Inadvertent revelations on how Kashmir messed up the army

Book Review: KGAKGG

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The dust jacket of Kitne Ghazi Aaye Kitne Ghazi Gaye by ‘god’s favourite child’, ‘The KJS Dhillon’, carries the blurb ‘National Bestseller’. Presumably, it touched a chord in its intended audience: ‘young boys and girls aspiring to be part of the Indian Army family…to motivate these young people…to unleash the warrior within themselves…’.

My interest was in a passage that caught my eye as I browsed through it at a bookshop. The anecdote is of my father, then corps commander Chinar Corps - depicted as a ‘strict disciplinarian’ but remaining unnamed in the book - chancing upon a young second lieutenant on the sidelines of a night operation in the Valley. Instead of chewing him out for some minor administrative infraction he’d spotted, father’s motorcade drove off, much to the relief young officer.

That the author includes the incident in his autobiography, though its neither significant nor has him as protagonist, caught my eye. I wanted a closer look at what the author has to say about a strange incident in Kashmir in the period, Kunan Poshpora. His unit finds mention in narratives critical of the army’s showing in Kashmir back then. But, curiously, there is nary a reference to the incident in the book.

Perhaps the book’s scope as a motivational tract for youngsters lead to its excision, though this risks observations that the author infantalises the youth of today. This may more likely owe to the author being posted out by the time of its alleged occurrence. He didn’t get back to that unit later, since, as with many officers of his generation, he went on to the Rashtriya Rifles (twice it would seem from the non-chronological memoir) and command of another regimental unit in Kashmir.

Since the author prides his six tenures in Kashmir totaling some 12 years of service life, that is a yardstick to measure the book by. Many officers, particularly of infantry, have had multiple tenures in Jammu and Kashmir, making them part of the army’s Kashmir cadre or honorary Kashmiris, as the author jocularly brings out. To the army’s Kashmir engagement can be attributed some of the anomalies, if not quite pathologies, that have come to be associated with the service.

If anyone’s looking for a sophisticated understanding of the Kashmir problem, it would only be fair to expect to find it within the covers of the book. His claim to fame dates to his tenure at the helm of Chinar Corps when the Pulwama incident took place and the clampdown to keep Kashmir from boiling over on the vacation of content of Article 370. And yet, given his creditable academic record at National Defence Academy, where he passed out with a 6.8 grade point average, it is hard to believe that his take on the problem is so limited, unable to tread beyond the official narrative.

There could be two complementary explanations.

One is that the higher military leadership forged in the Kashmir cauldron was of a typical kind. While not all resorted to ticket punching, the army leadership’s immersion in counter insurgency was of such an order that not all its members were able to transit intellectually to the demands at higher operational and strategic levels. At the higher levels, a capability for critical thinking is a must.

It’s possible to infer that the incestuous nature of the army’s Kashmir engagement was all-consuming, hobbling critical faculties of those on the upward career curve. Though the Kashmir cauldron has thrown up credible military leaders (Nanavatty, Panag, Menon, Hooda readily come to mind), there is also a set that has prospered under right wing regime(s) - remaining unnamed here as their self-confession makes them rather well-known.

The author was picked as the perspective planning head, when General Rawat - who superseded two seniors of the mechanized forces on account of his supposed Kashmir expertise - was Chief. He informs of Rawat asking him at the end of one of their sittings together if he’d take over Chinar Corps. Clearly, Rawat knew ‘Tiny’ Dhillon’s 6’4” frame fit the bill for a fast-tracked promotion. To say the least, Rawat’s statements on Kashmir were always shocking. We know a Chief’s speeches are drafted in Perspective Plans – headed by Dhillon then in his fourth tenure in that branch.

Rawat wanting someone to take forward the ‘take no prisoners’ Operation All Out, which since the Burhan Wani phase, had consumed some 600 Kashmiri youth and foreign terrorists, appropriately alighted on Dhillon. (One militant, Adil Hussain Dar, whose gun jammed, was taken alive in the period.) Chuffed up, the author goes on to boast of a 100 killed in the first five months of 2019, including the Pulwama mastermind ‘Ghazi’ within a 100-hours. His illegitimate and illegal warning was, ‘You pick up the gun, you are dead.’ Of those killed, 75 per cent were callow Kashmiri youth. To his credit per his unverifiable claim, he brought over 50 young boys from the militancy.

