Retaliating Is One Thing, Deterring Cross-Border Attacks From Pakistan is Another

If only some way could be found to target the BATs specifically, then some kind of a deterrent pressure could be built. As of now, the poor jawans who get killed are merely collateral damage.

 

There is a farcical debate going on about how India should deal with Pakistan on the beheading episode. Amarinder Singh, the chief minister of Punjab, wants three heads. Ramdev, the yoga entrepreneur, wants 10.
The government is silent, though army chief Bipin Rawat has hinted at retaliation, saying that the army does not disclose its future plans, but that he will share the details after the execution of the Indian response.
There is one problem. That the Indian jawans were beheaded is known to the Indian authorities; presumably they have retained the photographic evidence, since the personnel were cremated in sealed caskets. The external affairs ministry’s spokesman Gopal Baglay said on Wednesday (May 3) that India had “actionable evidence,” which was the blood sample of the slain personnel and the trail of their blood going to the Pakistan side of the LoC.
Pakistan is predictably silent for the simple reason it knows that to even acknowledge what their so-called Border Action Teams (BAT) have done would be tantamount to a war crime. So, as far as they are concerned, they will claim that non-state actors – call them Kashmiri “freedom fighters” if you will – perpetrated the act, though it is well known that they got their covering fire from Pakistani army posts.
This is what poses a dilemma for the Indian side. To go and lop off 10 heads and then declare that you have done it would immediately bring the charge of committing a war crime on the Indian army. Considering its generally good record, it would be a blemish that will not go away easily.
Now it is not that Indian soldiers have not lopped off heads before, but they were done in covert operations that no one talked about. At the same time, the message was received by the people who were meant to receive it. Now, however, with the government tacitly encouraging the media to raise the demand for revenge to a fever pitch, it will not be enough if the army, say, a fortnight from now, simply issues a press statement saying that it has avenged the attack.
All that the Pakistani side will do is to simply claim that nothing has happened. That is what they did in the case of the ‘surgical strike’ that the Indian side announced. Even now, that strike is only an Indian claim, there is no collateral evidence, either from Pakistan or from the UN Military Observers Group in India and Pakistan, which at least nominally monitors the border.
The bigger problem is that we do not know what it takes to deter such attacks on Indian troops. While the attacks are carried out by the Pakistani BATs – and any retaliation by the equally tough Indian Special Forces – the victims are ordinary soldiers on the LoC, either through ambushes or silent attacks. If only some way could be found to target the BATs specifically, then some kind of a deterrent pressure could be built. As of now, the poor jawans who get killed are merely collateral damage.
We do not even know what triggered the recent event. There is little doubt that it was a carefully staged operation directed by the Pakistan army. Maybe it was in retaliation for something our forces had done, or aimed at raising India-Pakistan temperatures further by forcing India to react. Perhaps it is linked to the possibility of an India-Pakistan meet at the sidelines of the SCO summit in July, speculation for which is rife ever since the visit to Muree of the Indian businessman Sajjan Jindal, who is said to enjoy the confidence of both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif. If it is the first, silence would have been a better option, and if it is the second, we need to remember the American adage – revenge is a dish best served cold.
If the goal of the assault and beheading was to derail an India-Pakistan détente, surely by now we ought to have learnt how to handle the Pakistani deep state which resorts to a provocation whenever there is a talk of peace between India and Pakistan.
This is a bizarre situation where India and Pakistan are being pushed to fight a war literally at two ends of the spectrum. At one end are ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons and at the other are knives and fists. The middle ground of a good old-fashioned war with guns and tanks, which the two armies are raring to fight, seems to have become obsolete. The fist and knife war can go on indefinitely since it is not destructive enough. On the other extreme is the nuclear option after which there’ll be no one left to knife.
What is happening on the LoC is, as we noted, a farcical affair because all it is doing, as far as India is concerned, is to provide grist to the pseudo-nationalist mill. Instead of focusing on much more important tasks in nation building, it is feeding people on a diet of heightened and negative emotions, amplified by the TV channels.

