru was hanged because the Indian law doesn't allow electric chair, lethal injection, stoning to death, guillotine or any other form of execution.’ However, there is another straight answer: He knew too much. He had already exposed the Indian state’s behavior in Kashmir in his pleadings for justice over the years. But the true face of the state is unremarkable. He knew more. He was the exposed link into a chain of subterfuge leading into the STF (Special Task Force), a unit of Kashmiri rebels who turned coat.

He had pointed this out while alive referring to a certain ‘Tariq’ in the shadowy world of the renegade rebels who set the stage for India to prevail in Kashmir by systematically killing their former comrades and their supporters using fair means and foul. The outfit called Ikhwan was inducted into the police to regularize them. Their notoriety was such that one campaign promise of a political party that won in the polls in 2002 was that they would be disbanded. They were rechristened instead, regularized and hopefully more disciplined since. That Pakistani trained jihadis were degenerate and their terror acts reprehensible, the cliché ‘fight fire with fire’ provided legitimacy to such paramilitary outfits. In that troubled era in their heyday they served to undertake the ‘dirty war’ on behalf of the state.

The ‘conspiracy theory’ needs airing at this juncture. Was the STF used, and did it, in turn, use Afzal Guru for nefarious purpose? Spelling out the conspiracy theory is necessary. This has been done competently elsewhere by the likes of Arundhati Roy and Nirmalangshu Mukherjee. It is with reason they have titled the volume in which their case appears: 13 December, a Reader: The Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament(Penguin India, pp. 233, Rs. 200, 2006). The very term ‘conspiracy’ is a way to marginalize what could well be the truth. The fact that no inquiry has gone into the parliamentary attack, the truth has not been plumbed. With Afzal gone, it is now also probably beyond reach.

As with any ‘strange case’, it is best to begin with the motives. Parliament attack led up to the Indian military mobilization. That the mobilization stopped at the border and did not cross it suggests more than just statesmanship on Prime Minister Vajpayee’s part. It indicates a strategy, one premeditated and not one thought up at the spur of the moment in the crisis brought on by the dastardly attack. Crisis environments do not lend themselves to cool heads. Stopping at the border was  cool headed decision. That can only have been induced by a predetermined plan of action. In effect, the conspiracy theory has it that the parliament attack was a doing of the intelligence agency put to it by the national security apparatus at the apex level. The one who could have more information on this, the then national security adviser and principal secretary, Mr. Brajeah Mishra, is now no more to confirm this. That in his absence his denial can be anticipated makes the theory a ‘conspiracy theory’.

The diplomatic coercion - coercive diplomacy in strategic terms –mounted thereafter also needed a trigger. Pakistan had crept back into American good books with 9/11. India that had begun courting the US ever since it burst its way into the nuclear club, felt left out in the cold. It needed to embarrass Pakistan, snap America out of its Musharraf infatuation. India needed a trigger. A trigger could not have waited for a bunch of obliging terrorists to come round and timelystorm the parliament. India required instead manufacturing a trigger. This is where the STF comes in.

Given the nature of the violent conflict on in Kashmir at the time, the existence of detention centers is well known. That these would have had inmates with very little chance of seeing freedom once again can also be conceded. Consider that in case a few of these inmates – who were incarcerated since they wanted to harm India – were given a choice of dying a death they had always imagined for themselves, one of a jihadi, how many would have agreed to the proposal. It is obvious that there would be at least some wanting a crack at India, dying in a blaze of imagined glory rather than blindfolded in front of a death squad.  It can be surmised that there would have been no shortage of recruits from those dark chambers. All it needed now was to put together the supporting cast and the equipment, and have a cover story. It is here that unfortunate Afzal figures in the story. The rest as they say is history; but most of it unwritten, deliberately kept unknown, and now, unknowable.

If this is too implausible, then the second manner such a show can be put together is to insert double agents into terror groups. They can then be manipulated into conducting outrages that they are intent on in any case and the manipulator may wish carried out for own political purposes. For instance, in a famous case in Handwara, an SPO induced a couple of unemployed youth to go into a forest after giving them weapons with the promise that a jihadi armed group awaited their joining the group in the forest. The gullible duo went into the forest only to be shot down by the Rashtriya Rifles ambush party conveniently placed on the track to intercept them. Thus, all went home happy: the RR for their brave ambush; the SPO for his information on jihadi movement in the forest and the duo as martyrs to everyone’s final home. This is not an unknown tactic in intelligence circles. In the US, there is record of agents penetrating jihadi internet sites and manipulating net warriors into planning jihadi attacks, based on which they have been arraigned before the law for terror. Their incarceration would not have happened otherwise had the netizen been otherwise engaged in purveying or consuming extremism, as distinct from planning or participating in terror.  It is therefore not impossible for intelligence agencies to carry out terror attacks by proxy. Indian agencies, to their credit, are no exception.