Even so, it is retrospectively clear that the scene was being set for the evacuation of Article 370 by killing those who might create a ruckus. Quietude in wake of Amit Shah’s 5 August histrionics in Lok Sabha owes much to such setting of the stage, not to mention Ajit Doval’s camping over in Kashmir for a fortnight to control the paramilitary pumped in, lest another Bijbehara occur.

That the general was party to a hoax on the nation is clear from his bit of perception management on national television that an improvised explosive device had been found on the Amarnath Yatra route. That lending of the authority of his uniform to the excuse for the regime’s year-long crackdown across Kashmir, albeit prolonged by the Covid outbreak, is the author’s ticket to infamy.  

It’s no wonder then that he, fixated as he was with Kashmir, missed the wood for the trees as the Chinese marched up to their claim line in Ladakh. As Chief of Defence Intelligence Agency he ought to have read the tea leaves, since input had been received of Chinese headed onto Tibet during their winter exercise. This is yet another elision - proving the baleful effect of the army’s Kashmir obsession that cost the nation 20 Galwan brave-hearts.

The monotonous regurgitation of the official narrative in the book, right from the inception of the problem in Kashmir to how the autonomous state was defenestrated, can also have an alternative explanation. The second one gains plausibility from the author in the acknowledgements informing of encouragement to record his memoirs from a former major and star of the right-wing lapdog media, Gaurav Arya.

This suspicion is reinforced by the ingratiating account of the author’s meeting with Amit Shah, the all-powerful home minister, during his visit to Kashmir when Shah was contemplating voiding Article 370. Dhillon egregiously recalls opining to his wife on return from a one-on-one working breakfast meet: ‘Bees yuvraj mil kar bhi iss bande ka mukabla nahin kar sakte.’ What can be more sickeningly cloying than that?

For his pains, he has so far only been rewarded with the chairmanship of the board of governors of Mandi Indian Institute of Technology, the director of which - on Dhillon’s watch - has been the butt of memes. But then, the market is rather full with generals – and sister service equivalents – falling over each other to attract the attention of India’s ruling duo – national interest and institutional integrity be damned. Though subtitled My Life Story, expect a sequel.  

 

 

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Disengagement to de-escalation

Military lessons-learnt alone won’t do

ali

Nov 30, 2024

https://kashmirtimes.com/disengagement-to-de-escalation-in-ladakh/ Disengagement to de-escalation Military lessons-learnt alone won’t do Kashmir Times, 2 Dec 24https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/disengagement-to-de-escalation

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An early bird, the best National Security Adviser India never had, General Hooda, lists four military lessons from the recent step back in Ladakh: one, get intelligence analysis right; two, get contingency planning in place; three, get a realistic fix on relative capabilities; and, four, ‘rebuild’ deterrence against Chinese military coercion by communicating that redlines will be met by a ‘decisive and visible’ response.

Cumulatively, these steps could presumably defuse into the future the four possible explanations of the Chinese intent behind the provocation in Ladakh: one, to snap back against Indian infrastructure developments; two, to gain territorial control; three, to broadcast regional dominance; and, four, to influence India’s strategic relationships.

Here I undertake a reality check on Hooda’s unimpeachable case for a rebuilding of deterrence.

The four lessons reconsidered

The first on the (wish)list is sound intelligence analysis. As with the Kargil intelligence debacle, information did trickle in but did not inspire a scramble. However, this time round no intelligence review has been done. Sans any effort at accountability, even if a better look onto the Tibetan plateau and beyond - with a leg-up by a strategic partner - strategic intelligence will likely continue to be hobbled. Operational level intelligence - necessary to trigger preemptive or responsive action - will therefore unlikely be spurred.

Contingency plans are likely in hand, given additional troops and information periodically put out on exercises. The problem however is not with readiness as much as resolve.

Surely, Fire and Fury corps, as it was configured pre-Galwan, had the wherewithal to spring a counter grab action. The same could have been conducted anywhere else along the eastern front (then under the current Chief of Defence Staff). Covid outbreak is but a fig leaf, since Ladakh was in any way winter cut-off and had is integral resources in place.

So, it’s not so much capability, but delegation that is a problem.

The problem will likely remain. General Naravane’s recall of the hotspot atop Kailash range is a case to point. Extracts from his memoirs – since held up in the works – have him reaching for the defence minister, when the Chinese reactively clambered uphill from their side. Apparently, the answer he received was ‘jo ucchit samjhe, karo’ (‘do as your wont’).