The American novelist Norman Mailer once proposed, apropos the American belief that the Vietnam war was really a proxy war with the Chinese, that the two sides resolve the matter by both the US and China selecting their best army division and having them fight it out, face to face in the Brazilian jungle. Whoever won would be declared the winner of the larger war that was going on in Vietnam. In other words, if primal instincts needed to be assuaged, let it be done in the truly primeval style where combat was often ritualised.
The Wire May 6, 2017

Why it's dangerous for BJP government to assume it can resolve Kashmir crisis

The clearest indication that things on the ground are regressing in Jammu and Kashmir is the massive Cordon and Search Operation (CASO) launched in Shopian, the southern part of the Valley last week.
At the beginning of the militancy, such door-to-door operations were the norm, they were wasteful in terms of manpower and they obtained indifferent results. But there was little alternative to them since the J&K Police had melted down and local intelligence had dried up.

Square one
Subsequently, when the BSF G-Branch had developed a network of informants from turning captured militants, and the J&K Police had revived, such sweeps were wound up and instead, the security forces, often led by the state police’s Special Operations Group, resorted to intelligence-led operations that cause little collateral damage and virtually decimated the militant network in the Valley.

Army personnel during a search operation in Shopian district of Kashmir. (PTI) 
So, the indications are, that, at least in the southern part of the Valley, things are back to square one. Reports suggest that the local police has again melted and no local intelligence is coming through, and hence the massive brigade-level sweep. Just how retro things are, is evident from a comment by a retired general that maybe the time had come to once again use turned militants, Ikhwanis, to hunt down militants.
In these past weeks and months, for the first time in a long while, we have had international leaders saying that, maybe, there was need for mediation between India and Pakistan on Jammu and Kashmir.
First it was our own Nikki Haley who said that the Trump administration could play a role in de-escalating the India-Pakistan situation, then came Turkish President Erdogan who in a interview on the eve of his visit to New Delhi, called for “a multilateral dialogue” to settle the Kashmir issue. Now, we have even had a Global Times commentary noting that China “has a vested interest in helping resolve regional conflicts including the dispute over Kashmir between India and Pakistan. “
Many Indians don’t realise that for the world community, J&K is not a closed chapter. It is just that, based on the India-Pakistan dialogues, the world community has felt that perhaps, it was best left to the two to sort out the problem. But if there is a feeling that there is no dialogue and things are escalating, then there will certainly be need for third–party intervention.
Skewed perception
All these years, despite continuous Pakistani interference, the J-K issue was slowly moving towards resolution. Militancy was declining and even Pakistan was signaling that, maybe, it could accept a compromise in which current borders would not change.
The big problem that we have today is that the BJP-led government has different ideas. It actually believes it can resolve the issue once and for all — liberate Pakistan occupied Kashmir, in particular Gilgit Baltistan, and bludgeon the dissidents in the Valley into submission.This is, if anything, a perfect example of hubris.





New Delhi believes that the factors responsible for the violence and tension in the Valley are entirely external. And there is little to be gained through internal dialogue. This is a skewed understanding of the situation. Pakistan is certainly responsible for pumping in men and money into the Valley, but they are able to get shelter and function because India has not been able to convince the locals that it has their welfare in its heart.

Flexible tactics
Last week, the key BJP interlocutor, speaking behind the screen of anonymity, ruled out all dialogue till the stone-pelting continued in the Valley. Referring indirectly to some comments by former NSA MK Narayanan and former RAW chief AS Dulat, he declared that they had “had enough time and opportunity to implement their ideas… Now it is our turn to get things in order. Let us handle the issue in the way we want.”
So the world, and the people of this country, must accept a strategy where the government deliberately allows the health of Jammu and Kashmir to deteriorate, claiming that this will effect a complete cure at the end. If this sounds like a quack cure, it probably is.
Past governments had a more modest approach, believing that all they could do was to manage the issue, not resolve it in the short term. To that end, they adopted multiple, but flexible tactics — talks with Pakistan, roundtables in the Valley, behind-the-scene dialogue with the separatists and so on.
This led to a slow and steady improvement of the conditions in the Valley. The search for the perfect solution is illusory, the best as is well known, is often the enemy of the good.
 Mail Today May 8, 2017