Afzal therefore had to go. The shortcomings in his trial are now well known. The unacceptable reason for his hanging – the demand of the ‘collective conscience’ – is reversion to the bygone days of human sacrifice. He would have gone earlier had the ruling formation and its lead party of the period of the parliament attack returned to power in 2004. They had much to hide. The Congress that has been around since needed him alive to keep the pressure on that party, now in opposition. However, the tide having turned against the Congress to the extent the writing is on the wall, a human sacrifice was decreed for its revival. This explains the timing of Afzal’s departure. As for the Congress, it will prove an insincere act equivalent to the opening of the locks of Babri Masjid the last time it was under siege.

Perhaps dark clouds overhead in that era – nuclear tests, Kandahar hijack, fidayeen attacks, Kargil War, Chittisingpora massacre, Srinagar assembly bombing, right wing rule, 9/11, military rule in the neighbor etc – made the intelligence games necessary. These are games nations play since Chanakyan times. Machivelli testifies that these are indulgences of princes. When elephants fight, grass suffers. Afzal Guru was but another blade of grass.

https://www.newsclick.in/Many-Chink-India-Nuclear-Chain-Command

Many a Chink in India’s Nuclear Chain of Command

UNEDITED

CDS done with, now for the NSA please

The government has made its choice of first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). It has been a no-brainer for a while now as to who it would be. Frontrunner General Bipin Rawat has bagged the race. He aced any rivals there might have been by a last minute surge, in belittling the leadership of the country-wide, largely-leaderless and spontaneous protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). With an extension in uniform till 65 years of age, he would be around for most of the balance tenure of this regime. This indicates why he nabbed the post.

Even as the last lap was underway in the CDS race, the mandate of the CDS was put out by the government. The process had been set off by the prime minister’s announcement at Red Fort. From the timing of the release of the mandate, immediately prior to Rawat’s retirement, it was clear that the job was going to him. Else, there would have been no hurry to do so.

More than another three years of Rawat in the headlines, it is this hurry to get a regime loyalist into the CDS sinecure – anyone with illusions on the CDS efficacy in the Indian bureaucratic system may now lay them to rest – that can potentially cost the country dearly. This article spells out a deficit in the charter, that did not find mention in the preceding debate on the CDS.

The charter of responsibilities of the CDS post include being permanent chair of the chiefs of staff committee, heading the soon-to-be-created department of military affairs within the ministry of defence and acting as a single point military advisor to the defence minister. Alongside, he would be sitting in on the national security adviser headed defence planning committee and the defence minister chaired defence acquisition council. Along with the three chiefs, he would also be part of the now NSA-led strategic policy group, a pillar of the national security council system. He is also to be military advisor to the nuclear command authority (NCA).

Of interest for the purposes here is his location in the decision making tree on nuclear matters. As are the other three chiefs, he would also be in the NCA’s executive council that is headed by the NSA. The NSA by virtue of being secretary to the nuclear command authority’s ministerial-level political council is charged with implementing its decisions as head of the executive council. As military advisor to NCA, the CDS presumably will be an invitee to its meetings.

However, the operational control of the strategic forces command (SFC) rests with the NSA, while the CDS has administrative control over the nuclear forces and as part of the executive council under the NSA. This makes his say a nebulous one in the implementation of the political council decisions. There is no nuclear staff in the headquarters integrated defence staff that he would head as part of his permanent chairman of the chiefs of staff duties. There is no question of a nuclear component in the department of military affairs that will be set up for him to head.

In the current system, the nuclear think tanks of the government report to the NSA. The SFC is merely an organization to implement nuclear decisions, as it should be. There is a strategic planning staff, reportedly in the NCA, presumably reporting to the NSA. There is also a strategic programs staff in the NSC Secretariat, again outside of the CDS ambit. There is also a military advisor already under the NSA, traditionally held by a retired military man.

