There is no such thing as a "surgical" air strike or why air power is barbaric

IN the wake of the Mumbai attacks, there was a lot of comment on the possibility of an Indian air strike on Pakistan.
Such surgical strikes, it was said, would ensure that the terrorists receive condign punishment, and would, at the same time, avoid collateral casualties of civilians and non- combatants. This would also ensure that Pakistan did not have any cause to escalate the situation to an all- out war.
Proponents of air power, and there is no dearth of them around the world, would do well to dwell on what it has done in Gaza in the space of 21 days.
According to the BBC, some 4,000 homes were destroyed, 20,000 damaged, 1,300 Palestinians killed, mainly non- combatants, 5,000 injured and 50,000 rendered homeless. Some of this damage was done by Israeli tanks and artillery, but a great deal of it was done by the surgical strikes of the Israeli Air Force.
Now cut to India and Pakistan. On December 24, the Chief of the Western Air Command, Air Marshal P. K. Barbora, revealed that his command, which would be the principal instrument of such a strike, had some 5,000 identified targets across the border.
He was presumably talking of an all out war, which in the India- Pakistan context could be a three- week affair and not merely a punitive strike on terrorist camps. No doubt the targets would be bridges, military staging points, railroad junctions and the like. But you can be sure that such an attack would probably land up extracting a far greater toll of civilian casualties than anticipated.
In crowded South Asia, bridges and rail junctions are almost always surrounded by clusters of shops and shanties, munitions have a way of going astray, coordinates can be wrongly entered into guidance kits of GPS bombs, a facility identified as a military target may be an innocent vocational training school — there are scores of reasons why pin- pointed strikes go astray.
There are more controversial reasons for collateral damage. In today's asymmetrical conflict, militant groups do not hesitate to use civilian shields to mask their activities. There may be an anti- aircraft cannon hidden in a mosque, a rocket- launching facility in a school and so on.
Amputation
Proponents of air power have, since the very beginning, claimed that it is the most efficacious method of war and that it is capable of quickly breaking the will of a determined enemy. Aerial bombardment strengthened the will of the British and did not seriously dent the German war industry till 1945. However, it was responsible for some serious war crimes such as the deliberate fire- bombing of Dresden and Tokyo, and, of course, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was no pretence there that the target was not any specific military facility but the entire population.
Advances in technology — laser and TV guided bombs — during the Vietnam war brought forth the contemporary wave of surgical strike enthusiasts. Following Vietnam, the US developed an aversion to taking casualties that would show up on TV screens at home. The idea of launching retribution at enemies from 30,000 ft was attractive doctrinally as well as politically.
The first Gulf war brought this technology to its peak. The US war was essentially an aerial war of more than a month, followed by a limited land campaign. The US had the skies free to itself and used it to decimate the Iraqi army spread out in the desert and prevent it from carrying out any effective counter- attack.
Surgery
But the US also attacked Iraqi civilian infrastructure, devastating the power, water and sewerage systems, as well as railroad, telecom and port facilities. Nearly 3,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. The most devastating incident occurred when two laserguided bombs destroyed the Amiriyah bunker killing hundreds of civilians. The US claimed that this was also a military centre, but the claim has not been verified to date.
The devastation visited on Iraq thereafter persuaded armies such as those of Serbia, and non- state actors like the Hezbollah and Hamas to alter their tactics. They were better dispersed and, in the case of the latter, they learnt to develop underground facilities, co- located in civilian areas.
The second Gulf war brought out the even greater effectiveness of air power. Iraqi armies were devastated well before they could reach forming up areas for military activities. Iraqi divisions simply came apart under the weight of the aerial assault; of the 3,000 pieces of artillery, Iraq had just 15 standing at the end of the war.
In 2001, the Taliban, too, took US airpower into account and withdrew into strongholds rather than offer long supply lines to be bombed. Yet, with the US air dominance, the Taliban were compelled to flee their camps and see their conventional army destroyed. The Northern Alliance- led ground offensive completed their rout.
Surgical strikes looked clinical and clean from 30,000 ft altitude and neither the nations, nor the pilots connected themselves to the death and destruction below. You could be forgiven if, at this point, you would have declared hosanna— the era of surgical strikes and no- casualty war had arrived. But the high- tech dependent western armies were about to learn their lesson.
The first came when, in the mid- 2006, Israel launched an aerial blitz on Lebanon. Large areas of the country and its capital were devastated, but even the Israelis acknowledged that they had not dented the Hezbollah war- fighting abilities after 34 days of pounding.
Indeed, many see the recent Gaza attack as an attempt by Israel to show that it remains the pre- eminent military force in the region, one that will not hesitate to use war as an instrument of policy.
The second lesson came from Afghanistan itself. Though the US was totally dominant in the air, it lacked boots on ground. Large swathes of the country were left for the Taliban to reconstitute itself.
With its leadership based in sanctuaries in Pakistan, the Taliban was able to re- establish itself and has since been able to expand its sway.
The US has brought in further refinements in its use of air power.
Predator Drones, equipped with airto- ground missiles, have routinely struck targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Because of the stealth of the UAV and the supersonic speed of the missile, attacks are sudden.
The light warhead minimises collateral damage.
However, some strikes have been controversial. In the Damadola attack in January 2006, aimed at Ayman Al Zawahiri, eight men, five women and five children were reportedly killed while the Al Qaeda Number 2 got away. The killings sparked huge demonstrations in Pakistan.
Aggression
Collateral casualties of air strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan have become a routine affair. President Hamid Karzai has on several occasions pulled up the US and NATO forces for “ carelessness” in their strikes leading to civilian deaths.
Today, if we live in the era of laser and GPS guided bombs, we are also in an increasingly networked world where pictures and accounts of civilian deaths quickly make their way around the world.
Wars, as the Americans learnt in Vietnam, and as the Israelis are learning in Gaza, are often won and lost at the bar of public opinion. One picture of a mother crying over a dead child is enough to shift the tide of opinion and make even the most defensive of operations seem to be barbarically aggressive.
This was published in Mail Today January 22, 2009

