https://www.milligazette.com/news/Opinions/33905-india-should-reform-intelligence-agencies-in-national-interest/

Reform intelligence agencies in the national interest

Reprising an earlier argument made on these web pages occasionally over the past ten years is apt in light of a new book shedding light on India’s intelligence agencies. The case made earlier was that India’s largest minority, its Muslims, have been saddled with responsibility for the terror threat by its intelligence agencies for no fault or doing of their own. Over the last two decades the terror threat in India was, firstly, hyped up through intelligence operations, and, secondly, pumped up through ‘black operations’, involving terror acts by non-Muslims passed off as Muslim perpetrated. A recently released book, Spy Stories: Inside the Secret World of the RAW and the ISI, by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, provides testimony for the argument.  

The authors make the case that the setback at a Kandahar over the turn of the millennium - in which India exchanged a few Pakistani terrorists in its custody for the passengers of a hijacked plane - resulted in a boost for operations of intelligence agencies. Intelligence agencies operations had apparently been curbed somewhat at the late 90s when India was contemplating expanding an outreach to Pakistan through a composite dialogue. The Kandahar episode – that followed close on the heels of the Kargil War - upended any thought of dialogue with Pakistan. Instead, it resulted in the intelligence agencies being allowed to reactivate offensive operations, along with painting Pakistan black by winning the war of narratives.

As per the book, intelligence agencies consequently launched information operations - buttressed by diplomats - highlighting Pakistani interference in India’s domestic affairs through proxy war in Kashmir and also by supporting Muslim extremists and criminals in the hinterland. While the book does not go into any detail, it hints that, in addition, they also conducted ‘black operations’ in order to further implicate Pakistan as a terror sponsor state. In his review of the book, Sushant Singh, the fearless scribe on strategic affairs, lets on that the book has clues that even as significant an incident as the parliament attack has traces of a false-flag operation. He refers to the insufficiently probed role of the rogue cop, Davinder Singh, who allegedly was a player in that episode. Since the authors rely on intelligence sources, they portray that the terror attack was handiwork of Pakistan, white washing the career gains the rogue cop made over the next decade and half. Unbelievably the cop turned up in the Pulwama episode too. That he continues to be on the loose, having been discharged from service without a probe ‘in the national interest’, should ring bells.

Readers of this publication need no elaboration on the other terror attacks attributed to Muslims.  The book brings out that at least 16 major terror attacks across the country were of dubious origin. Some involved at least one army officer and one sitting member of the current parliament. The army officer, Purohit, has been let off, since he supposedly kept his hierarchy informed of his penetration of the saffronite cell that was behind the bombings such as in Malegaon and in Hyderabad. This only serves to reinforce the suspicion all along that the bombings were by saffronite extremists, but brings to fore the covert support of intelligence agencies with the ostensible rationale of a build-up of a case against Pakistan as a terror sponsor for strategic and foreign policy purposes.

However, that rationale is self-serving, dressing up intelligence agencies’ doings in plausible national security terms. What is concerning is the saffronisation of the intelligence agencies – and elements of other security services - brought out in the book. Such saffronisation must be placed in the context of Hindutva politics being played out over the period. At the time, the right wing party was out of power and was in search of a key to Delhi. The intelligence agency-overseen bombings thus provided the ballast for the campaign of right wing forces. The bombings generated polarization and marginalized the minority. On the back of the resulting manufactured ‘wave’, the current ruling dispensation came to power mid-last decade.

This brings to fore the political role of the intelligence agencies, which clearly calls for closer executive and parliamentary supervision. This is easier said than done. While parliamentary oversight does not exist – there being no parliamentary standing committee charged with this – there is little evidence of executive oversight either. Recall, the bombings averred to here were in the period of the United Progressive Alliance ten years sway. Its national security advisors and home ministers were unable or unwilling to clean up the intelligence agencies’ stables. It can be inferred that their inability and unwillingness owed to their knowledge that the rot was rather deep. Besides, findings of an Indian non-Muslim hand behind the bombings would have revealed Indian foreign policy offensive against Pakistan sterile and rendered vacuous its backing for initiatives as the convention on international terrorism. Now, intelligence agencies variously report to the two right hand men of the prime minister, Amit Shah and Ajit Doval. Since the ruling dispensation has been the gainer from actions of intelligence agencies, it is hardly likely to trip itself up.

That a continuing series of intelligence failures not having prompted a clean-up so far, it is hardly likely that the finding here matters that intelligence agencies were acting outside their mandate by creating the political conditions for electoral triumph of the right wing. Not only was India found flat-footed at Kargil, but so has been the case - if the official narrative is to be believed - with the terror attacks from parliament to Pulwama. More recently, the Chinese intrusions in Ladakh escaped the intelligence agencies. Worse, the Pegasus affair - ‘Snoopgate’ - has also not evoked introspection and course correction. The fall of India’s ally, the Ghani government in Kabul, will also unlikely stir matters. Their hard-sell that with Article 370 gone, Kashmir will mend, has not quite worked out and the chickens are readying to come home to roost. A system that plants incriminating evidence remotely in computers and then makes arrests using the planted evidence as evidence of conspiracy as has been the case with the BK16 or charges victims of communal carnage as has been done in the case of the one-sided political violence in North East Delhi can neither self-regulate nor autocorrect.