Clearly, preparedness can incentivize action only up to a point. Will to shoulder the consequence and unintended consequences must be demonstrated by matching delegative power with redlines.

Hooda’s third lesson carries two examples of the Indian perception of Chinese capability. Apparently, pre-Galwan, there was a belief in an Indian advantage in the air and adeptness in mountain warfare. The two should have instigated a vigourous response to Chinese provocation. In effect, the assumptions turned out as vapid as General Ayub Khan’s pre-1965 views of the Indian military.

Now that Chinese have caught up on both counts, and are amply ahead on parameters as infrastructure, advantaged as they are by terrain, and technology – if Pravin Sawhney is to be believed - India is left without comforting assumptions. When it couldn’t take the cue of wishful assumptions, why will a better fix on relative capability today spur action?

On to General Hooda’s fourth ask: ‘a successful deterrence strategy rests on three critical pillars, often called ‘3C’s - capability, communication and credibility.’ Credibility is based on resolve. Resolve is but synchronized military capability and political will.

That the counter in 2020 - though a great logistic feat - was operationally reactive, shows that though adequately poised (it had a decade of military buildup in Ladakh behind it and a nationalist government into its second term), India was not able to deliver a credible counter. Neither parameter – military capability and political will – having changed relatively since, how can deterrence find itself ‘rebuilt’?

Deterrence of what?

Deterrence is to prevent harm on oneself by creating the perception that the action will prove futile or will invite like or disproportionate hurt on the perpetrator. For now, self-evident is India’s potential for deterrence by denial.

Having achieved its objective of having India respect its territorial claims through springing the crisis and the gambit of interminable talks, China is satiated territorially. Since it has no further territorial intent in Ladakh, a capability for deterrence by denial has only a limited benefit, restricted to preserving an ability to protect existing infrastructure, and that yet to come up if not effected by unrevealed compromises at the parlays.

Contrarily, India needs a capability for deterrence by punishment, a better heft on tackling the other three explanations of the crisis and likely to persist into the future.

India has exerted a capability for deterrence by punishment - or ability to up the military ante - to bring home to the Chinese that disengagement is in the interest of both states. Its showing on Kailash range amounted to this.

It may yet need to show military muscle to influence talks to go beyond their current enabling of patrolling access at merely two of the friction points. There are three other friction points where buffer zones have to be rolled back to open up patrolling points.

A deterrence by punishment capability serves to deter Chinese adventurism in search of regional dominance. With 17 Corps coming into its own, and the Uttar Bharat Area being converting to an operational corps, and incipient steps to theaterisation in the works, China must be wary. At the cusp of super-powerdom it would unlikely wish to be defrocked.

The third explanation is regards Chinese messaging India against too close a relationship with the United States. The latter might be more pronounced as the Trump Presidency kicks in, wherein, to cosy up to the Russians, he is liable to be more assertive with the Chinese. Given India’s past propensity (‘Ab ki baar, Trump Sarkar’, ‘Namaste Trump’), it is liable to fall in line, with a need for external balancing as cover. This would necessitate preparedness at a higher notch.

By this yardstick, the step after disengagement - de-escalation – must only be selective and partial. The ‘new normal’ must see India’s capability for deterrence by punishment in place, with its contingencies well practiced. Even so, a military doing its bit is never enough.

Realistic?

The problem with intelligence setup is set to remain. The military can expect to be let down with a recurring lack in strategic intelligence. Recall how the hype around two rounds of personalized diplomacy – Wuhan and Chennai – failed miserably to pick up signals of Chinese reneging. With the same narrative employed yet again before Kazan, the intelligence subsystem of national security will likely fall in step with the political narrative, stemming ostensibly from need for an economic reopening to the Chinese behemoth.

The larger problem is with political reluctance in reconciling with playing second string in global affairs. It does not go well with the ideological beliefs of the regime in place and its domestic posturing. Yet, it cannot afford being upended, like was Nehru, during its national majoritarian project. Consequently, it would unlikely countenance a military distraction, whatever the cost in national interest. It follows that expecting delegative authority for activating contingency responses is mite too much. Expect instead dilution in deterrence by appeasement: much fury, no fire.