Wrong diagnosis: Rhetorical arrows cannot dispel hard questions about government ineptitude in Sukma massacre

When you mis-categorise a phenomenon or mislabel an event, you are liable to err in dealing with it. This can have serious consequences, just as faulty diagnosis leads to a worsening of a disease.
And so it is with the Maoist insurgency in central India.In the minds of the Modi government, the Maoists appear to be nothing but terrorists who are wont to make “cowardly attacks” on our security forces who were, in this most recent instance, killed in a “cold blooded manner”. A senior minister weighed in against human rights activists for their silence on the killings.
Now, from all accounts, the CRPF party was expertly ambushed by a group of Maoists and the 25 personnel killed presumably died fighting, gun in hand. This was an unfortunate development, tragic, even disastrous. But it can hardly be termed either cold-blooded or cowardly. As for human rights, the traditional use of the term relates to atrocities against non-combatants, including disarmed security personnel.



Perhaps the government had hoped that through its rhetorical arrows, howsoever misdirected, it would quell the hard questions about its own conduct. Why had it failed to appoint a person to head the CRPF for the past two months (one has now been appointed on Wednesday)? Why are poorly trained and led CRPF personnel being asked to take up such a dangerous counterinsurgency duty?
Mao Zedong once said that you should respect your enemy tactically, even while despising him strategically. So, even as we reject the Maoist ideology and seek to destroy it tooth and nail, we should have a healthy regard for Maoist guerrillas’ abilities as fighters. Only if we do so will we be able to defeat them.
The Maoist challenge is not a new one. Police have been combating them in various ways and locales since the mid-1960s. It has soundly defeated them in Bengal and the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh and there is need to learn from those experiences in taking on the latest version of Maoists in central India’s jungles.
The key to the defeat was a combination of political action and intelligenceled military operations. Clearly, in the case of Chhattisgarh what we are witnessing is an incoherent application of military force, sans any intelligence. This was evident in the terrible 2010 ambush in Dantewada when CRPF lost 76 jawans, and a year later when 26 died in Narayanpur. Then, as now, CRPF had zero intelligence about large Maoist forces in its vicinity.
Such intelligence can be obtained through technical means ­ UAVs, foliage penetrating radars and so on. But it is best gathered through the patient use of human sources.
The forces you employ must be highly skilled in jungle warfare as the Greyhounds of Andhra are, or the army in the northeast. But more than that you need effective political messaging through which you challenge the Maoist narrative that the people are being exploited and their rights violated by the Indian state. This does not mean a speech in New Delhi or a declaration in Raipur, but action on the ground. The people must be made to feel that the government cares for them and is doing its best to resolve their problems.
In that sense the Raman Singh government is the biggest failure. He has led the state for nearly 15 years, has done little or nothing to undermine the Maoist challenge and is leaving the issue to be resolved through exclusively military means.
The use of force to resolve a problem is very seductive, but it is also extremely destructive. Now we seem to be seeing this wrong-diagnosis-worsening-thedisease phenomenon in Jammu & Kashmir as well where the government has decided that all dissenters are terrorists who must be dealt with as such. As a result, the political health of the state has taken a turn for the worse.
Times of India April 29, 2017

India's autocratic streak of democracy

Last week in a conversation triggered by Yogi Adityanath's style of governance by fiat, a colleague argued that India cannot function with the liberal democratic system. It needs a dose of authoritarian rule to transform itself. 

There is little doubt that if the country were to hold a referendum today, the result would favour those who will accept curbs on freedom of our precious freedoms of speech and action as a necessary sacrifice for economic growth. 

