Kashmir - what went wrong-II

Ground realities:

Ground situation in J&K does not indicate any improvement. Pakistan has created a war-like situation by blatantly sponsoring cross-border terrorism. Suicide attacks by terrorists on security and civilian targets are taking place on a regular basis. There is no let-up in infiltration. Area of terrorist conflict has widened and there is upgradation of terrorists' armoury. The terrorists' have been able to operate through a well-developed infrastructure of support, which includes guides/informers, harbourers and accomplices. Minority groups in Muslim-dominated areas of Jammu province continue to be under pressure. Ethnic-cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus remains unaddressed.

To what extent the war of attrition has tired down the local support for separatists is difficult to guess. However, it can be safely said that India has failed to evolve a realistic counter-insurgency doctrine to tackle terrorist menace in Kashmir. Even the Estimates Committee of Parliament in its 20th report on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) regarding policy making and system of higher direction has deprecated the lack of strategic planning and thinking at the national level. It has pointed out that directions and tasks must necessarily flow from a well-defined policy, or else the armed forces, guided by adhocism, will founder. Mr George Tanham of the Rand Corporation, the prestigious think-tank of the USA, in a study "Indian strategic thought," concluded that India has no strategic culture or tradition. It is an inward-looking country and its history, geography, culture and civilisation have shaped this tradition, he added.

The main failures of India's counter-insurgency strategy in J&K are lack of long-term strategic planning, defensive mindset built on bizarre assessments and non-coordination among different security agencies. "Proactive strategies," announced by NDA-government have remained empty rhetoric only. The security forces, operate from a defensive angle under severe stress.

The mindset of politicians has percolated down to the Army generals. ‘Kashmir is a political problem and needs to be sorted out politically’ has become new obsession. Kashmir problem is being attributed to the cumulative neglect of political, economic and social aspirations. If it is to be sorted out politically, then what should be the scope of CI operations. Obviously, to bring the separatists to the negotiating table. This dangerous mindset is responsible for not fashioning a pro-active strategy. Seek and destroy operations have thus been employed selectively and not as a regular strategy.

Separatists elements in Kashmir are waging a Jehadist war, which has transnational linkages and ramifications. Post-1973 oil boom in Gulf and Soviet intervention in Afghanistan are in the primary responsible for rise of Islamist rebellion in Kashmir. Jihadist violence has to be defeated both globally and locally. There are no short-cuts. No amount of appeasement of separatists or their sympathisers will deliver peace. This leads to one conclusion: Terrorist war has to be defeated militarily. Once it dawns on Kashmiri separatists that they are fighting a losing war, dissenting elements will come forward to wrap up the last remnants of terrorist violence. Peace with dignity and honour in essence means compromise with separatists. It is only after defeating the Jihadist war on the ground that addressing the problems of misgovernance or restoration of displaced Pandits to their homes will have meaning.

An important cause for the failure of the operations in J&K is the lack of coordination between the MoD, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Cabinet Secretariat. The formation of Unified Command was a laudable strategy but it failed to achieve its objectives. The original purpose was to reduce duplicity of efforts, have honest intelligence sharing and periodic review of CI strategies. In practice it never happened due to unnecessary local political interference. There was no clearly defined command and control mechanism and pr         oper coordination between MHA, MoD and the cabinet secretariat. BSF, Police and Army witnessed competition for credit-sharing. There was no sharing of actionable intelligence and each agency held its own terrain.

There is a war-like situation in J&K. Therefore Unified Headquarter has to be headed by a senior Army Corps Commander and coordinated at the highest level. There is a need to create a single agency for directing counter-insurgency operations. The centrally administered paramilitary forces can be put under the command of the Army to carry out internal security duties for which they are trained. The role of Rashtriya Rifles can be expanded further with integration of SOG/STF wings of state police, VDCs and SPOs. Recruitment of younger elements among VDCs and SPOs on permanent basis with better remuneration and upgraded arms would provide a strong cutting edge to CI operations, with ample actionable intelligence available. VDCs and SPOs also know the local terrain and the people better.

A realistic counter-insurgency strategy would focus on stopping infiltration, quarantining the insurgency by restricting the area in which it operates, regain control over infiltration routes in Pir Panjal, denying the hideout to the terrorists and launching seek and destroy operations to decimate the militants, ensure that suicide strikes are counter-productive to terrorists, evolving innovative intelligence strategies and lastly, neutralizing the support structures of terrorists. External components of counter-insurgency strategy to relieve pressure locally would include paying Pakistan back in the coin and destroying camps in PoK. Political content should be given to counter-insurgency and clarity of tasks and objectives should percolate down in unambiguous terms. Additionally, Army commanders should avoid controversies and dalliance with those think-tanks whose ideas are at variance with national interest. In the recent past, the army involved itself in unnecessary controversy by associating itself with a symposium in Jammu University and conducting Sadhbhavana in Turtuk (Ladakh).

Infiltration:

From Chicken Neck to Pathankot there is a linear defence. After every hundred yards there is a security man. It is amazing how terrorists could sneak in and launch a strike at Kaluchak camp. If we are not able to manage linear defence, how can we deal with porous borders north of Chicken Neck i.e. LoC and PoK.

During the past ten years, to facilitate infiltration, ISI has created new enclaves in border areas of Jammu. As per a report, 16 Corps Commander, Lt. Gen. JBS Yadava, disturbed enough by the link between new  enclaves and spurt in terrorist activities, sent a detailed communication to the state government The commander revealed that hostile settlements had come up along the more than 36 rivers and mountain nullahas in the Samba sector, which constitute key infiltration routes into Pakistan.