Two more articles on why the army is not in good shape

The Transport fleet

IT was as far back as 1972 that the government decided to restructure the transport fleet of the Indian Army, based as it is on vehicles that were of World War II vintage. According to the Comptroller and Auditor General ( C& AG), “ it took more than two decades for the Army to decide the modalities of its implementation”. The government took the decision to replace old- generation vehicles in 1988, but it was only by 1997 that the ministry of defence finally decided the new mix of vehicles that the Army should have. It has been another decade and more since, but anyone who travels on Indian roads knows some of those old vehicles such as the legendary Jonga, Nissan and Shaktiman are still around.

In fact, the C& AG pointed out that as of 2005, out of the 21,680 of the jeeptype vehicles, some 6,837 Jongas were still around, as were some 13,856 Nissan: one- ton truck representing a whopping 41.56 per cent of its class of vehicles. The Army held some 20,000 ( 23 per cent) old- generation vehicles in its fleet which meant higher fuel and maintenance costs, as well as serviceability.

The fuel efficiency of the Nissan was much lower than the 2.5- ton Telco that was to replace it adding costs ranging from Rs 7.58 per km in 2003- 2004. What these would have cost in the last two years when oil prices touched the skies, you can guess.

The main reason for this was that the government lacked the will to shut down production at the vehicle factory in Jabalpur. The strong ordnance factory employees union ensured that the decision to shut down production was not carried out, so the government continued to place orders for the oldgeneration vehicles.

The Jabalpur factory is at present assembling Stallion and LPTA vehicles by procuring semi- knocked down components from Ashok Leyland and Telco. The government does procure directly from these companies, but why the government goes through the effort to buy kits just so that it can keep the ordnance employees working is a story in itself. T HE factory which comes under the Ordnance Factory Board was established in 1969- 70, to manufacture three types of non- combat vehicles for the Army: The three- ton truck — Shaktiman based on a German MAN design, one- ton vehicle — Nissan, and a jeep called the Jonga based on Japanese designs. The designs came out of war- devastated Axis powers in the early 1950s and were nothing but an extension of their World War II vehicles.

Beginning in the 1990s, under the new policy, the Army began to acquire a new generation of vehicles — 5 and 7.5- ton Ashok Leyland ( Stallion), 2.5- ton Telco ( LPTA) and Maruti Gypsies. So work slowed down in the Jabalpur factory.

In an earlier report, the C& AG had observed that despite the 522.21 lakh unutilised hours of work during 1994- 95 to 1999- 2000, the factory resorted to overtime work of 229.05 lakh hours involving payment of Rs 52.51 crore.