There is one problem with this model. Prime Minister Naerndra Modi, and now, the Yogi, may be paragons among leaders - honest, deeply committed to the nation and enormously hard-working. 

But they are neither gods nor supermen. They cannot themselves administer every department they oversee, nor ensure that there are excesses committed in the name of the policies they advocate. 

Nationalism 

Implementing Modi or Yogi's stern pronouncements depend on a capable bureaucracy or a dedicated party organisation. 

 

 

Yogi and Modi cannot themselves administer every department they oversee, nor ensure that there are excesses committed in the name of the policies they advocate.

There are two ways to achieve that goal - one is to have a governmental system populated with people with their own qualities down the line from the secretariats to city municipalities and village panchayats. 

But, the Indian bureaucratic culture until now has been associated with inefficiency, corruption and lassitude. It can change, but only slowly and over a period of time. 

The other option is to rely on party cadre. In that sense the BJP government is well endowed. The party and its mentor organisation, the RSS are a cadre-based outfits with committed and dedicated personnel. 

Whether they intend to, or can provide, expertise in building a modern state is another matter. What seems to drive them is cultural nationalism - gau raksha, vegetarianism, re-writing history text books, promoting traditional medicine and so on. 

The big problem with authoritarian systems of the type that my colleague envisages is that they choke off feedback loops. It is possible to use all kinds of mechanisms like town hall meetings and the social media to know what the public is thinking. 

But over time, it's clear, this simply doesn't work resulting in explosive revolts leading to a great deal of death, disruption and destruction. 

Perhaps the best example of a contemporary authoritarian system is China. The Communist Party of China, currently some 121 million strong, runs everything there, the state, every school, university, municipality, all the big industry, indeed, even the Chinese military is actually an arm of the Party, rather than Chinese state. 

So, the best and the brightest, if they want to flourish, must become part of the party system. 

This system has achieved a great deal - it has transformed China from a poor Third World Country into one which is seeking to emerge as the pre-eminent world power. 

But in the process, it has also committed great crimes, leading to the deaths of tens of millions of people. 

Legitimacy 

Under Xi Jinping, the CPC is seeking to reinvent itself as the party that will lead to China's rejuvenation as the world's foremost power. But it is acutely aware of the fact that it sits atop a vast corrupt system where there is little justice for the average person. 

He/she cannot move across China and settle down where they will, they cannot get justice because the party is the prosecutor and judge and its functioning opaque. 

It walls off China's internet and strictly controls the flow of ideas in the educational system and media. 

History shows that as countries like Japan, Portugal, Spain, Israel, Greece, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore transited from the middle-income to high-income levels in the 1960s and 1970s, they also shed authoritarian rule and became democracies. 

Middle income China confronts this dilemma today. The CPC may not acknowledge it openly, but it faces a crisis of legitimacy. Having achieved middle-class status, people also want a say in their own governance and liberty of thought and action. 

Besides, there are the intangibles that democracy delivers in terms of its cultural eco-system where entrepreneurship and innovation flourish. 

India, of course, is an exception being poor and a democracy, though it is, as historian Ramchandra Guha says, an 'election-only' democracy.

Stability 

India, of course, is an exception being poor and a democracy, though it is, as historian Ramchandra Guha says, an 'election-only' democracy. So does it require a dose of authoritarian rule to transit to a middle-income economy? 

Many in India would argue that it does. The Modis and Yogis are looked up to because they have an authoritarian streak, but their problem is that they do not have the large numbers of administrators and managers who can get this system to work at higher levels of efficiency. 

On the other hand, they have a large team of raucous cadre who are undermining the already fragile social stability and rule of law in the country. 

Mail Today, 23 April 2017

Why Is China Renaming Seemingly Unimportant Places in Arunachal Pradesh?

Two of the six spots renamed could be of significance, but the other four are simply points on a map. Is there a method behind this that we cannot discern at the moment?

