https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/in-pakistan-imran-khan-faces-a-challenge-fiercer-than-the-world-cup-1200640.html

In Pakistan, Imran Khan faces a challenge fiercer than the World Cup

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan often uses cricketing analogy in communicating. Referring to the police’s attempts to arrest him for failing to appear before a lower court, that then ordered his arrest, Khan averred, “They (his political opponents) want to get me out of the match so that they can win the elections.”

While in Punjab and Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, whose assemblies were dissolved by the ruling party there, Khan’s Tehreek-i-Insaaf, provincial elections have been announced for summer, national election are due in autumn, following the National Assembly completing its full term in August.

Not only are elections at stake, but – in case Khan wins – whether he would be around to regain his chair, whence he was ousted in a vote of no-confidence in April last year. By going after Khan, the ruling coalition hopes to have a like verdict as befell his predecessor Nawaz Sharif in the Panama Papers’ case in which Sharif was barred from holding office for life.

In the current crisis, Khan has held out at his Zaman Park residence in Lahore, with crowds of his supporters denying the police access. The face-off over two days resulted in some three score injured on both sides.

This is seemingly a steep price for Khan’s alleged misdemeanor – sale at a profit of mementos bought from the toshakhana at discounted rates that had been received by Khan when prime minister. However, another non-bailable warrant stems from threatening a woman judge and the police at an earlier rally.

Besides the ruling coalition of unlikely partners – the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and Pakistan Peoples’ Party – others hoping to take advantage of the opportunity of putting Khan away are the Pakistan Army and - per Khan - the United States (US).

Clearly, Khan has a more formidable array against him than he ever faced in his cricketing days.

Imran Khan is very likely to clutch at straws as he navigates the challenge. He has alluded to a foreign conspiracy in the US looking for a scapegoat for its Afghanistan debacle. Since Khan consistently stood against its presence and activities in the region, he makes for a plausible fall guy.

Even if the American denial is accepted, that the theory helps Khan tap into the reservoir of anti-American sentiment present has undoubted political utility.

As for the Pakistan Army, it has lost its uses for its ‘selected’ prime ministerial candidate. Having witnessed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s impromptu stop-over late 2015 at Sharif’s Raiwind farmhouse, the Army thought Sharif as getting too close to India.

The Army preferred a new prime minister in place to help reach out to India on Kashmir as part of the eponymous ‘Bajwa doctrine’, named for its originator, Pakistan’s Army Chief. In the event, they were sorely disappointed. India changed the very complexion of the situation in Kashmir by its bold step on Article 370.

Khan complicated the Army’s relations with US too. The Pakistan Army, faced with being dismissed from frontline state status after the US’ Afghanistan debacle, wanted to sidle back into good books.

The US has been substituting Pakistan with India as part of its China-centric pivot to the East. Pakistan has also to keep it mollified since Pakistan has emulated India in taking an equidistant stance on the Ukraine War. It also wishes to take advantage of US’ disappointment in India on India’s autonomous position on the War.

Pakistan is currently in negotiations with the International Monetary Fund on yet another bailout package. Since the US holds the purse strings, keeping it placated is priority.

Bye-election results of late last year show that elections cannot  be relied on to keep him from power. Other measures need thinking up such as making a mountain of a molehill in the toshakhana case or persisting with the case on threatening the woman judge, though Khan has apologized since.

That the police has blinked for now means only that the current crisis has passed, but more such crises lie between now and elections. 

That such crises can be defused shows Pakistani resilience, but if the Army steps in citing persisting political instability or if Khan of his deprived of an election win later, the loser is democracy.

  

 https://www.thebookreviewindia.org/stories-across-space-and-time-from-the-pen-of-an-indian-spymaster/

A LIFE IN THE SHADOWS: A MEMOIR by AS Dulat HarperCollins, Gurugram, 2023, 256 pp., ₹ 699.00

The book review india, MARCH 2023, VOLUME 47, NO 3

AS Dulat is reported to have put out, the book under review has been written without taking clearance from current-day intelligence minders. An earlier government order had it that those serving and retired from intelligence services were required to take such clearance prior to publishing anything related to their work. Dulat, former Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) head and Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer, has cocked a snook at the order with good reason. On the surface, there is nothing in the book that should see him fall afoul of powers-that-be. In other words, there is little upfront in the book for a reviewer to encourage readers to get a copy. The book however says much, if read between the lines.