Therefore, to carry any expectations of fair play or rule of law is to be naïve. The intelligence agencies have Chanakya as their mascot. Kautilyan thought informs the working of this regime. Regime survival is the primary morality in Chanakyagiri and intelligence agencies have pride of place in its scheme. It misses national security minders that Chanakya wrote in and of a period when India was a space for contesting principalities. Principles and values cannot be imported from two millennia back to inform workings of a parliamentary democracy today. To the extent intelligence hands subscribe to Hindutva, to them Hindutva legitimizes their distancing from the professional ideal. This accounts for the authoritarian and illiberal democracy India has become in its 75^th year. A rollback to the constitutional framework implies first a reform of intelligence agencies in the national interest.

 

 

 https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/20743/The-Fallout-of-an-Afghan-Civil-War-on-Kashmir

Civil war fallout on Kashmir

Afghanistan is heading into a civil war. The Taliban and the Afghan government have not resumed their talks process started last September in Doha, even as they square off on ground with the Taliban controlling the country side and the government losing five cities so far.

At an open session of the Security Council called at the behest of the Afghan government and facilitated by India, holding the rotating presidency of the Security Council through August, a consensus could be observed with all members against an Emirate emerging in Afghanistan.

Even so, as of now, it appears that the pessimistic possibility, of the two sides contending militarily till winters set in and dampen military moves, is in the offing.

From civil war to proxy war in Afghanistan

Currently, verbal professions to the contrary apart, it is not self-evident that relevant actors find the impending civil war unwelcome. Strategic calculations may well prevent a meeting of minds on how to avoid a civil war and in case of its incidence, how to bring it to a close.

An internationalized non-international armed conflict lends itself as a setting for proxy war. In addition to the two parties, the government and the major insurgent group, the Taliban, ethnic militias have formed at several locations to fill in the vacuum created by the dissipation of the Afghan national security forces. Reports have it that all sides have militarily supportive external actors.

The Americans are assisting the Afghan air force and are conducting air strikes of their own. Pakistani elements of the Jaish and Lashkar are reportedly participating in Taliban offensives, with the Afghan government claiming that tens of thousands of fighters have entered Afghanistan from Pakistan. India is backing the government as part of its strategic partnership commitment dating back a decade. India and Iran may reprise their earlier support for the Northern Alliance in backing these militias.

India-Pak proxy war prospects

For India, keeping Pakistan tied down in Afghanistan in a proxy war will help keep Pakistan off Kashmir. Thwarted from gaining strategic depth in Afghanistan and from limiting Indian influence there, Pakistan may revive its proxy war in Kashmir.

In such a case the escalation dynamic may kick in. Whereas Indian support for the Afghan government is legitimate, escalation may be clandestine, with intelligence operations from Afghanistan into Pakistan, such as Indian support as alleged by Pakistan for the Tehrik-e-Taliban. Pakistan for its part may up-the-ante by backing terrorism in India’s hinterland.

India’s conventional deterrence against Pakistan’s subconventional challenge has been diluted lately. India’s pivot to the China front has led to transfer of some of its Pakistan-centric strike corps assets to the mountain strike corps poised against China. India’s ongoing commitment on the China front will prevent it from resorting to retribution in the form of surgical strikes, fearing escalation might prove diversionary from the China front.

India has also thinned out its paramilitary, the Rashtriya Rifles, from Kashmir by deploying up to a division worth in Ladakh this year. This may incentivize Pakistani adventurism, though the multi-tiered counter infiltration grid has not been affected. Activation of the LC by Pakistan would enable it to thrust Afghan civil war hardened Pakistani infiltrators.

Counter terrorism as excuse, a heavy handed Indian response can be expected in the Valley. There has been an increasing reliance on the police and central armed police since the neutralization of Article 370. No known doctrine informs the functioning of these uniformed forces function and reporting as they do to the ministry of home, accountability may be at a premium.

Preventing such outcome

Strategically, India can ill afford an active Pakistan front, since it is staring down China for now. However, the government is liable to prioritise its own parochial interests, based on the election cycle. Therefore the question to answer is if an uptick in militancy and its counter in Kashmir is in the political interest of the Modi government, looking as it is to elections in Uttar Pradesh soon and national elections thereafter. Arguably, a stand-off with Pakistan is better for the opportunity it affords for polarization and electoral gains thereby.

Pakistan’s relative reticence in its proxy war over last few years owes as much to the continuing scrutiny of the financial task force, but also because Pakistan has been busy with returning the Taliban to a controlling position in Kabul. If this objective is placed out of reach by India’s support for the Afghan opposition, then Pakistan may revert to its traditional preoccupation – Kashmir - with vengeance.

Both sides have stepped back from the promise of initiatives of earlier this year such as the resumption of ceasefire on the LC, indicating that they are not averse to a strategic contest in Afghanistan.  Preventing such a contingency requiring such calculations by the two sides to be dispelled is a tall order.

India needs reminding that whereas the talks process with China has enabled stability on the Line of Actual Control, the threat remains. A weakened conventional deterrent against Pakistan precludes election-influencing resort to surgical strikes, making these politically risky. A restive Kashmir will negate the Indian position that its Article 370 related initiative has returned normalcy. As for Pakistan, it needs no reminding that a return to the terror situation of early last decade is hardly in its broader national interest.

Preventive diplomacy in Afghanistan

Avoiding a civil war in Afghanistan is a first, essential step. The US having bailed out, the onus is on the regional powers, Russia and China, to step up and fill the breach by bringing about a regional solution to a regional problem.

This is easier said. The hasty manner of the US exit suggests it is keen to leave a ‘mess’ behind for its antagonists – Russia, Iran and China – to contend with. India having kept Pakistan out of the Security Council meeting on Afghanistan may prompt Pakistan, and its benefactor, China, keeping India out of the Troika-plus grouping in the lead on Afghanistan.   

