The terrorist attack at the army camp at Mahura in Uri Sector of J&K on 5th December resulted in the martyrdom of at least eight army personnel and three police personnel including one Lt Col of the army. All six terrorists were killed. This was one in series of other terrorist attacks in J&K same day, ostensibly in the run up to the second phase of elections scheduled on 9th December and as prelude to the next visit of PM Modi to J&K.
The attacks gave a breather to sagging morale Hurriyat’s Geelaini who was apprehending his doles being cut off by the ISI because his bandh (shutdown) calls during elections were ineffective.
This was hardly the first attack on an army camp. Among the much precedence, there have been two such attacks on the army garrison at Kaluchak that also housed families of service personnel. Then there was the one at Tanda where a Brigadier was killed and the Northern Army Commander on a visit at the time of the attack escaped by the skin of his teeth. The last major one was at Samba where the terrorist wearing black overalls akin to the personnel in the targeted camp, entered the army camp and killed a Colonel rank officer besides others.
In the present instance, the terror attacks were timed coinciding with the rabid mullah Hafiz Saeed holding a massive anti-India JuD rally at Lahore under total patronage of the Pakistani government. All this while Pakistani Army Chief Raheel Sharif was patted on the back in the US, conferred the US Legion of Merit medal and US Secretary of State John Kerry eulogized Pakistani army as the “truly binding force”.
The question here is what have we learnt from all this? To say that lives of security personnel have little meaning in India is little wonder, notwithstanding the recent statement made by the PM while addressing the DGPs conclave at Guwahati regarding sacrifices made by police personnel. So what has been the response to the series of terrorist attacks on 5th December? The media says Pakistan has unleashed proxy war on India – pray what has been happening in past three decades? Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and some other J&K politicians make bland statements condemning Pakistan while the State Government diverts funds for promoting terrorism and are hand-in-glove with terrorists, same as the main opposition party.
The attacks gave a breather to sagging morale Hurriyat’s Geelaini who was apprehending his doles being cut off by the ISI because his bandh (shutdown) calls during elections were ineffective. The Home Minister says that Pakistan should stop such terror attacks – if horses could have wings! Section of the media says that since President Obama has declined to visit Pakistan in conjunction India in January next on grounds of instability, Pakistan wants to create instability in India to ward off Obama’s trip to India. Some appreciation but you are widely off the mark Sir. Don’t expect Obama to be deterred by such antics and Pakistan will ensure no terror attack takes place in New Delhi while Obama is here.
...briefing by his ISI mentors was simple: go and kill as many Indian security personnel you can in next 12-24 months; enjoy the hoors (women) of J&K as much as you can – you have the gun so no one will stop you...
There are the usual sermons of beefing up security, which indeed are valid but consider this that if a taxi full of civilians jump two consecutive check posts despite being challenged to stop and troops open fire killing them, you sentence the soldiers to life imprisonment. In such environment do you expect sentries to open fire at terrorist who approach them on foot dressed up like Indian security personnel? Did this not happen in the terrorist attack on an army camp in Samba? Will the system hold the hand of the sentry if he is suspicious and opens fire ‘first’? It is a different issue that the military personnel jailed in the Machhil encounter may be exonerated decades later as it happened in the case of the Samba Spy Scandal; exoneration after 18 years with careers and reputations destroyed without compensation. In any case how do you reverse 18 years of military life?
One had the occasion to visit the Join Interrogation Centre at Srinagar in early 1990’s. The captured Pakistani terrorist was vocal about instructions given to him in Pakistan post training, arming, financed (with additional fake Indian currency) and radicalized with stories of Indian atrocities - akin to what you find on website of Hurriyat’s Geelani. His briefing by his ISI mentors was simple: go and kill as many Indian security personnel you can in next 12-24 months; enjoy the hoors (women) of J&K as much as you can – you have the gun so no one will stop you; enjoy yourself and our links across will ensure you are not arrested; in the event you do get arrested, enjoy yourself since no lawyer will be ready to prosecute you and you cannot be moved out of J&K; then you have the human rights groups that will holler for your early release; we will look after your kin here, and; rest assured on your return we will pay you more.
Many on TV shows say that India should “up the ante” without elaborating what do they imply by that. Whose baby is it anyway – Defence Ministry, Home Minister, External Affairs? Are we to go for another Op ‘Parakaram’? Of course MoD has been giving serious thought to counter terrorism in its own specialized way. A veteran General recently posted on Facebook that sometime back he met an Indian Postal Service officer serving in MoD (as part of armed forces civil service) doing a counter terrorism course in the United States. What a cute covert way to obtain expertise. Perhaps that is the reason no Post Office has faced a terrorist attack. But that apart, where is the time to think about such trivial issues like proxy war.