 

Earlier this month China’s ministry of civil affairs, responsible for social and administrative affairs under its government, published a notification changing the names of six places in Arunachal Pradesh, which China has claimed since the 1950s and now says is South Tibet. According to the state-owned daily Global Times, this is a “move to reaffirm the country’s territorial sovereignty to the disputed region.” But there is little doubt that the step is a deliberate move aimed at punishing India for permitting the Dalai Lama to visit the Tawang monastery earlier in April.
China’s renaming places is part of what is called lawfare, where countries seek to get the legal high ground to press their claims. This is not a new feature for the Sino-Indian relationship. For instance, when China wanted to press a claim to Barahoti Pass in Garhwal, it renamed it as Wu Je. Likewise, Demchok, which is in Ladakh and claimed by China, was named Parigas. Similar examples abound in cases where China or other countries dispute territory. We are familiar with the Argentinian designation of Falklands Islands as the Malvinas, or the differing names used by the Vietnamese and Chinese for the Paracel and Spratly Islands.

The notification on renaming of six places in Arunachal Pradesh, which China calls South Tibet.

Along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), where Indian and Chinese claims overlap, the naming and renaming is accompanied by another manifestation of the game – leaving behind tell-tale signs. Chinese patrols enter areas within the Indian claim line and leave behind newspapers, cigarette packets, old uniforms and so on. Often they paint rocks declaring it to be Chinese territory. Indian patrols do the same and whenever they come across Chinese tell-tale signs, they deface them and carry away or destroy the litter.
The Chinese ministry published its notification of April 13 giving the names in the Chinese, Tibetan and English scripts along with the latitude and longitude of the places. However, they did not indicate the original names of the places.
Plotting the Chinese given latitude and longitudes onto Google Earth results in a fascinating revelation – while two of the spots could be of significance, the other four are simply points on a map with no habitation and no prominent landmark. One would imagine that they are totally random, but perhaps, since this is just the first of many similar exercises, there is a method that we cannot discern at this stage.
Plotting “Wo’gyainling” (91° 52’ 25”E and 27°34’54”N) on Google Earth reveals a nondescript locality in Tawang 1.70 km from the monastery as the crow flies. However, some 300 metres away is the small but elegant Urgelling Gompa. Now there are scores of gompas all over the area, but the significance of Urgelling is that it is the birthplace of the 6th Dalai Lama.
“Mila Ri” (93° 52’ 25”E and 28° 03’ 06”N) – “ri” means mountain in Tibetan – is not even the highest point on a forested mountain slope. “Qoidengarbo Ri” (93° 45’ 57”E and 28°16’ 50”N) is clearly a peak, though its significance is not known to this writer. Maybe, it and Mila Ri are places of local religious significance.
“Mainquka” (94° 08’ 04”E  and 28° 36’ 03”N ), or Menchuka as it is now known, seems to be just about the only place of significance renamed. It is a town with an airstrip just about 30 km from the LAC.
“Bumo La” (96° 46’ 25”E and 28°06’ 55”N) was initially assumed to the Bum La (27°43’ 31”N and 91° 53′ 32″E), the pass north of Tawang where India and China have their routine military-to-military meetings. But the coordinates provided land you up at the eastern extremity of Arunachal Pradesh, some 24 km west of Walong, while Bum La is on the western extremity. Further, Bumo La does not appear to be a pass, as the suffix “La” would suggest; it is merely a point on the slope of a mountain.
“Namkapub Ri” (95° 06’ 05”E and 28° 12’ 49”N) is the big mystery. There was an assumption that this could be the Namka Chu ( 91° 40’ 40”E and 27° 49’ 18”N), which is in the western extremity of the Sino-Indian border in Arunachal Pradesh. This was the site of the first attack by China in 1962. But the coordinates provided by the China’s civilian affairs ministry lands you on a forested slope where there are no distinct geographical features like a river, a mountain peak, pass or a dwelling of any kind.
The Wire April 24, 2017

China renaming places in Arunachal is an old ploy to delegitimise adversaries

China has long mastered the art of “lawfare” or the system through which legal claims are put forward to delegitimise adversaries. Renaming places is not something new. So the Chinese call the Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea as the Xisha and Nansha islands or the Senkaku islands which they dispute with Japan as the Diaoyu islands.
 