Even as the two sides slug it out on ground for a position of advantage at Doha, the international community must get its act together. While India must help the Afghan government whittle Taliban’s military momentum by provisioning political support, military equipment and discreet military advice, alongside it must upgrade its outreach to the Taliban from an intelligence-led to a diplomatic one. For its part, Pakistan may require applying the brakes on its protégé, the Taliban, lest its very success backfire in international opprobrium. 

Both India and Pakistan need to find a way back to where they started off the year with. Their intelligence contacts need to be speedily revived and a joint diplomatic support to the Doha mediation offered. This is the best way the two can prevent an otherwise upcoming civil war in Afghanistan, an imperative if the two sides are to fulfill their much vaunted claims on behalf of Kashmiris.

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 http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=112113

What a civil war next door means for us

It is widely believed that Afghanistan is heading into a civil war. The Taliban and the Afghan government have not resumed their talks process started last September in Doha, even as they square off on ground with the Taliban controlling the country side and the government losing five cities so far. Taliban has reportedly lost some 200 fighters over the week in Afghan air force bombings.

At an open session of the Security Council called at the behest of the Afghan government and facilitated by India, holding the rotating presidency of the Security Council through August, the Afghan government has asked for the Security Council to warn Taliban against attacking cities. The call found echo in the statements of some members of the Council.

The current situation

This makes sense in the balance-of-power logic, with both sides having some tokens in the power play that inevitably precedes negotiations, with the government holding the provincial capitals even if the Taliban controls the intervening rural spaces. Such a power equation helps build symmetry on the negotiation table and bears promise of an agreement emerging with the two sides relatively evenly represented in an interim government that an agreement is expected to midwife.

Taliban’s gains on ground are therefore troubling. Not only do they set back the talks, allowing it to grab as much as it can in the interim, but portend an uneven agreement. Given the latter possibility, it makes it more likely that the two sides may persist with fighting, with the Taliban hoping to make military gains and the government hoping to preserve its space and reclaim lost ground.

For this reason there is a consensus in the international community that the Taliban must be cautioned against attempting to take Kabul militarily and any Taliban Emirate emerging thereafter would not be recognized. This would place the Taliban at the same starting point it was some 25 years ago when merely three states recognized it, though it had control over some 90 per cent of Afghan territory then. Besides, persisting with fighting in face of calls for military restraint would jeopardise not only political support, but also humanitarian and developmental aid that serves as incentive for the two sides to arrive at a compromise agreement at Doha.

The Security Council’s open session ended in further deliberations in a closed format. The outcome will likely be reflected in a Security Council resolution when the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) comes up for extension by the Council next month. Interim developments, both on ground and at Doha, will inform the resolution on the UNAMA mandate that will reflect these developments.

Optimistically, if the Doha talks make progress and fighting is curtailed, UNAMA can be mandated to extend support to the Doha process till it eventuates in an agreement on interim power sharing in Kabul. Alternative, if the military situation worsens, the international community can exert pressure to open up the humanitarian space, extending but maintaining a status quo on the mandate of the mission. In both cases, the UN secretary general’s newly appointed personal representative would support forming an international and regional consensual position on the future of Afghanistan supportive of a ceasefire and a resumption of the peace process.

Unfortunately, as of now, it appears that the alternative - pessimistic - possibility is more likely. The two sides may contend militarily till winters set in and dampen military moves. Thus, it is only over the turn of the year that movement on the peace front may be more visible. This gives enough time for the international community and the regional players to get their act together.

Currently, the prominent actors are only superficially on the same page. The United States (US) has fast forwarded its exit, without meeting the earlier intended timeline of the Doha peace process resulting in an agreement by when it departs. This has prompted criticism from regional players as China that it is a hasty withdrawal and from Pakistan that the US is leaving a mess behind. The three, joined by Russia, are confabulating in the extended troika while the other regional players, as India and Iran, feeling left out, want to join the conversation. As tit for tat, at the Council session, Pakistan, a major player, was not in the room, kept out – in its reckoning – by India as chair of the Council.

Proxy war clouds ahead

Strategic calculations might yet upend a meeting of minds, leading to violence continuing. The Americans are assisting the Afghan air force and are conducting air strikes of their own. To the Americans, such support lends confidence to the Afghan government to persevere against the Taliban offensive. However, air strikes are prompting the Taliban to rationalize its uptick in violence against civilian targets, such as its recent assassination of the media head of the government, and forays into urban areas.

This solidifies civil war portents, an outcome the US may not be averse too since it leaves the ‘mess’ – Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s word – at the doorstep of China, Iran and Pakistan, states with which it does not have cordial relations. Besides, it helps the US get back at the Taliban by denying Taliban control of Afghanistan for defeating it in a decade-and-half long insurgency. An Afghan cauldron will keep China’s Belt and Road Initiative centric interests in the region in abeyance.

A civil war might serve as setting for proxy war. India would continue its support for the Afghan government under its decade-long strategic partnership and revive its relations with its erstwhile partner, the Northern Alliance, by reaching out to the ethnic self-help militias that have formed across Afghanistan in wake of the Afghan national defence and security forces proving less than able to take on the Taliban despite over a decade of capacity-building by the US and, to a lesser - and less visible - degree, India. For its part, Pakistan will likely deepen its military engagement with the Taliban. It has reportedly deployed elements of the Pakistani terror organizations as Jaish and Lashkar in support of Taliban offensives.