A major point that the author puts across in his seemingly casual manner is that there is a hard-line operational in Kashmir and against Pakistan. This owes in part to a streak of ruthlessness in the personality of National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval. Dulat devotes the better part of a chapter to get us familiar with his ‘friend’ and former IB colleague, Doval. To Dulat, Doval is the ideally suited security manager for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who enjoys the reputation of a strong man publicized assiduously since his days in Gujarat and now as the Prime Minister taking ownership of surgical strikes.

But it is not only the personality factor responsible for the situation, but the frame is provided by the tussle between the two security paradigms: realism and liberalism. Though a liberal himself, he is realist enough to understands that force has a role to play in managing internal conflict. His liberal orientation however makes it obvious to him that dialogue is the answer in such circumstance.

As a Sikh, he was witness to how the Khalistani insurgency was tackled. There too the liberal-realist tussle played out in the contrasting approaches of policing heroes, Julio Ribeiro and KPS Gill. While Ribeiro’s was a people friendly approach, Gill was unapologetic about strong arm methods. To Dulat, even if effective, as was the case in Punjab, such rough and ready methods have an avoidable price in societal alienation.

He applies his finding to Kashmir and concludes that the policies of suppression operational there are counter-productive. He rues the inability or unwillingness of the State to resort to readily available political means such as reaching out to both the mainstream regional political parties. He believes even the Hurriyat is ripe for engagement, the security dragnet having suitably tamed its separatism. Pakistan has also sensibly kept its distance, warned off by India’s public lowering of its threshold for violent retaliation in surgical strikes.

Being witness to the hard-line is painful for Dulat, who has had a long professional association with the Kashmir issue. While he was the intelligence services’ pointsman for Kashmir for the initial decade and half of the insurgency, he developed a deep understanding of and affiliation with Kashmiris. That the Kashmiris have been facing the rough end of the Indian stick lately troubles him. The book thus serves a purpose of a reasoned and timely critique of Modi’s policies in Kashmir.

Dulat’s is a voice that can credibly do so. He was the intelligence hand in Kashmir at the outbreak of the insurgency. Later back in Delhi he headed the Kashmir desk, while Doval was in the field in Kashmir reporting to him. He became acquainted with Doval’s tough line back then, but reasons that so long as the cat caught mice, there was no quibbling over its colour. After the stint as head of the R&AW, he was absorbed into Vajpayee’s prime ministerial office as adviser on Kashmir. The episode of the Kandahar hijack is an evocative read, with Doval’s role recounted being particularly interesting since it shows how Doval reacts under pressure.

Vajpayee was a votary of a soft-line in Kashmir and in regard to Pakistan. Dulat has recounted his experience then in his other book, Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years, recorded on the dust cover of this book as a bestseller. Unfortunately, Dulat’s efforts at conflict resolution by bringing the Hurriyat onboard for talks with the Home Minister Advani could not be taken to culmination by the next government of Manmohan Singh.

While Singh carried forward the dialogue, it lost its way - as did India’s Pakistan rapprochement strategy - with 26/11 Mumbai terror attack writing the epitaph. Dulat nevertheless persisted in his peace-making efforts, this time at the Track II by participating in a conclave of intelligence chiefs of both sides. His interaction with Pakistani spy chief General Durrani is carried in his other ‘bestseller’, The Spy Chronicles.

The book reviewed here is in part Dulat’s latest effort in this noble, if thankless, cause. His chapter on Farooq Abdullah is advocacy for the government to use Abdullah’s good offices in steps out of the quagmire it has got India into in Kashmir with its wanton jettisoning of the Article 370 jugular that linked Kashmir to India. The book gives us insight as to why Dulat is indefatigably on this course, trying to end a protracted conflict.

The first chapter is about his family background, suggestive of an elite upbringing with old school values that have increasingly got out of place in New India. The book is in the form of a collection of vignettes from his eventful life, covering his association with President Giani Zail Singh and, as the spook in-charge of security of visiting dignitaries, with significant political personages of late last century, such as Margaret Thatcher and Lee Kuan Yew. Of interest to professionals and faculties in security studies would be his dilation on the ‘trade’, as the world of spooks is known, and his foreign stint in Nepal. Significant is Dulat’s revelation of how during his tenure as the IB head in Bhopal, that included the response to the gas tragedy, he was rudely reminded in a mob attack on a train he was embarked on during the anti-Sikh pogrom that he was ultimately, Sikh.