A former MoS for Defence says his first day in office, the Defence Secretary walked up and told him his one priority task is to keep the military under the thumb. Then you have this veteran ambassador who first was in IAS and on his first day in MoD was briefed that he simply should concentrate on what procurements are in pipeline, how much money can be ‘made’ and forget the rest. So what has changed?
If future terrorist attack involves a weapon of mass disturbance (chemical, radiological, biological), how do you expect to respond?
Somehow, our hierarchy fails to comprehend that conventional response to sub conventional threats is recipe for continued impotency. Proxy wars aim to take advantage of the weaknesses of the adversaries while maximizing one’s own strength, achieving disproportionate effect. Today’s conflict situations show the most effective response from a state against superior operational power of an opponent is crafty diplomacy, wily espionage, terrorism (including cyber terrorism), low intensity conflict or proxy war, employment of weapons of mass destruction like dirty / chemical / radiological bombs through non state actors and a host of other asymmetric approaches.
We may well be subjected to CBRN terrorism in the near future and in countering Pakistan’s proxy war, we have to build the deterrence on our own steam. If future terrorist attack involves a weapon of mass disturbance (chemical, radiological, biological), how do you expect to respond? Surely the response cannot be second strike. Isn’t this what sub-conventional warfare is all about? This is the major lesson we should have learnt from Op ‘Parakaram’. Ironically, emergence of irregular forces with greater strategic value over conventional and even irregular forces during conflict situations in recent years has not been acknowledged by India. Hence, we have failed to establish deterrence against irregular forces relying only on diplomacy, which has not sufficed. Current and future threats that India faces dictates there can be no shortcut from having full spectrum conflict capabilities.
What should be a matter of serious concern to us is that while Pakistan possesses advanced sub conventional capabilities and is employing them proactively, India is lagging behind. This is a strategic asymmetry considering sub-conventional war will continue to be the order of the day. That is why condemnation of Pakistan (mother of terror) remains lip service by globalplayers since Pakistan’s ISI retains the strategic potential to assist both US and China even though running with the hares and hunting with the hounds, as big powers play the Great Game in curbing influence of their rival. The fault lines of Pakistan are numerous. Take the population of Gilgit-Baltistan who do not want to be part of Pakistan. Same goes for Baluchistan, Sindh, NWFP etc. The key lies in not only protecting your own fault lines but getting a handle on the adversary’s fault line.
...we have failed to establish deterrence against irregular forces relying only on diplomacy, which has not sufficed.
For creating deterrence to proxy war the foundation is well planned intelligence-cum-psychological operations at the strategic level for which the right mix of intelligence agencies and Special Forces is must. Unfortunately, in India the external intelligence agencies consider this to be their exclusive domain. The result has been continuing and gaping voids in strategic intelligence and fiascos in experimenting with the LTTE and organizations like EROS. Significantly, all this is linked to the deeper malaise of keeping the military out of policy formulation on matters military and national security and the MoD sans military expertise. That the military-industrial complex has been in such horrible state too is because of absence of military (users) in the DRDO-DPSUs-OF especially at the management and decision making levels.
The late Dr Krishnaswamy Subramanyam considered the doyen of strategic thought in India by every government kept recommending that we need to overhaul our higher defence set up but only cosmetic changes were made, main reasons being the intransigence of the political hierarchy to matters military, corruption and unaccountability of the bureaucracy and hold of the arms mafia that draws power from funding political parties.
It is high time we shed the utopia of Pakistan changing its India policy, which is firmly in the grip of her military-ISI that aside from spawning terrorism globally has pathological hatred towards India. Pakistan’s proxy war will be get a boost with post 2014 Afghanistan and developments in the Middle East. It hardly needs reiteration that conventional power is ineffective against sub-conventional threats. Idealism cannot be a stand-alone factor especially when costs of following an inward looking policy is much higher in the long-run and detrimental to our economic progress and national security.
Therefore, the macro level changes we need are to remove the sub-conventional asymmetry through balanced mix of realism and idealism; evolving such a policy with a road map and an execution plan. As per former Service Chiefs whenever there was occasion to discuss reponse to asymmetric war, the hierarchy closed the issue. Noe the million dollar question is will the government under Prime Minister Modi change all this or will we continue as status quoists?