Implications for Kashmir

For India, keeping Pakistan tied down in Afghanistan in a proxy war will help keep Pakistan off Kashmir, over which India has tightened its political and military control of late. Perceiving that its mentee, the Taliban, is thwarted in Afghanistan, Pakistan may return to its long held preoccupation, Kashmir, by resuming infiltration of Afghan civil war hardened Pakistani Punjabi fighters to revive the intensity of terror and help boost the insurgency in Kashmir. With China breathing down India’s neck on the other side, in Ladakh, Pakistan will unlikely be deterred by India’s conventional might, whittled as it has been with the pivot to the China front involving a diminution in its conventional advantage by transfer of some of its Pakistan-centric strike corps assets to the mountain strike corps poised against China.

Since the Taliban will be rather busy within Afghanistan, it is unlikely they will spare time and attention for Kashmir – the fear voiced in some strategic writings based on the factually incorrect narrative that international jihadism and Taliban presence was incident in Kashmir in the nineties when the troubles there were at their peak.

A revival of the insurgency, buttressed by Pakistani terrorism by proxy, shall lead to India responding with a heavy hand. The regional security situation can get potentially worse since the trend in surgical strikes over the past decade has been incessantly upwards. Earlier these were retributary raids, which in 2016 grew in magnitude and by 2019 had acquired an aerial dimension. More stringent population control measures impacting Kashmiris can be expected.

Reliance on the police, assisted by the central armed police, has only grown since the nullification of Article 370 two years back. With a proportion of the army-led paramilitary force, the Rashtriya Rifles, redeployed to Ladakh in the face off against China there, the security forces – feeling resultantly more vulnerable – will likely be more heavy-handed.

Politically, such a situation might be read as an opportunity by the Indian government. It is on-the-ropes after a series of setbacks to include a poor economy, disputed record in its showing on Covid, an alienated constituency of farmers and ‘Snoopgate’. Facing elections in a crucial north Indian state, Uttar Pradesh, early next year, it can use a stand-off with Pakistan for electoral gains, as it did in the last state elections there soon after the 2016 surgical strikes.

For Pakistan, continuing military contest in Afghanistan has the advantage of allowing its protégé to make gains and cement its strategic interest there of ‘strategic space’. Strife in Kashmir enables it the cover of a political rationale highlighting human rights to reengage in its interference in Kashmir. Pakistan gets two places to divert the Islamist energy within its society, even though this has the underside of developing a backlash in its cities as was the case a decade back. Besides, it can help it get back at India for tripping it up in Afghanistan and spurning its offer of geo-economic incentives made early this year.

Heightening preventive diplomacy

The upshot of this worst-case assessment is that while players may voice a disinclination for a civil war, all may not be unwilling to settle for one in case their interests are not met. The strategic interests of the US in leaving behind a restive Afghanistan must be called out, even if this dilutes focus on the Taliban as the sole spoiler.

Prevention of the worst-case entails the political moves currently framing the developing situation in Afghanistan need being energized in an expansion of the extended Troika to include India. The regional organization most relevant – the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation – must step up, since it has both political heft and is best positioned to lend support to any agreement from the peace process, including by deploying military monitors or peacekeeping troops along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as requested by the Afghan government at the Security Council. The UN envoy can play a catalytic role in all this.

Even as India is helping the Afghan government whittle Taliban’s military momentum, it must upgrade its outreach to the Taliban from an intelligence-led to a diplomatic one. This will help it mirror the other actors who have links with both sides, making it appear less of an outlier thereby. India can exploit and further its proximity with the Gulf states by helping them move faster on the peace process. It can position itself as a responsible player by easing the job of the UN envoy and bolster its longstanding case for a permanent Council seat.

For this to transpire, the internal political fallout of the possibility of being scalded by an Afghan civil war’s fallout in Kashmir must be brought home to Indian security minders. The sentiment voiced by Olympic javelin gold medalist Neeraj Chopra that had Nadeem, the fifth place Pakistani finisher, joined him on the podium it would have been good for Asia needs to come to fore.

 

 https://southasianvoices.org/the-escalatory-risks-of-indias-integrated-battle-groups/

The Escalatory Risks of India’s Integrated Battle Groups

In recent years, changes in the Indian military have made escalatory risks and the nuclear factor loom larger in the event of any military confrontation. These changes are threefold: a shift to integrated battle groups (IBGs) from corps-sized formations, a military pivot away from the Pakistan front and towards China, and under-the-radar nuclear modernization. All these changes lend themselves to fueling escalation between India and its adversaries during a conflict.

The impact of these changes suggest three escalatory steps. The first step on the escalation ladder is the availability and utility of IBGs as of next year (2022), by which time they will be “carved out of existing formations.” IBGs are small, agile units with offensive tasks within both “pivot” (ground-holding) and strike corps that lend themselves to joining battles earlier and can enable a swift transformation of a crisis into a conflict. The second step of escalation involves secondary support for IBGs. As IBGs have a lighter footprint, they may require reinforcement in the face of an adversary’s response, resulting in increased intensity of a conflict, higher levels of force commitment, and possible horizontal escalation at the conventional level. Finally, the third step risks escalation to the nuclear level, made more likely by the preceding conventional escalation.

Escalatory Impulses

While IBGs were initially envisioned for India’s western-front on the Pakistan border, as the threat of salami slicing on the Sino-Indian border comes to the fore in India’s defense planning, IBGs are now being operationalized on both fronts. While their development on their own does not provoke nuclear thresholds, the employment of IBGs is likely to foreshadow greater escalation, both vertical and horizontal, that in turn brings the nuclear equation into play.