Though Dulat presents himself as a laid-back, cricket-playing chap who enjoys his drinks and conversation, he nevertheless comes across as a serious security practitioner. He deliberately eschews trying to impress his reader with any insider knowledge and highfalutin jargon. It’s almost as though he has exhausted his analytical thrust in his official missives.

The good that accrues is that the book then is an accessible one for students of security and peace studies. The bad part is that it appears there is much unsaid in the book in a self-censorship that relegates the book to a travel companion to be picked up at an airport bookstore. Even so, the book is a useful addition in parts to the books by diplomats – such as Satinder Lambah - that have contributed to the understanding of the intractable India-Pakistan conflict and to books by reputed journalists - as Anuradha Bhasin - on the Kashmir conflict.

 

 

 

 

 

 https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/the-learning-from-amshipora-military

The learning from Amshipora: Military leadership matters

Note: The story has moved on, though not covered in below post https://theprint.in/judiciary/amshipora-encounter-in-appeal-against-life-term-captain-says-he-obediently-followed-orders/1432276/

It is worth congratulating the army on its Court-martial consigning the perpetrator of the Amshipora killings to life imprisonment.

It is strange that the army needs to be complimented on following through on a be done-and-dusted case of an as egregious a human rights violation as it can ever get.

One would’ve thought that this oughtn’t to have happened to begin with in an ethically-imbued army. That it would do the right thing reflexively and a verdict as this would be routine.

Unfortunately, it is not quite this simple.

Firstly, the verdict took rather long to get to – short of three years - which is not in keeping with military mores on disciplinary action.

Secondly, it is uncertain that the vagaries of the justice will allow the verdict to playout to its logical conclusion. Recall how the army court-martial sabotaged the Pathribal case and how the armed forces tribunal - that had a former army vice chief on its rolls - let off the Machil killers.

In the Pathribal case, the army brazenly dismissed the case for lack of evidence, though consigned to their custody by no less than the Supreme Court on the army’s own choosing.

In the Machil case, the tribunal had it that those killed were dressed Pakistani-like and found near the Line of Control (LC), and – ergo - were terrorists. The former vice chief on its rolls evidently forgot that his presence was to ensure against such stupid inferences. Perhaps he interpreted his job to be to sweep the case under the carpet.

What is the honourable thing to do is now no longer cut-and-dried, even if it ever was.

In the Amshipora incident, the Rashtriya Rifles (RR) Sector Commander alighted on the incident with unseemly alacrity, claiming it to be a genuine encounter. It reveals that he was not quite in touch with his instruments. He may have been motivated by the confidential report syndrome that annually mid-year afflicts officers.

The chain of command was unamused when the police scratched the surface of the encounter story. Yet, the Victor Force Commander and the Chinar Corps Commander took a month to launch a formal inquiry.

Despite Amshipora on his watch, the Brigadier went on to earn a Yudh Seva Medal (YSM), implying his showing in overseeing other encounters had washed off the stain. His only loss was in missing out on the National Defence College course, that would have enabled him to get to three-star rank eventually. He may yet make it to two-star rank, his medal bailing him out.  

No evidence can ever be found of whether this largesse owed to his immediate superior also being from the same regiment.

Interestingly, since ‘Yudh’ translates as ‘War’, it is apparent that the insurgency in Kashmir was being viewed as late as Republic Day 2021 as a proxy war, presumably because in the encounters some Pakistani terrorists were also dispatched to Valhalla.

Once the LC ceasefire with Pakistan kicked in yet again, even awards for operations along the LC were in line with peace time awards, e.g. the Seva Medal series. Curiously, the Victor Force commander toting up the same statistics for his performance, received a peace time award; perhaps a bar to his YSM from his last command assignment fell short and an Uttam Yudh Seva Medal (UYSM) might have overshot. The same year, the UYSM received by the Corps Commander is easier to explain, given an active LC at the time.