The other major area of such settlements was across the National Highway, connecting Pathankot to Jammu. These settlements provided a staging post to terrorists seeking to target the Pathankot-Jammu road and railway line, as well as access to key areas in rural Jammu. Mr Praveen Swami, a senior journalist pointed out.

“Polemic apart, migration into Jammu poses several difficult questions, which need hard answers...Hysterical claims of a conspiracy to marginalise Jammu Hindus, then, are clearly misplaced. But the fact remains that the new migration does hold out security risks. The growth of Gujjar settlements along the Basantar, Aik and Devak rivers, for example, has been mirrored by a sharp increase in terrorist activities”.

From here terrorists cross to Doda, Udhampur and Bhaderwah or go north into Rajouri and Reasi. How responsive was the then ruling NC government to national security concerns, Mr Swami wrote:

“General Yadava’s letter (October, 2001) received a curt response. The J&K government argued that state subjects could settle wherever they wished, and the Army had no business to involve itself in the issue. One key point made in the 16 Corps letter, however, went unaddressed. The General had pointed out that many of the new settlements were coming up on government land, and that encroachments even in strategically-sensitive areas were being regularised. Although the letter was too polite to say so, National Conference cadre were often involved in the creation of such enclaves, brokering land sales and then promising regularisation of forest encroachments, and access to housing schemes like the Indira Awas Yojana. A Jammu-based Minister is widely believed to have encouraged supporters to start a large-scale forest fire near Sidhra earlier this year, an enterprise that was meant to clear land but went tragically wrong after three of the would be settlers accidently burnt to death.”

Despite the hurdles being created by the NC government,  the Central government did not intervene and allowed the situation to drift with its disastrous results. It did not want to annoy an ally.

The reasons often cited for continued infiltration in Jammu-Kathua belt are - availability of local guides to terrorists, lack of coordination between various intelligence agencies and dense population right upto the zero line. Till 1999, the Indo-Pak border in Kathua, which remained peaceful, was mostly used by transborder smugglers for bringing in gold and narcotics. Subsequently ISI started forcing these smugglers to also take a consignment of arms and ammunition along with the gold and narcotics. J&K Police as well as Punjab Police achieved a major success, when they seized large quantity of arms from Hiranagar on the instance of gold smugglers. Police realised the gravity of the situation only after three of the five heavily-armed militants, who sneaked into the state from across the border, were killed during a fierce encounter the same year. The remaining two terrorists were apprehended by alert villagers near Ghagwal.

There was no dearth of ideas on how to tackle the infiltration meace. There were suggestions to create a unified command of intelligence agencies, besides clearing two km. belt along the border of all inhabitants. Army had even demanded a role in administration in select border areas to track down guides and harbourers of terrorists. All this was ignored.

A border-management strategy addressing to both the human factor as well as the geography will take care of the problem of infiltration. Inducting mines along the routes witnessing heavy and regular infiltration and employing ground sensors to detect infiltrators have been often emphasised. This should be done without any delay. Resettlement of ex-servicemen to create pragmatic enclaves in border belts and bolstering of the patriotic groups has also been suggested.

Army on its part should go for effective deployment to check infiltration. Greater accountability and domination of all the infiltration routes will reduce the infiltration to a minimum. Simultaneously the GoI can maintain international pressure on Pakistan to put an end to cross-border terrorism. In case Pakistan fails to respond, capability to smash launching pads in PoK should be kept ready.

‘Fidayeen’ factor:

Suicide strikes by the terrorists has costed much to the security forces. It has created fear psychosis and led to media disgrace. Casualties have increased and additional manpower had to be deployed. "Fidayeen” attacks at Raghu Nath Mandir can be explained but not on military camps. These highly motivated terrorists have been able to sneak into high security areas primarily because security of installation is not planned or lot of local civilians have access to military camps.

There is a need to curtail this civilian access to army camps. In the first fidayeen attack on Badami Bagh Cantt, allowing access to doubtful journalists was a big security lapse. The disturbing trend is how repeatedly terrorists are gaining access to camps. Senior army officers instead of evolving a solution to this problem made irresponsible statements. "If somebody has to die he can die inside also. These strikes cannot be prevented". These statements do not add to the morale jawans.

Fidayeen attacks can be pre-empted through foolproof security of the camps, forseeing the attack and maintaining vigil on the civilian staff posted with the army. Had we foiled fidayeen strikes in the beginning, these attacks would have gone out of fashion.

Infiltration of terrorist groups:

World's foremost expert on terrorism, Rohan Gunaratna says infiltration of terrorist groups is the only way to destroy these groups. This is necessary to track down harbourers and financiers of terrorists, nab the infiltrating groups, fomenting inter-group clashes among terrorists and finally creating confusion in their ranks. Additionally, this can become important and reliable source of intelligence gathering.

Seek and Destroy operations:

These operations have one objective - to chase the terrorist right up to his hideout and kill him. Army had been deploying it selectively. Such operations demand national consensus as collateral damage at the initial stage is heavy. In the initial phase, army followed a policy of "recovery without losses" in Doda and the region was delivered to the terrorists. Security of Srinagar-Jammu highway was imperilled and terrorists dug deep into the adjoining Anantnag district. Minority groups in Doda became targets for ethnic-cleansing. Use of helicopters to track down mercenaries in higher reaches of Doda and upgradation of weaponry for CI operations was also not seriously pursued.

Decisive battle to decimate terrorism in Kashmir has to start from Doda. Gradually this can be extended to Kashmir valley proper.

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