 Martyrdom in Bafliaz 20 years ago……. and now - Kashmir Times: Oldest English NewsPaper Jammu, Leading Newspaper Jammu Kashmir, Latest News about Jammu & Kashmir

Martyrdom in the Sauni Cauldron

Amit Sharma was always the life of the party. His sense of timing was so perfect that any gathering in the officers’ mess was continually in splits. Such gatherings much needed his tonic since the days battling terrorists in the Bafliaz bowl in Surankote were grim.

When on the tracks of terrorists Amit was to the fore. Even if not nominated as the lead, he’d nevertheless be present in the radio conversation on what to do and what to avoid doing when trapping the quarry, the terrorist in his den in the Behramgala-Poshana belt.

His nature to step up and deliver as the occasion demanded led to his leading his team into a gun fight at exactly the same set of hair-pin bends at which the terrorists struck only late last week. This was exactly 20 years back.

I was leading an operation in which Amit was participating. We were to clean up Chamrer bowl, immediately to the west of the Sauni jungles through which passes the ill-fated Dera ki Gali-Bafliaz road.

As we trudged up through the pines, my team was ambushed. We barely made it out of the killing ground, but in the process lost touch with the rest. The commanding officer – coincidentally also named Amit - rushed up from the base, while Amit held fort.

Even as the terrorists made a dash out of the cordon thrown together in quick time by the two Amits, who in fleeing downed one from the CO’s party, Amit was hot on their trail. Little did he realise that the terrorists had left a stay-behind man in their wake. This terrorist accounted for Amit’s scouts before Amit leveled him. Amit was awarded a posthumous Sena Medal.

When twenty years later another set of good men die at the very same spot in the Sauni jungles, it is worth asking if the sacrifice of the five of 12 March 2004, including that of Amit, was at all worth it.

By when Amit departed, the ceasefire had come into play along the Line of Control and Vajpayee had signed on the Islamabad Declaration with Musharraf, that had potential to reset India-Pakistan adversarial relations.

Some have it that had Vajpayee stayed on, then he’d have seen his Lahore initiative to its logical conclusion. This counter factual ignores that his next try at rapprochement, the Agra initiative, was spiked by Advani, who’d have taken charge if India was indeed ‘shining’ back then.   

Manmohan Singh, who took charge, flattered to please. He was more fixated in fixing relations with the United States, even staking his government’s fate in parliament on it, rather than mending fences with neighbours. He got a perfect excuse in the Mumbai terror attack to stall on the composite dialogue, making a typically hesitant outreach in his lame duck second term.

To be fair, he was outflanked by the right-wing that had by then gained a messiah, provincial stalwart Narendra Modi. The manufacture of the Hindu Hriday Samrat was a campaign with intelligence fingerprints all over it, having as it did both propaganda by deed (black operations passed off as terrorism to implicate Muslims) and propaganda plain and simple (that Hinduism needs saving by its messiah) as its thrust lines.

Coming in with a strong-man image – especially one when contrasted with the much-maligned Manmohan Singh – Modi fell victim to his own propaganda. Believing that he had Pakistan suitably over-whelmed by his own image, he invited Nawaz Sharif over for his swearing in – quite as having satraps over at a crowning.

This - a second opportunity – was stymied soon enough over an insignificant invite to tea at the Pakistan high commission of Kashmiri separatists. Hoping to revive the opportunity, Modi over-extended his embrace of Sharif by turning up at the latter’s doorstep. The Pakistani establishment lost no time in showing Sharif – compromised by the visit - the door.

A third opportunity was after the Chinese came knocking in Ladakh, triggered by Amit Shah’s taunt in parliament that he’d wrest Aksai Chin back, as he would Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. India hastily revived the ceasefire on the Line of Control. The ceasefire had fallen to bad days after spells of shelling across it had started in earnest after Modi took over, it being a safe place to show off his 56” chest. 

Two raids had taken place across it, one by land and one aerial, both boosted to ‘surgical strike’ status by supplicant strategists and a pliant media. Fictional results were ascribed to both, allowing Narendra Modi to inveigle his way into the imagination of nationalism-deluded India for a second time.

With the Chinese dragon posturing on the Line of Actual Control, it made sense to have the other front -against Pakistan - dormant. This enabled India to switch forces over to the China border, including from the Pir Panjal, from which one Rashtriya Rifles division-equivalent Force rushed up to high altitude.