This is an anomaly of sorts. The vesting of executive authority over the most significant portion of India’s war making machinery is with neither an elected official nor an official. Instead it is with a prime ministerial appointee, the NSA, who is “the principal advisor on national security matters to the prime minister”. This clarification was done last August, as an afterthought nearly two decades into its existence, in the allocation of business rules of the government that also make clear that the NSCS will be the secretariat for the PM-led National Security Council (NSC). No such clarity obtains in relation to the NCA.

There are two approaches to a critique of the current system: theoretical and practical.

It does not require theory to discern that the most significant issue in nuclear decision making is accountability. In a democratic set up this would be responsibility and accountability of a democratic authority. While the system is clearly predicated on the final say being with the prime minister assisted by his ministerial colleagues, the insertion of the NSA as the next tier is unfathomable. The arrangement of dubious legality undercuts the Indian democratic system of parliamentary accountability of the cabinet.  

There is no Constitution-compliant parliament-adopted charter for the NSA. This appointment is at the behest of the prime minister and relevant press releases have it that it is ‘coterminous with the prime minister’s tenure or till further orders, whichever is earlier’. Sister democracies - the United States and United Kingdom - have the NSA position, with the US system having the due legislation, but both do not vest their respective NSA with executive authority.

In the nuclear decision and implementing loop, it cannot be that a commander-in-chief of strategic forces reports to a civilian having no clear and sanctioned position. Yet in India, this is indeed the case. The uniformed superior of the commander strategic forces command instead has only administrative lien and no staff to undertake the military-relevant nuclear advisory function. How the CDS will fulfill his defence advisor function in the NCA is left to imagination.

Whereas much ado has been witnessed over the writing up of the mandate of the CDS, there has been little let on in the open domain of the NSA’s remit. All that is known is that he has a finger in every pie – intelligence, information domain, defence planning etc. It is not known if the business rules of government have been reframed to account for his consequential presence in the system. The NSA is inordinately empowered and – worse - remains outside of the legislated lines of authority, responsibility and accountability.

A way to remove the anomaly would have been to have the CDS have operational control over the strategic forces command by removing the NSA from the chain. For this he would need to have the requisite staff support under him. The NSA could continue in a strategic-political advisory capacity to the political council, with the CDS in attendance for military advice, receiving of orders and implementing these. Both NSA and CDS should figure in the political council of the NCA, but with the CDS not merely in an advisory, but an executive, role; the advisory role being inherent in his tasking as first among equals in the military top hierarchy.

The second direction of critique is whether the NSA-centered system remains efficacious for nuclear decision making, with the insertion of a CDS into it. This is easier to establish since into this regime’s sixth year the decision making system is clearly dysfunctional. Its choice of first CDS, based on parochial considerations of political like-mindedness, best illustrates the strategic vacuity at its core. 

This decision alerts to the problems that can accrue in an NSA-CDS system with the two personages occupy respective chairs. The NSA, with security forces as a hammer in hand, sees every political and security issue as a nail. Thus, political matters become securitized – such as the counter CAA protests and security forces unleashed. The army chief and now CDS has consistently played along, not only acting as his master’s voice, but chiming in with his bit. Thus, in the current system, the NSA is likely to remain hardline and any advice he receives will only be music to his ears.

A system over-reliant on the NSA is faulty to begin with. Personality oriented, it can but have little institutional strength. As seen, in the nuclear dimension, it is structurally flawed. It is with this system in place, India is liable to approach any forthcoming crises. Given that the hardline is set to persist, with no checks and balances left even from a traditionally and characteristically cautious and conservative military, the nuclear dimension of crises cannot be neglected hereon.

This implies that the NSA-CDS relationship in the nuclear decision making and implementation loop needs rethinking. The regime would do well to cap its reputation for national security dynamism by getting on with the long-pending restructuring of the NSA position, making it an advisory rather than a trouble shooting one. Now that it has a CDS of its choice in place, it must divest the NSA of nuclear decision implementation in favour placing the responsibility with its CDS.   

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https://countercurrents.org/2020/01/gujaratification-as-the-foremost-national-security-threat

Gujaratification as the foremost national security threat

A commentator has it that Kashmirisation of India is underway ever since methods law and order maintenance tried and tested in Kashmir found their way into the national capital with the invasion of the armed police into a university campus to rough up students. Alongside, Gujratification of India is also underway, evident from the foray of a right wing lynch mob to beat up students of another central university in the national capital as the police stood by.