Against Pakistan

For Pakistan, India’s shift to IBGs appears in line with the deterrence compulsions of the nuclear age. If Pakistani deterrence messaging on tactical nuclear weapons is to be believed, corps-level operations flirt dangerously with the nuclear threshold—placing achieving reasonable political aims through conventional force at an unnecessary level of risk. Though India conceptualized Cold Start in 2004, military leadership acknowledged that operationalization of the doctrine was still pending as of 2017. Now IBGs will provide Cold Start with teeth, enabling the launch of pivot and strike corps limited offensives. However,  in response to terrorist attacks, the presence of ready-to-mobilize IBGs can shorten the fuse between crisis and conflict, enabling India to go beyond the surgical strikes pitched as the dividing line between subconventional and conventional levels. Surgical strikes, which may be aerial or involve a few dozen troops, have not pushed Pakistan down the conventional escalation route so far. However, IBGs—potentially entailing several thousand troops—are decidedly breaching the subconventional-conventional divide, thereby likely to provoke further conventional escalation.

Furthermore, India’s divided attention between China and Pakistan may make Pakistan more capable of responding to IBGs, allowing escalation to occur more quickly. India is slicing up its third strike corps against Pakistan to create an additional mountain strike corps for use against China. The 1 Corps has reportedly been stripped of much of its infantry and some of its armor. Under the circumstance of seeming equivalence—two of Pakistan’s strike corps versus India’s two plus the newly downsized corps—Pakistan may react more successfully to IBG offensives under its “new concept of warfighting” doctrine. Pakistan has reportedly engaged in extensive war gaming and exercises and repositioned its response forces to negate any advantage India seeks from its Cold Start doctrine. Since this preparation may give Pakistan the confidence to take on India’s Cold Start IBG-executed offensives, Pakistan could proceed to do so, generating adverse operational circumstances for the Indian military. A few years on, when India has regained the fighting elements of the strike corps for the plains, it will be back to square one, but with an increased capacity for being quicker off the blocks.

A military setback by Pakistan would have both internal political and reputational costs for India, perhaps pushing it to over-compensate and go beyond the scope of limited offensives by IBGs. Should symmetric conventional escalation tend towards India gaining an upper hand, either through territorial gains or degradation of its military assets, Pakistan could uncover its well-advertised conventional-nuclear “full spectrum deterrence” doctrine, predicated on the strategic effects of tactical nuclear weapons, bringing the nuclear factor into the equation.

Against China

The dynamics of the situation on the India-China front also lend themselves to accelerating the impetus to horizontal escalation, outside of the military contest on the Himalayas. The Himalayan terrain on the border makes IBG-sized forces deployable, maneuverable, and easily switched between theaters of conflict. Since IBGs imply small portions of territory being captured, rather than territorial chunks, escalation may incorrectly be presumed to be manageable.

However, IBGs make military options figure more readily into the menu of political choices. In the fall prior to the Ladakh crisis, the IBGs intended for use in mountains were only used in exercise HimVijay, on the other end of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), in Arunachal Pradesh. A second IBG related exercise was Pakistan-front centric. As a result, the military option in Ladakh was defensive and restricted to “mirror deployment,” though there were also other reasons, such as the onset of the pandemic, that caught India flatfooted and impacted its decision-making on Ladakh.

Although India did not deploy IBGs during the Ladakh crisis, the likelihood of military escalation will be higher next time as IBGs are primed for conflict. The early position by the Indian government that down played the crisis and asserted that there was no intrusion that merited a military reaction in Ladakh will no longer be an option. A political need to “do something” may lead to upping the stakes in Ladakh. India played down the crisis last year, in part because it did not have the force readily available for a military reckoning in Ladakh. In the next crisis, with IBGs on hand, India has the ability to be responsive to domestic political pressures and compensate through military action.

This rising political view is in part due to criticism of India’s failure to exercise a counter-grab option and thereby increase its strength at the post-Ladakh crisis negotiations. China has therefore proved only partially responsive to a negotiated disengagement and de-escalation. Such learning from the crisis may entail greater Indian reliance on IBGs in an offensive role, since IBGs are customized for agility in mountainous terrain. While this capability and intent has deterrence utility—forcing China to think twice before any military adventure—deterrence is never cast-iron. Deterrence has a dark side: actions required to maintain credibility might require suitably positioned and tasked IBGs to launch quick offensives.

In a future crisis, while IBGs of defensive formations would as part of “offensive defense” replicate maneuvers like the Kailash range occupation in August 2020 in real time, India could also deploy offensive IBGs to push into China’s side of the LAC and counter-grab the Moldo garrison or Rudok. Either proactively or in response, China may capture Daulat Beg Oldie—India’s well-known Achilles heel—clinching its advantage in the Depsang area. The localized border war may expand under compulsion from a nexus of military factors and nationalism to include air raids and missile exchanges against other regions in both countries. In an adverse circumstance developing on the Himalayan front, Indian maritime strategies have already mapped out horizontal escalation to the seas near the Malacca Strait.

While the nuclear aspect has historically not played into India-China confrontation in the same ways as India-Pakistan crisis, it is nonetheless a crucial aspect to consider as India’s force options expand. Both India and China commit to No First Use (NFU) of nuclear weapons and have other motivations to not deploy the nuclear option, however the vagaries and uncertainties of conflict may stretch doctrinal commitment.

Preventing Escalation

The likelihood of escalation brought on by IBGs and the increasing focus on China has grim indications. The nuclear factor in an India-Pakistan context is well acknowledged. Pakistan’s possession of tactical nuclear weapons makes this stark, as does India’s shift—discerned by some experts—towards jettisoning NFU. Against China, any public rescinding of NFU in face of tensions on the border, would likely be read as nuclear messaging—adding great uncertainties to conflict dynamics on LAC. By embarking on IBGs India is making its military power usable. However, India would do well to acknowledge the resulting escalatory dimension and take prior precautions.