That the lieutenant governor jumped into action, publicly condoling the victims’ families, shows the conspiracy was unbeknownst to the hierarchy. (It is another matter that the promises of jobs the politico made have not been kept three years on, though Hindu victims of killings by terrorists at a village nearby received such benefits the very next day. Even so, White Knight Corps, in whose area the village falls, should exert – if only as a public relations measure - with the administration to deliver on its promise.)

This means any suspicion that the false encounter had any hierarchical imprimatur can be laid to rest in this case, though vigilance on human rights protection is neither invalid nor illegitimate.  

To the Brigadier’s credit, when commanding an RR battalion earlier, he had earned a gallantry medal, with an accompanying purple heart testifying that this was not based on a well-written citation. It is not impossible that he was duped by the RR battalion under command.

It is a positive trait in a military leader that she invests trust in her command. On rare occasions, a junior might let down the faith reposed - as possibly was the case here - but that is no reason for not respecting  subordinates to do the right thing the right way. It allows juniors to rise to the occasion.

General JJ Singh in his autobiography recounts an incident in which as brigade commander in the Valley he faithfully transmitted operational information received from one of his battalions, only to find out later that he was misled, leading to an operational snafu. He then insisted that either he be removed, or the battalion commander replaced. 

It is easy to imagine that with the wrath of the hierarchy on him for the Amshipora murders, the RR unit commander’s career was likely sealed, though he too may have averred to be conned by Bhoopendra. Even if true, it is too proximate a level to have been taken for a ride by a subordinate.

Grapevine later had it that the offending battalion in the Amshipora case was later relocated into rigorous mountain terrain for reorienting itself on the ethical conduct of operations. That they merited collective action suggests that Bhoopendra might not have been acting in isolation.

Since the command hierarchy in Chinar Corps in position at the time had a reasonable professional reputation, the Amshipora false encounter was eminently preventable. Since it nevertheless did occur begs the question of what structural prevention should be in place hereon.

There is speculation aplenty on why the false encounter was engineered by Bhoopendra Singh, aka Major Basheer Khan, and his affiliates, a prominent one being that they were after the ‘goodies’: pelf in case of his Kashmiri informers and perhaps awards in case of Bhoopendra himself.

Be that as it may, the structural explanation here is that command tenures are so short that commanders are faced with a challenge in impressing their personalities and yardsticks on their commands.

In my last post, I highlighted the rather short command assignments owed to an elongated waiting list. Apparently, while a passable tenure at higher levels is taken as one and a half year, the duration these days of one-star to three-star command is just above a year long. By all accounts, this is too short.

Whereas the military tries pruning the list, dropping some names onto the ‘staff’ track and is contemplating collapsing the one and two-star command opportunities, with the onset of integrated battle groups, it is evidently a losing battle.

I proposed Specialism inform career paths. Spotting and collaring the Leadership and Operations Speciality must be done by the 16^th year of service.

The idea is with their battalion-equivalent command tenures done with by the 15^th year, those with demonstrated leadership abilities can be sifted for induction into the leadership track from across the army’s combat and combat support arms. Their staff assignments would be with operational content, billets proliferating lately from information operations to cyber.

Others not so selected could populate specialised streams to which they have self-selected – administrative or logistic - in the hierarchy of headquarters, while those from the services could continue down career paths geared to their expertise.

Assured progression on the leadership track must follow, so that the underside of military leaders simply not having time enough to grow into their ranks and measure up to the weight of epaulettes, is done away with.

Take for instance the Force Commander in question. He made one-star at about 2013 and in less than ten years demitted command of India’s show-window corps in Ladakh. In effect, he has transited three command tenures, interspersed with another three staff tenures, and -not to forget- the National Defence College course, implying he has not sat on any chair for more than a year and half. This would amount to ticket-punching in a circumstance the structure was not responsible for such musical chairs.

The Corps Commander in question went on to head the military operations branch, be Vice Chief and now made it to Army Commander level, all in a laughable time-span of less than two years.

On his part, the Brigadier was wounded as a battalion commander in 2010, and completed his one-star command in 2020, making for some 10 years in the rank of colonel. Whereas colonelcy is good preparation for higher ranks, a decade of it is long enough to turn even radical leaders into demure followers.

Though the military likes to deride bureaucrats, taking a leaf out of their book on cadre management is in order. They make joint secretary rank by the 15^th year and get to the top two rungs as a matter of course. This gives them policy making experience on-the-job, honing their core expertise.

