New Army chief Dalbir Singh Suhag has many challenges before him. Among them is bringing about change in the Army’s mindset to make the force relevant in the altered environment. Both Pakistan and China will remain the focus
As he assumes the office of Chief of Army Staff today, General Dalbir Singh Suhag has the usual choices: Continuity, which is easier, and change, though difficult, will benefit the Army by making it relevant to the altered environment.
Speaking recently in Parliament, Union Minister for Defence Arun Jaitley expressed satisfaction at the Army’s performance, especially in Jammu & Kashmir, which has two military held lines with Pakistan and China. He said that detection and elimination of terrorists in Kashmir was good, and intrusions by Chinese forces into Indian territories were due to differing perception of the disputed border. Regarding official data that 597 soldiers had committed suicide in the last five years, the Minister assured the house that preventive measures to bring stress level down amongst troops were being implemented. This is not all. Based on the outgoing Army Chief, General Bikram Singh’s pronouncement at the Kargil Memorial in Dras that the Army was ready for all eventualities, Mr Jaitley declared that the Army was ready to defend the nation.
Considering that India spends $40 billion annually on defence, and has a 13 lakh strong Army which is double the size of the Pakistani Army, should our objective not be to compel Pakistan (without starting a war) to stop infiltrationIJ Should we not desire to address the root cause of suicides by soldiers — a clear indicator of low morale — rather than seek ameliorative measuresIJ And, why should Chinese Army regularly intrude into our land when we do not transgress on theirsIJ
A few recent news items should jolt us out of our complacency. China has, for the first time ever, appointed Sun Yuxi as its special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. During his maiden visit to Afghanistan, he gave a clean chit to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, saying that it was fighting rather than aiding terrorism, a charge repeatedly made by Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai. Juxtaposed with the fact that the Taliban/ISI are gaining ground in south and east Afghanistan from the retreating US/Nato forces, the writing on the wall is evident: China through commerce with the new regime in Kabul, and Taliban/ISI by force in south and east Afghanistan will overwhelm and exploit Afghanistan, with marginal opportunities for other regional players, especially India.
But it is the enormous involvement of the General Headquarters, Rawalpindi, in the developing Afghanistan situation which should interest the Indian Army. The Pakistani Army is at present fighting in North Waziristan, stabilising Swat valley in Khyber Agency and South Waziristan which it attacked in 2009, and tackling unending unrest in Balochistan. Given the commitment of its Army reserves in the west to support high stakes in Afghanistan, the assessment of the Indian Army that the ISI will open floodgates of terrorism in Kashmir once the US forces leave Afghanistan, is baloney. On the contrary, the Indian Army has a minimum two-year window of opportunity to convert its maximum forces from counter-insurgency operations (80,000 of Rashtriya Rifles) to conventional warfare role.
However, given the resistance to change within, this will not be easy. During my visit to Jammu division a few months ago, the Corps Commander, lt Gen DS Hooda (presently, Northern Army Commander) told me with flourish that counter-insurgency forces brought forward to the line of Control for anti-infiltration role can easily convert to conventional war mode.
However, his experienced predecessors disagree with him. Retired lt Gen Mohinder Singh, who commanded 8 Division, which was ordered to adopt itself from CI to war mode in little time during the 1999 Kargil conflict, recently wrote that, “counter insurgency and conventional warfare are as different as chalk and cheese. While CI ops require immediate and expeditious response with rapid planning lest militants run havoc, a conventional warfare requires deliberate and unwavering coordination of not only amongst those assaulting, but also with the array of supporting arms and services, including the Air Force.” Moreover, retired lt Gen Kishan Pal, who commanded 15 Corps in Srinagar and bore the brunt of Kargil engagement, confessed recently, saying: “We did not win the Kargil war. We lost 586 lives and did not consolidate military gains.”
His point was elucidated by a former Army chief Gen VK Singh in his book, Courage And Conviction. Writing about the 2001-2002 Operation Parakram, which according to him, “exposed the hollowness of our operational preparedness”, he said that: “Northern Command further compounded the problem by declaring that it needed time for the troops — who were mostly deployed in a counter-insurgency role — to reorient themselves.”
So what should Mr Suhag doIJ Respect the soldiers who in turn will respect his command and not kill themselves in helplessness. For 24 years since 1990, soldiers have lived in the war-zone of Kashmir with uncertainty and fear of the unknown. They patrol, lay ambushes, fight elusive terrorists who live amongst unsuspecting people, are on guard duties, and run sundry errands. The General commanding of the largest division in Jammu told me with unabashed pride that his boys are ever on vigil and get four to five hours rest in a 24 hours cycle. I have met innumerable young officers who, while leading men from the front on these dangerous missions, have confided in me that they did not join the Army for these unending encounters. They had joined to prepare for and fight conventional wars. And, this is what the Army should do.
Once the bulk of the Army goes back to its primary task on the military lines and the borders, things will fall in place. The focus of Army Headquarters and all formations will be on the field units: Are they equipped, trained and rested to give a bloody nose to enemiesIJ Then, modernisation will become a mantra from the present rhetoric, soldiers’ morale will be high, and we will believe the Army chief when he says that his Army is ready for all eventualities. Pakistan will get deterred and China will be circumspect.
What about CI ops in Jammu & KashmirIJ This job should gradually revert to paramilitary and State police forces. Today, Jammu & Kashmir Police is a hardened professional force from what it was in 1990. Moreover, the Army should help train desired numbers of paramilitary forces in their two Corps battle schools in Jammu & Kashmir. Once their training improves, the Army, except for a few hubs of terrorism in Kashmir, should progressively hand over the CI responsibility to them.
But, they are not good enough, is what the Army brass insists. We do a better job than them. This is true. Also true is the fact that if the Army continues doing the paramilitary’s job, who will do the Army’s jobIJ Remember Kargil, when the complete Army top brass in Jammu & Kashmir was taken off CI ops for conventional war, and the sudden command vacuum was sought to be filled by overnight induction of the Overall Force Headquarters from Delhi to Srinagar in June 1999. Being an administrative headquarters, it had difficulty in adopting to operational role, and hence, was unacceptable to both paramilitary and the State police; within weeks its Commander, lt Gen Autar Singh, on Mr Farooq Abdullah’s insistence, was sent back to Delhi. Surely, Gen Suhag would not like similar things to happen again.
(The writer is a former Indian Army officer and now Editor, FORCE, a newsmagazine on national security)