There are already functioning channels of communication with all sides. These channels need to be formalized for escalation control and early conflict termination. India has ongoing military talks and a diplomatic working group with China. With Pakistan, the intelligence channel is already functional, with the recent ceasefire on the Line of Control to show for it. Such conversations, alongside preventative diplomacy, will partially help enable India to overcome escalatory tensions.

Preventive diplomacy is also essential in mitigating escalatory risks. Kashmir continues to be a flashpoint for nuclear escalation between India and Pakistan, India must seek further back-channel negotiations and DGMO talks. This is admittedly easier said than done, but the escalation prospects of military developments suggest that while in the past escalation was avoidable—as the non-availability of IBGs made moving to the first rung of the escalation ladder more difficult— now, with the capability at hand, India is likely to have greater pressure to address the political problem that might give rise to their use.

Against China, India must temper the impossible-to-achieve aim of restoring the status quo ante in Ladakh by countenancing the mutual give-and-take necessary in border negotiations. While there may be some domestic costs of this approach for Indian policymakers, the alternative risks straining limited resources and keeping the border primed for more serious clashes or conflict. Even while military moves, such as strengthening deterrence by denial, are afoot and a strategy of hedging by toting up strategic partnerships, such as the Quad, are underway to strengthen India’s response to salami-slicing on the LAC, India must diplomatically ensure that in a future relationship of “antagonistic cooperation,” cooperation rather than antagonism dominates.

https://thekashmirwalla.com/2021/07/kashmirs-militancys-reorganisation-act-post-august-2019/

QUOTED IN RAYAN NAQASH'S 'KASHMIR MILITANCY’S REORGANISATION ACT POST-AUGUST 2019'

 Ali Ahmed, a former infantry officer in the Indian Army who has served in Kashmir and later served as a senior political affairs officer with the UN, said that for Pakistan, Islam had always been “a very useful tool to attract people to go across [to Kashmir] and do mischief. There is money in it and there are volunteers.”

“Its not all about Islam,” Ahmed said. “They may have these terms that sound Arabic but they are not necessarily Islamic. The Hizbul Mujahideen is not necessarily Islamist, they have as much nationalism and sub nationalism and Kashmiri nationalists in it. That [name] maybe a term to perhaps attract money from Pakistan or the Muslim world.”

Outfits like the TRF on the other hand, Ahmed said, “may not attract the funds that are required to keep the whole thing going. So even if there is a [later] reversion to Islamic symbolism that doesn’t necessarily mean Islamism is resurging [unless] if the Islamist energy is diverted to Kashmir by Pakistan.”

Pakistan at the moment is waiting as the events unfold in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal, said Ahmed, adding that these events could “encompass” Kashmir. “If the Indians play hardball, the Pakistanis have got this lever,” he said.

“Then you would need Islamism because it gives you the kind of energy to take on a state as powerful as India. If Islamism has seen the back of the Soviet Union and the United States, it will be possible to think that it will at least tie India down in Kashmir.”

 https://www.claws.in/civilian-faculty-at-professional-military-education-institutions/

Civilian faculty at Professional Military Education institutions

While technical training institutions, as for instance the College of Military Engineering, and pre-commission training institutions, such as the National Defence Academy, have civilian faculty members, the directing staff (DS) at professional military education (PME) institutions is largely uniformed, such as at the Defence Services Staff College (DSSC). At the former set of institutions, civilian staff members and officers of the Army Education Corps teach subjects aligned with the mainstream military professional remit, such as military history, geopolitics etc.

However, there are subjects of professional interest at PME institutions which can be taken on by qualified civilian staff and service veterans, for example strategy, defence policies etc. There are also requirements associated with the award of academic degrees to graduates of PME institutions, the course requirements for which mandate turning in of dissertations, such as for award of a Masters degree at DSSC. Arguably overseeing of such requirements can be better done by civilian faculty members.

Therefore, there is a case for a proportionate civilianizing of the faculty of PME institutions, as the DSSC, War Colleges and National Defence College (NDC), limited to subjects that civilian experts imported from the academia, strategic community and media can address equally competently.

Thus far, exposure to civilian experts at PME institutions has been through a regimen of discrete expert lectures on topics relevant to the military, for instance nuclear deterrence etc. Subjects as strategy are covered by uniformed faculty members, some of whom are earlier graduates of the institution or of equivalent foreign institutions. Such institutions have been well-led, with the commandant appointment being tenanted by renowned names such as Manekshaw, Sundarji, Menon etc. Gauging from the quality and reputation of India’s military leadership, this arrangement has stood the military well so far. The steady stream of students from foreign countries testifies that the standing of these institutions is well deserved. So it is prudent to leave well enough alone and ‘not fix something that ain’t broke’.

Even so, enhancing the scope, content and depth of understanding of higher order subjects that provide a context to the profession of arms is warranted. India is standing on the cusp of greater military responsibilities accruing from its upward power trajectory. It is also staring down adversaries in a two-front situation and taking on key security provider duties on behalf of the international community out of its traditional areas of footprint. It is making the requisite structural changes, for instance going in for theaterisation, associating extensively with militaries of strategic partners, acquiring over-the-horizon capabilities, being on the vanguard of the national bid for self-reliance etc. Alongside, cultural changes are on fast-forward, as a technology orientation and jointness.

Creating a military leadership that can take up the challenges requires innovation. Some measures undertaken so far include increasing the numbers of officers undergoing training at PME institutions. The numbers of foreign officer students have also expanded in keeping with India’s outreach to neighbours, extended neighbourhood and friendly developing countries. The expansion of PME institutions implies a larger DS body, which per force has to come from and at the cost of frontline formations.