Military leaders in contrast spend a quarter of their careers at the higher levels. Neither of the two courses they do in the duration can compensate for the interminable stay at the lower rungs.

If the idea is some form of perverse coup-proofing by the civilian side, then it is brilliant.

However, the responsibility for this is not at a civilian door, but the military’s own. It’s a self-inflicted career graph, in order the military is not led by Tigers but pedestrians in tiger stripes.

Its operational consequence was evident in the Amshipora.

The command hierarchy in Northern Command was unable to push back against the General Bipin Rawat-mediated Operation All Out. A brainchild of the Hindutva regime, it was a preliminary operation to remove into perpetuity any Kashmiri youth with the gumption to challenge what was impending: the evacuation of Article 370 of all meaning.

The pressures for ‘results’ in terms of ‘kills’ - comprehensively delegitimised by the body of evidence in the preceding Kashmir experience - upended ‘winning hearts and minds’, the cornerstone of the counter insurgency doctrine.

Kinetic means are to get a situation under control and are no substitute for political measures to end an insurgency. The violence indices simply didn’t justify the logic one Chinar Corps commander gave out: that all who take up the gun must be eliminated.

Not only did no general in the Northern Command have the gall and good sense to remind Bipin Rawat of the Army’s own doctrinal product, but bought into his 2018 Army Doctrine on hybrid war. The concept was borrowed from a United States’ training institution where Rawat underwent a course in the late 2000s, at a time when United States was in the midst of its twin Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires of its own making.

Instead, command tenures being short, commanders have to set off at the trot. Though at an operational cum strategic level, they have been conditioned through multiple tenures in the Valley to seeing only the operational level as their beat. The strategic level has been usurped by the Police, who may have at best heard bullets fired in panic.

There is no known input of the Army into Amit Shah’s Article 370 demolition act. It is possible it was not even asked; former military men appointed as advisers in national security corridors claiming to speak for it in support of the regime’s caper.

Another example is the stupefaction of the army in Ladakh. Covid cannot account for this. Take the case of the then commanding general in Leh. His colonelcy ended in April 2011 and he handed over the Ladakh command in September 2020, a timespan less than ten years.

Sure, Eisenhower had a lightning progress from colonel to four-star general. But that was war-time, warranting deep-selection, in his case by General George Marshall.

In the case closer home, the limited duration at the upper levels leads to an inability to be at home at the strategic level. No wonder the Chief of Defence Staff post was kept vacant for a year and there is no military adviser to Ajit Doval for now. This owes to a leadership development career profile that isn’t.

Merits of the proposal here for extended leadership opportunities over the last two score years is the only way. Career assurance will steel the backbone, while longer experience will ensure professional credibility at higher levels.

It would be easier to socialise a cohesive leadership. Yes, logically a cohesive apex cadre makes for a Prussian General Staff look-alike, with attendant subordination issues in a democratic polity.

But then a defanged officer corps – as now - makes for an easier civilian Constitutional coup, as can be seen unfolding in slo-mo and in plain sight.

 https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/specialism-getting-to-the-military

Specialism: Getting to the military’s future

The Indian Army’s Transformation, underway since late 2000s, is catching steam. Agnipath and Atmanirbharta are indicative. Rightsizing, retrieving from protracted deployment in Kashmir, the culmination of jointness in theaterisation and completion of pivot from the West to the North are impending. A measure to keep up the momentum is to induct Specialisation into officer corps repertoire.

Currently, a largely generalist profile prevails in the officer corps. Officers undergo a common, all-encompassing training enabling them to tenant staff appointments with divergent mandates. This has served the Army reasonably well, allowing exposure of officers to the whole gamut of functions – operations, administrative, logistics.

However, to complement the Transformation underway, such an officer profile cannot persist into the future. Specialisation is necessary for efficiency and mastering complex subsystems and processes, be these operations, intelligence, cyber, space, information operations, human resource and facility management, project management, procurement and acquisition, military international cooperation or supply chain management.

What might an upgraded career profile look like and how to get to it?

Specialism is key to the future. There are two aspects to this.

The first is creation of an army leadership. Second, is to have officers tenant appointments in specialised streams – operations, administrative, logistics.

