By neither having discovered nor invented a punitive deterrent, India has suffered from bouts of outrage from Pakistan. Now that Modi has chosen discretion as the better part of valour, he must strike the right balance
By neither having discovered nor invented a punitive deterrent, India suffers from periodic bouts of outrage and despair from Pakistan’s cross-border terrorism. Whether it was the attack on Parliament or 26/11 or the several Pathankots and Uris, New Delhi has failed to respond befittingly as promised. Dileep Chand, the taxi driver from Karol Bag, wants Pakistan punished so severely that it does not dare to cross swords again. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, by tweeting that the perpetrators of the Uri attack will not go unpunished, raised hopes for avenging the Uri carnage. Eleven days after Uri, by merely praising the Army, paying tribute to martyred soldiers and reiterating retribution, his actions fall short of demonstrable retaliation. The public is sick and tired of listening to the record stuck in the groove of helplessness. The truth is that our security agencies do not possess suitable and adequate capacities and tools for punishing overt and covert surgical strikes.
Had the contingency plans for responses, matching existing capabilities to Mumbai and Uri-like attacks, been vetted earlier by Modi, there would have been no need to postpone the retaliation to a time and place of our choosing. Instead, it would have been near immediate for effect and surprise. The negative factor for any cross-border strike today is the adverse situation in the valley where anger and resentment against the administration and security forces is unprecedentedly high. The home-base must be secure for any trans-border strike that has the potential for escalation.
It is instructive to return to Operation Parakram the response to attack on Parliament. Contrary to popular perception, it achieved quite a bit of strategic and tactical mileage from the coercive deployment backed by the threat of the use of force. There was partial compliance on India’s demands by Pakistan though the US provided greater satisfaction. In his two speeches on January 12, 2002, and May 27, 2002, (to dissuade India from launching operations on these two dates), the then President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf gave a public undertaking not to permit terrorism in the name of Kashmir from within its territory. US Under Secretary of State Richard Armitage of the ‘stone age’ fame and later Secretary of State Colin Powell conveyed to New Delhi that Musharraf had promised to end infiltration and terrorism permanently, visibly, irreversibly and to the satisfaction of India. Infiltration reduced by 53 per cent and a cease fire on line of Control (loC) came in place in November 2003. The two D Days of January 9 and June 9, were averted due to the Musharraf pledges underwritten by the US which did not want two nuclear armed nations to go to war. Fast forward to 2007. Back channel talks between the two sides led to the four-point Kashmir formula which was a missed opportunity. India did not go to war because according to then Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, the Army was not fully ready for it.
last week, former National Security Advisor MK Narayanan wrote that, after Mumbai 2008, the military lacked the capabilities for meaningful surgical operations. That would be like taking out Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar. He believes that hard and in depth strategic capabilities which will impose pain and cost on Pakistan are still not available with the Armed Forces. That capability deficit is a reality. Pakistani writer Shahzad Chaudhry has called Uri a ‘false flag’ operation. He has suggested that India or India-linked agencies carried out the mayhem in Uri in order to shift the focus from the indigenous Kashmiri Intifada to cross-border terrorism.
The situation in the valley is on the mend after Operation Calm Down, but the damage caused by serial misgovernance, notwithstanding stoking the fires by Pakistan, is serious and in the short term, irreversible. Eighty-one days, 87 persons, including two policemen dead and 12,300 civilians and 5,600 security persons injured later, the Hurriyat leaders have extended the strike till September 29. In this time, the intelligence, counter-infiltration, counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism grids have been degraded as troops and security agencies were mostly confined to barracks. Terrorists have capitalised on this through multiple infiltrations one of which sneaked into the Uri camp. The local population has glorified the terrorists and supported them vigorously. Security forces cannot operate successfully without the help of locals. This is a cardinal principle. The security lapses that are occurring periodically are due to the open-ended deployment of troops since independence, leading to operational fatigue and lowering of guard. Forces which are perennially on the defensive, deployed behind a barbed wire have a moral disadvantage. Further, being expected to fill in for the political and the bureaucratic leadership which is bunkered down is nothing short of mission creep. The security forces have created conditions conducive for political resolution, on at least three occasions in the recent past having brought the terrorist population down from 3,000 to 200 by the strategy of find, fix and finish.
Now that Modi has chosen discretion as the better part of valour, he has to find the right balance between hard and soft power. The latest Pew Poll suggests that while 67 per cent Indians want the Government to defeat terrorism by greater use of force, 63 per cent want bigger investment in defence. Capability creation for punitive operations must be fast tracked alongwith the establishment of a Special Forces Command. Further, hardening of India’s critical targets initiated after Mumbai is required, including plugging the gaps, especially in Jammu & Kashmir. The Madhukar Gupta report, following the attack on Pathankot, needs to be implemented. The 13-year old fencing along the loC has been compromised and requires to be re-wired with high-tech force multipliers. Denial of success to the terrorist has to become the basic strategy.
Diplomacy is being called to do the heavy lifting. The use of water as a pressure point to end terrorism is a long-term measure and can boomerang. India’s appeal to the international community, to declare Pakistan a terrorist-sponsoring state without itself doing so, is infructuous. Independent MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar has tabled a Private Member’s Bill to label Pakistan a terrorist sponsoring state. Similarly, threats of withdrawing most-favored-nation status, boycotting Saarc, abrogating the Indus Water Treaty, have become mind games and cannot substitute hard power. This generational challenge against terrorism has to be fought within the rule of law and with calibrated use of force. The military has to be provided the right capability and political direction. No way should it be asked to fight with what it has, as in Kargil. But as in the past, it is not ready.
(The writer is a retired lt General of the Indian Army. He writes extensively on defence matters and anchors Defence Watch on Doordarshan)