Not having read Naravane’s forthcoming book one does not know if he bought into the line that the voiding of Article 370 had somehow solved the Kashmir issue; thereby enabling the thinning out along the mountain fastnesses. Clearly, Amit Shah’s rationale of his action - ending terror and separatism – is yet another big lie of the Modi regime.  

The reiteration of the ceasefire bought India time, with Pakistan – itself plumbing economic and political depths – playing along, pretending to believe Indian promises on elections in and a revert to statehood of Kashmir.

Logically, India could have used the asymmetry to buy off Pakistan with hollow and false promises. But the regime that believes Pakistan is but a push away from failed state status and India itself is but one step from super-powerdom hasn’t been able to follow through on the promise of the ‘secret’ talks between the national security establishments of the two sides.    

Though seemingly master of all he surveys, Modi thinks he still needs the prop of Muslim bashing to keep his flock together.  Kashmir, Pakistan and India’s Muslims – in one breath – are therefore to be kept alive for use to extend his stay in power and the sway of right-wing ideology.

It can only come at a price well-regarded by now as a price paid by India’s institutions, including  the Army.

In a forested tract which we in our time there only traversed on foot, these days the army has been driving past hair-pin bends, though they’ve lost five each at precisely the same location twice over: not only 20 years back but also merely two years ago. But that is a benign symptom, amenable to tactical broth.

Not so the allegation – if true – that subsequent to the latest ambush, the army picked up some civilians and tortured three to death. While ostensibly victims of an over enthusiastic bid to extract information on terrorist movements, impunity in Modi’s India being such (recall the Amshipora murderer officer, the Machil and Pathribal false encounter perpetrators being let off) it could well be a reprisal. The memory of the deceased soldiers on the Dera ki Gali-Bafliaz stretch has been defiled by the army nursing cowards in its ranks.

It’s the price the military is paying for being complicit in extending Modi’s tenure in power, by inflating his image reliant on arguably false claims of military feats (giving China a bloody nose at Doklam and Ladakh), by succumbing to institutional defenestration (Agnipath) and parroting regime (the Naval chief’s words at Navy Day). Evidently, Amit Sharma’s sacrifice has been in vain.

Well after Amit attained martyrdom, the course get-together of the sixth course of the Joint Services Wing (present-day National Defence Academy) witnessed two retired veterans exchanging notes. My father attending the event learnt a course-mate had lost a son, Amit Sharma.

The least the surviving son, I, can do for the memory of the one who didn’t, Amit, is to shout out loud that the situation that allows for continuing hemorrhaging of good men must be stanched.

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 https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/expanding-indias-peacekeeping-footprint

Expanding India's peacekeeping footprint

Peacekeeping is not the primary job of a military, but only the military can do it. It is no wonder peacekeeping is yet another feather in the Indian military’s beret. In the Army’s holding high the flag, it has contributed to the image of India, for long a leading Troop Contributing Country (TCC).

However, in light of India being a Rising Power, is there a case for upping its participation in the UN’s peacekeeping agenda, particularly in light of a ‘New Agenda for Peace’? What might be the contours of such a step up on India’s part?

Here I take up two ideas on how India can up its act. The first is through leveraging its forte, military professionalism, with a turn to ‘robust peacekeeping’ without the usual caveats. Second is in imagining peace interventions for crafting of innovative UN politico-military action, exercising India’s military forte.

Peacekeeping today

Today, UN peacekeeping is at a plateau. Military-strategic developments stemming from the global geopolitical flux have naturally impacted UN peacekeeping. For its part, the UN has responded with a shift towards a ‘political first’ conflict resolution strategy. The place of UN peacekeeping in conflict resolution is supportive and enabling.

The stand-off in the UN Security Council has led to no peacekeeping missions being authorized lately, while peacekeeping missions underway are facing calls for drawdown and exit. The Council appears to be leaning on Special Political Missions, under the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, for mediated solutions, rather than relying on boots on ground overseen by the Department of Peace Operations.

This is a departure from the post-Cold War practice in which a multidimensional peacekeeping arrangement, with an intrinsic military component, was usually inserted into conflict zones. The reduced scope for peacekeeping deployment opens possibilities of thinking on how to make peacekeepers pertinent in the extant milieu.

Peacekeeping can be visualized as a triangle with its three vertices depicting respectively peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding. Peacekeeping deployment was to provide a modicum of stability on the ground for early peacebuilding to progress, even as a negotiated agreement is arrived at through peacemaking initiatives. The assumption is that peacekeeper presence would instill confidence in the conflict parties on the peacemaking table, while enabling the international community fulfill an obligation of protection of civilians (POC) through provisioning security and early recovery.