Taking the latter first, officers while in regimental service can self-select to the specialisation they wish to identify with. A combination of vacancies available, self-selection and identification of aptitude, signed off on in confidential reports, can lead to placement in a staff vertical.

At the Junior Command (JC) course level of seniority, the JC tactical content needs being supplemented with an elective – operations (joint operations, intelligence, information operations, cyber, space), administrative (human resource or facility management) and logistics (supply chain and associated verticals) – that is either on site at War College or outsourced to a lead training institution.

The College of Defence Management, Army War College and the Military Intelligence School are already running short courses. The prototype needs firming in, with officers of a suitable talent being trained, with surety that each would be employed subsequently in appointments which the training prepares her for.

Now for the first Specialism.

After regiment command tenures, the higher command level is at which the army leadership of the future should be culled for preparation for the future. A meritocratic exercise, the catchment must include all combat arms and support arms. This does away with the controversial pro-rata aspect that attends promotions till two-star level.

The command appointments must be tenanted by those so selected and progressively trained at the Higher Command course for the operational and strategic levels and at the National Defence College for the strategic and grand strategic levels.

Progression in the command hierarchy should be assured to these officers. This will end any need to look-over-the-shoulder and lend them confidence to look beyond the next confidential report. Their staff appointments must mainly be in the operations vertical, with mandatory appointments in a joint headquarters necessary for career advancement to higher levels.

For a younger leadership, longer tenures in command of formations and a longer service at senior levels, the sifting must be in immediate aftermath of command tenures, followed straight away by the Higher Command course.

Induction into the leadership cum operations stream must be done by the 16th year of service, allowing for another 20 years service for making full and best use of such officers.

Other officers would be vertically mobile through respective arms and service command hierarchy, with alternation in the staff vertical originally placed in.

Theaterisation is expected to reduce numbers of command headquarters. The integrated battle group (IBG) roll out would see a delayering in formations, with divisions being axed in favour of corps controlled brigade sized bricks of IBGs. A delayering can be done with the Area, Sub Area and Station hierarchy of headquarters.

Officer numbers can accordingly be pruned by encouraging an up or out system, with surplus officers choosing to leave at pensionable years of service with due preparation for the civil street as of now.

Just as the Agnipath scheme has been affected for lower ranks, a reversion to the original intent of short service commission officer cadre should be done, with officers of this stream leaving at five years and ten years as chosen by them and only a limited proportion, duly vetted staying on.

As of now there is no discernible debate on the direction of the officer cadre, though it will not only be affected by the Transformation underway, but will be driving it.

Some hard truths necessitating change need to be faced squarely.

The officer corps is bloated. The argument in the reverse direction that the vacancies exist that need being filled is status quoist. Instead, ridding those vacancies is the need of the hour, such as by amalgamating and delayering headquarters in keeping with information technology increasing spans of control.

The hegemony of the bloated arms of higher ranks needs being broken. Rightly reckoned as Mandalisation, it is not sustainable as the earlier legitimising logic of counter-insurgency participation and deployments meriting higher pro rata apportioning for the advantaged arms is no longer valid.

Since large numbers of officers are inducted, quality control at the inception has been sacrificed. There is no way mentoring in regiments can polish the material taken in. The impending downsizing of the Army will help reduce numbers.

Let the Border Police substitute the military in border guarding. An over enthusiasm in the Northern Command and Eastern Command to have operational control over border guarding function and continuing army deployments needs revision.

Moving from a war readiness military with a deterrence by denial doctrine to being a war deterrent military with a deterrence by punishment doctrine facilitates the proposed measure.

Training and employment have to be synced. Adhocism in the Military Secretary’s branch will only then be reined in.

Tenures in some appointments such as the budget or acquisitions related could be extended to five years. End colonial era designations, viz. DAA&QMGXYZ, for the U series to designate verticals.

The higher ranks are depleting in credibility. The duration at colonel’s rank is currently a life sentence. The musical chairs in command assignments thereafter is almost comical. Take the four changeovers already in India’s most significant theatre, Fire and Fury Corps in Ladakh, since the crisis outbreak.

Due diligence must attend the officer corps reset for the twenty first century, even if already a quarter century late. Its not impossible that there is thought to such like measures already in the system, and will be foisted on the Army and country in due course, as yet another Modi masterstroke we can do without.