Relying on civilian faculty may ease the officer management situation somewhat. Being high profile career officers, instructors are usually off to fill some or other command and staff billet sooner than later. Civilian experts can lend continuity in institutions that otherwise see a rapid turnover in the DS body. They can also take on time-intensive tasks as dissertation supervision, freeing up the DS body to undertake self-development activity standing them in good stead in future leadership positions. Students on course will perhaps access civilians more for academic input, since the perceptual hierarchical barrier will be less obtrusive. The benefit of such interaction is not ones-sided. The civilian staff will also grow as intellectuals, contributing to national strategic culture keeping pace with India’s advance on the world stage.

A mega-step along this direction, the National Defence University (NDU), is pending. In the interim, smaller steps can be taken. Expert civilians can be hired initially as consultants and perhaps with time, as the innovation settles in, as visiting and adjunct faculty. Those already holding down full time jobs can be brought on board on sabbatical, eased by the ministry of education facilitating. A period of quicker turn-over of civilians will get the word out on the military’s inner spaces in the academia. Over time, say by mid-decade, civilian faculty can be hired either through the Union Public Service Commission route or through competitive advertisements on faculty positions as normal in the academia. When the NDU is up and running, an arrangement for inter-posting can be arrived at, to include with defence studies faculties in universities and civilian and military-affiliated think tanks.

In a time of post-covid constrained defence budgets, over the short term, compensation need not necessarily be more than that for consultants hired by ministries these days in the national capital. The novelty of associating with the military can serve as incentive, since the insight from an intimate look can prove useful for cross-fertilisation. Chairs of eminence, as with some think tanks and faculties, can be instituted to attract those with international renown. Temporary scholar-in-residence program for the duration of a course or term can be started.

Fear of security breach or adverse observations from scholars may serve as dampner arguments. The security argument is liable to be overblown since all training institutions work with information in the open domain. Elements in the curriculum of war colleges are confidential, dealing with actual, but protocols attending these can continue in place. As for criticism, the military is no stranger to this and informed criticism is in any case welcome. The military has the mental and public relations social capital to counter it and the moral resources to course correct where necessary.

Civilian faculty inclusion in PME institutions is an idea whose time has come. The national discourse on defence and security is sufficiently advanced, with several universities running security, international relations and peace studies Masters level programs. Veteran officers are increasingly delving into complex subject areas of their earlier professional interest, such as military history. There is thus a plentitude of talent out there, allowing for competition and a quality intake. It can, as bonus, also help lend gender balance to the faculty.

Subject areas where the civilians, including retirees from civil services as defence accounts, can do justice include defence economics, defence industrial sector and policies, military sociology, strategic thinking, Indian strategic discourse, area studies, budget and procurement procedures, organizational management and change, etc.

Professionalism involves a degree of convergence in practices with peer militaries. If and since advanced militaries have long had civilians and military veterans taking classes in PME institutions, can the Indian military afford to lag behind anymore? With the Department of Military Affairs in charge of PME, piloting the idea, allocating the monies, implementing and expanding the scope with time can be easier done. Increasing receptivity to an idea that is certainly not new or original in the government’s privileging of change, encapsulated in the prime minister’s annual address to the military brass, needs exploiting in quick time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=111521

http://epaper.kashmirtimes.in/index.aspx?page=4 

A peace strategy for Afghanistan

Afghanistan is currently poised at a critical juncture. Apprehensions of a civil war abound in the contestation underway between the government, the Taliban and ethnic militias formed in anticipation of an impending civil war. The deteriorated security situation owes to the earlier than anticipated pace of departure of the United States (US) and its allies, with the former exiting its ‘longest war’.

The uncertainty results from the planned sequence of exit not having materialized. In late February last year, the US had entered into an agreement with the Taliban in which it had promised to leave Afghanistan by 1 May this year, in return for Taliban’s guarantee of securing Afghanistan against any threat to the US from its soil. The Taliban was also to undertake talks with the Afghan government on a ceasefire and the future roadmap for Afghanistan.

In the event, the transition from the Trump to the Biden administration led to the departure date of the US being set back by a few months by Biden, who announced that they would leave by the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, that had prompted their intervention in first place.

The hold up and prospects

For its part, the Taliban has played hard ball and procrastinated on the intra-Afghan talks at Doha that were to have resulted in a ceasefire. It did not turn up for the Istanbul meeting intended to lend momentum to the talks. It has nevertheless stuck to its side of the agreement with the US to talk to the government, there having been two rounds of talks so far – in September last year and in mid June.

The Taliban has indicated that it has a written-out plan that it would be conveying to the government at the next round of talks. The government is amenable to an interim arrangement of sharing power, with elections thereafter. A comprehensive agreement would also require covering a review of the 2004 Constitution, informed by Taliban’s view that the Constitution must reflect Islamic values. To what extent these values will draw on extremist versions of the Sharia is the major concern. The government and its backers would like to preserve the gains made over the past twenty years of peace building, in particular advances in the space for women and protection of minorities.

That the US has been emboldened to depart at a faster pace – best exemplified by its sudden vacation of the Bagram air base -  suggests not so much an indifference on its part to what might follow, but a tactic to get to the two sides – in particular the one it backs, the Afghan government – to get serious on intra-Afghan talks. The Afghan government has been reassured that it and the Afghan military would continue receiving US support, a message conveyed most recently during the visit of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to the US.

The Taliban is reliant on the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and can potentially be influenced by these countries, all of whom are friends of the US. Saudi Arabia is in midst of a makeover from its earlier adherence to puritanical religious norms, and therefore can be expected to help moderate the Taliban.