This is a necessarily time-consuming approach. It exposes the peacekeeping operation to vagaries of the ground situation, including resumption of violence and tenacity of spoilers. Besides endangering personnel security, the mission mandate of POC gets impacted.

Robust Peacekeeping has been visualized as answer. This involves the UN military component in applying military force below the strategic consent threshold. Even so, there is a reasonable reluctance among some TCCs to take up ‘stabilization’ and extension of state authority tasks that involve ‘robust peacekeeping’ or the taming of armed groups through application of military force. On their part, TCCs have been skeptical of the political heft behind peacemaking, wanting more to be done politically so that the military is left only with deterring spoilers rather than taking them out militarily.

Fluid security situations have led to the external military forces, from the regional bloc or from their strategic partners, being inducted into mission areas. For instance, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the UN stabilization mission there turned to a Force Intervention Brigade in the 2010s and, lately, to a regional force of the East African Community. Likewise in the UN mission in South Sudan, a regional intervention force was envisaged in the revitalized peace agreement to support the return of peace.

Capable of offensive action, these forces are to whittle recalcitrant armed groups. Their action sometimes increases threat to deployed peacekeepers, with the violent actors unable to make out a distinction between the UN and the supportive forces. For instance, in Mali, successive French military operations, Operations Serval and Berkhane, till recently, operated along-side the Mission there; inadvertently increasing the risk to the deployed peacekeepers, making the Mali mission tote up the highest casualty figures.

The UN has responded with a heightened thrust on force protection by implementing recommendations in the report of General Santos Cruz, and shifting to the hitherto-taboo topic of operationalisation of the intelligence cycle. Not only are Mission Headquarters more dynamic but leaders better selected and trained. Missions have energized information analysis and sharing. Contingent equipping and training are priority.

Such improvements can potentially engender a greater ability and willingness to take on a combat role on part of peacekeepers – when warranted and in line with mission mandate. Reservations on robust peacekeeping could – and should - be selectively and progressively shed.

A turn to robust peacekeeping

India could consider a taking to robust peacekeeping with a greater sense of ownership. It would strengthen the UN’s hand in stabilization tasks. This is not advocacy of default use of force, as much as a configuration of force and willingness to use force. While such posture serves to deter, resort to military force must remain the last resort.

An ability to negotiate with the conflict parties and recalcitrant armed groups at the tactical level must be intrinsic with such a force. While the mission’s political and civil affairs resources are available, contingents must also have an ability to negotiate its way through hotspots. This presupposes knowledge of the human terrain and a felicity with the local language. Contingents would require to be duly equipped in requisite soft skills, for which specialized training could be imparted prior.

From their counter insurgency spells of duty, Indian military contingents are familiar with conflict environments and are well-versed in fraternization and community interaction. Indian contingents are in a position materially and morally to take to combat, though after due exercise of outreach that prevents such resort in first place. Needless to add, proportionality and discrimination must inform all military action. This is of a piece with the contribution of the Indian brigade in DRC, where it has resorted to tactical level action against rebels, including through heliborne operations.

Since robust action potentially puts troops in harm’s way, India must lobby for staff representation in the intelligence and operations branches of Force Headquarters, besides a fair share of leadership positions. Its battalion groups must have a balance of enablers, as Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance subunits, such as drones, besides potent firepower assets as attack helicopters. Alongside, it must have language and culture specialists, enrolled through the Short Service commission and Agnipath scheme.

Innovating Preventive Deployment

As behooves an aspirant member of the Security Council, India must contribute ideationally to expand the scope of UN’s relevance in the emerging world. It could do this by backing opportunities for showcasing its military prowess in the interests of the international community. For now, India’s bilateral and multilateral participation in military exercises with strategic partners and regional organisations is commendable. It must enlarge this to increasing the ambit of peacekeeping in terms of preventive deployment.

The UN has been emphasizing conflict prevention for decades now. Conflict prevention-related peacemaking – preventive diplomacy - could use the muscle of preventive deployment to enhance its efficacy prior to, at the cusp of and on the outbreak of conflict.

India could place such capability at the disposal of the UN, either stand-alone or jointly with like-minded member states. Hypothetical illustrations of the scope of the innovation are in order.