True to form, the Chinese have pushed up their claim over Arunachal Pradesh to another level. The English daily Global Times said in a news item today that “China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs announced on April 14 that it had standardised in Chinese characters, Tibetan and Roman alphabet, the names of six places in ‘South Tibet’, which India calls ‘Arunachal Pradesh’ in accordance with the regulations of the central government.
So, Bum La, the pass that marks the Line of Actual Control (LAC) north of Tawang has become Bümo La and Namka Chu, through which the current LAC runs and where the fighting first began in October 1962, has become Namkapub Ri and Menchuka, a small town in West Siang district, has become Mainquka.
China has long mastered the art of “lawfare” or the system through which legal claims are put forward to delegitimise adversaries. Renaming places is not something new. So the Chinese call the Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea as the Xisha and Nansha islands or the Senkaku islands which they dispute with Japan as the Diaoyu islands. So Aksai Chin which India claims as being part of Jammu & Kashmir is occupied by China and is said to be the southwestern part of the Hotan Prefecture of Xinjiang.


According to the daily, the aim is to “reaffirm the country’s territorial sovereignty to the disputed region”. The paper cited a Chinese specialist Xiong Kunxin to say that the renaming and standardisation were part of “China’s growing understanding and recognition of geography in South Tibet.”
India’s claim on Arunachal Pradesh rests on the Simla Convention of 1914 which it arrived at with the Tibetan authorities which marked the border through what was known as the McMahon Line. The great monastery of Tawang thus became a part of India, though it was administered by Tibetan monks till 1951 when an Indian patrol team led by Major R. Khating sent them away. China says that its representative had not agreed to the Simla Convention, though the record says that he initialled it. Further in ensuring years, the Chinese authorities did not raise any issue with regard to the McMahon Line.
Even though China claimed a boundary on the foothills of the Assam plains from the outset, it did not press its claims. In 1962, following the defeat of the Indian Army, China occupied all of Arunachal Pradesh, but voluntarily withdrew thereafter.

Earlier in 1960, Premier Zhou Enlai offered to trade Chinese claims in Arunachal with India’s claims in Aksai Chin which China was occupying. This offer of a swap was repeated again by Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s. However, since the mid-1980s, the Chinese have been saying that India should concede Tawang to them. And now, following the most recent visit of the Dalai Lama, which China warned would spoil Sino-Indian relations, Beijing has taken this additional step.

However, in 2005, in signing the agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principle for the Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question, China accepted under its Article VII that “In reaching the boundary settlement, the two sides will safeguard due interests of their settled populations in border areas.” Indians assumed that the Chinese were willing to again forgo their claim on Tawang, but a year later China disavowed this as well.
Last month, Dai Bingguo who was Beijing’s top negotiator on the border dispute with his Indian counterparts between 2003 and 2013, said in an interview with the China-Indian Dialogue magazine that “The disputed territory in the eastern sector of the China-India boundary, including Tawang, is inalienable from China’s Tibet in terms of cultural background and administrative jurisdiction.” Indeed, he had the chutzpah to suggest that India was blocking China’s “reasonable requests” in not offering Tawang up as part of a border settlement. Indian negotiators have repeatedly told the Chinese that bringing up Tawang is a deal breaker.
Now, it is not just Tawang, clearly the Chinese are hardening their claim on the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh. And the prospects of a border settlement look remote. But this is not just something that affects India. Across their periphery, whether in the Senkaku/Diayou islands, or the South China Sea, China’s position on its borders has become more assertive and inflexible.
Hindustan Times April 24, 2017