The other interested regional players – Russia, Iran, China and Central Asian neighbours – have pitched in favour of a peace process and would stay engaged with both the ongoing peacemaking and inevitable peace building to follow. There is a consensus against an Islamist Emirate emerging in Afghanistan, including within Pakistan, the major backer of the Taliban, which cannot but register with the Taliban. Russia recently received a Taliban delegation out to reassure it that the Taliban has turned a new leaf.

A role for the UN?

Some building blocks are in place for managing the aftermath sufficiently to preclude prospects of civil war. The UN has a special political mission in place dating to the implementation phase of the Bonn agreement in late 2001. The mission has been largely engaged with lending coherence to peace building efforts so far.

The UN is no stranger to conflicts in Afghanistan, having assisted with peace processes earlier with special envoys and political missions. The Geneva Accords resulted from some six years of UN engaging with the Soviet Union, the Mujahedeen and parties supportive of the latter. It deployed the UN Good Offices Mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the late eighties to oversee implementation of the agreement.

From 1993 onwards - till 2001 - it had a political mission of support in Afghanistan, interfacing with the belligerents, Taliban and the United Front. Lakhdar Brahimi, who was the personal representative of the secretary general for a time in the period, had been instrumental in an early and positive conclusion to the agreement that emerged in Bonn post 9/11.

The UN has now appointed a special envoy, in preparation for assisting with the peacemaking at the intra-Afghan talks to complement the work of the Gulf States acting as facilitators of the intra-Afghan talks at Doha. This means that the infrastructure for supporting negotiations is in place, as also the UN capability to help implement any agreement that might emerge in the political mission, UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), enhancing its peace building role.

Given that the major players are contending militarily, there would be necessity for a military adjunct to  UNAMA. A comprehensive ceasefire arrangement necessarily implies measures for monitoring and dispute settlement, logically entailing third party assistance such as from the United Nations (UN) or a regional organization as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). This may change its current complexion from a political mission to a peacekeeping one.

The SCO has a security role best evidenced from the recent meeting of national security advisers (NSA) of its member states – attended by India’s NSA, Ajit Doval -  that no doubt considered the situation in Afghanistan. It can whistle up either a peacekeeping force or monitors in case an intra-Afghan agreement emerges from Doha.

Implications for India

India, albeit tentatively, stepped up its engagement as the situation has clarified on the US end game in Afghanistan. While it had reluctantly sent two retired diplomats to talks in Moscow in the initial stages of the peace process in 2018, reports from UAE have it that it has met this year with Taliban interlocutors in Dubai.

Though it has denied a meeting of Foreign Minister Jaishankar with Taliban representatives in his recent visit to UAE, a credible outreach at an official level is certainly on since it has attracted derisory attention of no less than the Pakistani national security advisor, who, apropos little, declaimed that India should be ‘ashamed’ of such contacts.

India feels free to engage with the Taliban as the Afghan government is itself in talks with the group. The advantage of such engagement is that India can get a direct feel of the attitude and intention of the Taliban and through the talks can influence it to respect India’s interests and investment in Afghanistan. It could also promise to support the interim arrangement and the elected government that follows with peace building support, incentivizing Taliban to moderate its postures.

Positive fallout of the emerging situation in Afghanistan on the India-Pakistan equation has been the let up in firing on the Line of Control since the late February. Even so, there are dark clouds forming. The apprehension is not so much from Taliban directly, as much from Pakistan. Once its northern flank is secured by Taliban in a power sharing arrangement in Kabul, Pakistan may resume its proxy war in Kashmir.

If the allegations by the two sides – India and Pakistan - are to be believed, then they have just engaged in a tit-for-tat exchange attended by plausible deniability. India has been blamed by Pakistan for the bomb blast in Lahore and Pakistan has been held responsible for the drone attack on Jammu air field. Pakistan has said that the reported contacts between the two sides, that had eased the situation, have since ceased.

India has two strategic options: one, fuel the Afghan civil war through a proxy war in Afghanistan with Pakistan and thereby keep Pakistan bogged down; or, two, lend its shoulder to the peace process in Afghanistan. The former is hardly a friendly gesture by an avowed friend of the Afghan people that is India. While the latter seemingly favours Taliban and, in turn, its backer Pakistan, it is a collaborative approach can see ripple effects in Kashmir.

Way ahead

Even though Taliban claims to have take 85 per cent of the area, civil war is not inevitable. Action must not be taken making civil war a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, mediation support should be enhanced. The current period of instability must be reframed as one in which the contending sides are last-minute trying to get to a position of strength, a typical pre-negotiation strategy.

Viewed thus, there is scope for military support of the government to hold its own. India has trained over 100 Afghan officers every year at its commissioning academies since its strategic partnership agreement in 2011. Holding the Ghani government’s hand will redress any asymmetry, making it clear to Taliban that it cannot take on the battle field what it can instead get on the negotiation table.

The Indian foreign minister has rightly held that legitimacy is a concern today. The ‘secret’ visit of the head of the Afghan High Peace Council, Abdullah Abdullah, to Delhi implies a role in returning sustaining peace for India. This can be by helping reduce the asymmetry on the negotiation table against the Afghan government.

To assume such a role, India must display self-confidence in its soft power to influence the Taliban to settle with the Afghan government and in its hard power to negate any consequences on Kashmir. The Afghan end game provides an opportunity for collaboration between India and Pakistan (and, indeed, also China) on restoring sustainable peace.

The building blocks for peace are already in place: peacemaking facilitation by the Gulf States supported by the UN; all actors on standby for peace building assistance coordinated by the UN; and ceasefire monitoring peacekeeping forces easily whistled up  on culmination of Doha talks.  

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] The author thanks the Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, for the opportunity of a lecture at which he made the observations in the article.