Take, for instance, the circumstance that obtained a decade ago, when Gaddafi’s forces were threatening genocide in Benghazi. The standoff led to intervention of the Western powers, and the rest is history. If a UN member state had made standby forces available for speedy deployment at Benghazi in a preventive mode, history might have been different. India was then at the horse-shoe table and could have inserted the option in Security Council deliberations directly, timely.

Take the circumstance preceding the Ukraine War. It was known for almost a month prior that the war would likely break out after the Winter Olympics. If a set of member states close to both sides were to have proactively offere a preventive deployment force, it is plausible that the Russo-Ukraine War could have been prevented. This could also have also been made available at a later juncture when the two sides proceeded with a few rounds of talks in the early period of the conflict. India was yet again in the Security Council during the period, allowing it a greater voice, enough to drum up a coalition of like-minded countries for a preventive deployment.

Another counter-factual illustration may help sell the possibilities and potential of preventive deployment. The period preceding the departure of the United States (US)-led West from Afghanistan witnessed protracted negotiations at Doha with the Taliban. Post-conflict stability through insertion of a preventive deployment force under aegis of a regional organisation, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, with the blessing of the Council, could have been thought through alongside. In the event, the UN special envoy, present at the side-lines of the talks was left with little to do.

India’s out-of-region capability is visible in its evacuation of citizens from foreign shores, such as from Ukraine and most recently from Sudan. This implies that it has the reach for also inserting troops with like alacrity. Its contribution to the UN Standby Arrangements System can be dusted up to facilitate such deployment on a short fuse.

Having the capability is not enough. There must be a willingness to offer it through diplomatic mobilization at the Security Council. Admittedly, India has a foreign policy that respects sovereignty of states and is mindful against external interference in internal affairs of states. Some conflict scenarios, that otherwise lend themselves to preventive deployment, can plausibly be viewed as internal matters. India is rightly wary of breaching the principle of non-interference. A case to point is its non-participation in the UN-African Union’s hybrid mission in Darfur.

However, it is evident that what begins in the domestic sphere often speedily spills over - and exponentially at that. India’s acceptability across a wide spectrum of the international community as a fair broker allows for a step-up to a larger role. Shibboleths should not hold India back. It must act the part of Voice of the Global South.

It cannot continue being counted as merely another prominent TCC, a club that also has Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh. To break-out, India has to offer a capability for the UN that places it in a footing of its own and appropriate to its changed stature as an ‘emerged power’.

India must obviously retain a modicum of control over such deployment of its troops, for which a special envoy could be nominated for interfacing with the conflict parties, the mission and the regional stakeholders. A more active embassy, with additional staffing in such conflict zones, will help the ministry monitor and align the political prong of UN strategy with the military prong. The appointment of a permanent defence attaché at the Permanent Mission of India in New York needs being done, as also one to the African Union.  

Conclusion

The ongoing geopolitical stand-off threatens to relegate the UN system. The UN is the most significant and legitimate multilateral forum. The UN’s continued efficacy is in the Indian national interest. A member state as India that aspires to a global role, needs to step up to such a role. It will not be conferred on it by any strategic partner. Toting up the backing of the P5 for having India as an equal partner is not enough.

Imagination precedes innovation. Indian diplomacy that emphasizes multilateralism could use innovative ideas. The greater integration in the higher national security structure and higher defence management over past two decades allows for felicity in using the tools available – diplomacy and military.

Active participation in peacemaking, including conflict prevention, is necessary. This has largely been monopoly of the usual penholders in the Council and their First World allies. Offering a preventive deployment capability to the UN would enhance India’s profile, strengthening its peacemaking presence.

Additionally, peacebuilding could also see greater Indian financial contribution. Indian-origin International Non-Governmental Organisations should become a more visible and sought-after presence in conflict zones. The scope of bilateral developmental assistance and lines of credit could be expanded by a distinctive Indian aid agency, with working hands from an Indian ‘peace corps’ equivalent organisation.

India must bring innovative ideas to the table and a capability to back these up. Peacekeeping forte is not enough. Breaking out of the box requires participation in doctrine evolution and proactive partnering in peacemaking and peacebuilding. Though there is no call for India to be the global policeman, assisting the populace caught up in conflicts is eminently in the spirit of the slogan: ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’. With international politics heading towards a deadlock, India must spot an opportunity for itself in the refurbishment of multilateralism, enabling the UN to reemerge as the principal forum.