Gujaratification – the hand-in-glove nature of the regime and police - is a recent phenomenon on the national stage. However, conditioning Indians by the lap-dog media to mainstreaming it is proving difficult. India’s liberal hangover appears to be bestirring itself with a rear-guard action by assorted liberals and a besieged minority hogging the headlines. 

Clearly, the regime has over-reached. Blinded by arrogance on being rewarded with another term by an electorate fed on lies related to its military showing in the Balakot episode and hoping to build on the momentum from its constitutional hocus-pocus on Kashmir followed by its judicial coup in the Ayodhya case, unfurled – prematurely as it turns out - its flagship enterprise turning India into a Hindu Rashtra.

The good part is that it has in its exuberance spilled the beans on the ways and means towards the Hindu Rashtra, Gujaratification.

The Gujarat Model commended itself into middle class consciousness based on economic growth figures of the state under Modi. The underside to the Gujarat Model – of abject socio-economic indices - was lost in the beeline of the corporates to set up shop in Gujarat and its self-interested endorsement by corporate honchos. Less visible was the Gujarat Model’s blind side of Gujaratification.

Therefore when the electorate opted twice-over for the protagonist duo – Modi-Shah – from Gujarat, they have unwarily imported from Gujarat the odious dimension of their rule. This is turning out the primary national security threat today.

Essentially, Gujaratification is the internal hollowing out of institutions, in this case security relevant institutions. The enervation of the Gujarat police is an example, with the easy illustration being its custodial killings in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case that was dressed up as preemption of a plot to ‘get Modi’. Apparently, the henchmen were in constant touch with their minister, Amit Shah, even as they implemented orders.

Shades of Gujaratification are visible in the actions of the Delhi police, run by Shah’s home ministry, in its conduct on the two university campuses. While at Jamia Millia they vandalized the university campus without any permission even to enter it, in the case of Jawarharlal Nehru University (JNU), they held back ostensibly for permission to enter the campus even as the rampage inside the campus proceeded unhindered. That they then allowed right-wing foot-soldiers to then vanish using the cover of the dark, with street lights helpfully switched off for the purpose. This has shades of Gujarat 2002, when it is alleged the police were told to lay off while right wing goon squads were given 48 hours to do their bit.

As in Gujarat, where the likes of whistle-blower Sanjiv Bhatt are in jail even as his counterpart the tainted DG Vanzara, of encounter fame, is scot-free, Delhi is witnessing a similar inversion of justice. No one has been proceeded against in the Jamia Millia episode, though social media is awash with the evidence of disproportionate use of force by the police. Supposed bus burning and stone throwing by protestors is taken as enough to let off the perpetrators. In the JNU case, a first information report has been lodged against the injured head of the JNU student union, while not a single – easily identified - perpetrator has been arrested.

Gujaratification poses a more insidious threat. The disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed, the JNU student, missing for some three years, is a case to point. The ease of access by right wing forces to the campus and impunity thereafter throws light on what might have transpired the day Najeeb went missing.

For additional clarity, Uttar Pradesh (UP) is example. The UP police’s handling of the largely peaceful protests has been captured on camera. They are shown up as supplementing their resources with right wingers. Where the crowds are shown as violent, it is arguably because of the communalized police’s high-handedness combined with the provocation from right wingers in their midst. The ensuing violence has been taken as legitimizing the excessive use of force that resulted in over a score killed. The chief minister, chosen for the job by the dynamic duo – Modi-Shah, has since justified their choice by talking of ‘badla’ (revenge).

Gujaratification, the subversion of institutions and instruments of law and order and justice, is a national security threat since there is no distinction left between state and its temporal steward. The threat is in such agencies ending up as handmaiden for the advance of the footprint of Hindutva across India. Their trampling on the political backlash in the guise of national security makes them complicit in majoritarianism, besides setting the stage for authoritarianism.     

The national security threat is amplified in case it overruns the military – the last line of defence. On being appointed Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, who has constantly over his tenure as army chief through his political interventions flirted with the ruling party, piously intoned: “We stay far away from politics, very far. We have to work according to the directions of the Government in power.”

Security agencies – police, military and intelligence - have a constitutional and official mandate, the fulfillment of which requires beng apolitical and secular. However, if – as the good general does – they follow orders without reference to their formal professional obligation to the Constitution and normative obligation to the nation, they stand compromised.

Therefore, directions received from political bosses have to be gauged in light of their mandate, with illegal and illegitimate orders ignored. Doing so alone can preserve national security from being suborned by either ideology or an incipient authoritarianism.