In that report, the C& AG had observed, “ Since the Indian automobile manufacturing sector has matured enough to take care of Armys requirement of vehicles, continuation of the vehicle factory in Jabalpur just for assembling semiknocked down components received from Telco and Ashok Leyland vehicle hardly serves any purpose.” But, the government gravy train goes on, even if the Army remains short- changed.

This article appeared on in Mail Today on January 26, 2009

The problem with artillery

BOFORS 155mm guns in a row, belching fire at Tiger Hill remain one of the iconic pictures of the 1999 Kargil War. Yet it was not known at the time that India had to fly in ammunition from South Africa.“ Had the conflict not been confined to the 150- km front of the Kargil sector,” says Brig ( Retd) Gurmeet Kanwal, director of the New Delhi- based Centre for Land Warfare Studies, “ T- 72 and 130 mm medium gun ammunition would have also run short. That would have been embarrassing for the government as well as the Army.” Everyone knows that the superb Bofors guns became a victim of the controversy over commissions paid for their acquisition.

But it is the country that has paid the real price. The 400 guns acquired were to have been followed by another 1,000 to be made indigenously.That did not happen and the original guns diminished through wear, tear and cannibalisation for parts.They nonetheless remain the mainstay of the Armys artillery units.

It has taken the government nearly two decades since the Bofors scandal peaked to issue request for proposals for 155 mm guns and howitzers for the mountains and plains, and self- propelled guns for the desert.If the Army is lucky, four guns shortlisted will go for trials and a final selection made that could join the Army by 2012 or so.

Till then, the Army will have to depend on its long- obsolete indigenously designed and manufactured 105 mm Indian Field Gun ( IFG) and the Light Field Gun ( LFG), the 75/ 24 Indian Mountain Gun, the 100 mm Russian field gun and the 122 mm Russian howitzer.There is some relief that we have managed to upgrade some 180 pieces of the fabled 130 mm M46 Russian medium guns with the help of the Israelis.

Some more relief comes from the acquisition of two regiments of the 12- tube, 300 mm Smerch multi- barrel rocket launcher ( MBRL) system with 90 km range. Had they been available then, they would have provided India the ability to hit at Pakistani artillery positions in Kargil.All this pain and expense had to be borne because of the DRDO- designed Pinaka system, which is in any case inferior to the Russian product.

The one area in which India has been traditionally weak is that of selfpropelled artillery.These are the heavy guns mounted on a tracked chassis which are integral to any offensive armoured force.

The US supplied Pakistan the first 155 mm artillery in the 1960s, and even today it has an edge over India in having something like 250 SP guns, which include some super- heavy 203 mm.India, on the other hand has just 100 130mm Catapult guns which is a juryrigged system of a Russian 130mm gun mounted on a Vijayanta chassis.Artillery officers complain the gun is too heavy for its chassis, which tends to break down regularly.

The plan to acquire a 155 mm SP gun using a South African turret was scuttled some years ago because its supplier, Denel, was involved in a bribery scandal relating to another acquisition.The lack of a relatively light mountain gun or a self- propelled gun affect any offensive war plan the Army may like to formulate.Movement in the mountains is extremely difficult and getting guns to negotiate the hair- pin bends of the roads is a major task.

So, some of the guns have to be light enough to be lifted by helicopters. As for SP guns, without them, any armoured thrust lacks the firepower it needs to punch through enemy defences.There is one other area where the Indian Army has been weaker than Pakistan. This is the area of artillery and mortar tracking using battlefield tracking radars.

Islamabad has fielded a French Rasit system since the early 1980s along with the US- supplied AN/ TPQ36, which were used in the Kargil war for tracking Indian mortar and artillery fire.By contrast, India sought to develop one of its own and actually rejected a US offer for an AN/ TPQ37, a more advanced version of the radar Islamabad had.This was done at the request of the DRDO, which said it was developing the system. By the time New Delhi realised its mistake, it had come under US sanctions in the wake of the nuclear tests of 1998.

Since then, the US has sold us six of the radars which form the core of the counter- battery systems. According to Kanwal, at least 30 to 40 such radars are required for effective counter- bombardment, especially in the plains.Only a few havw have been procured so far.

Mail Today January 24

Why the army is short of ammunition

EVERY October, the Indian Army carries out an annual provisioning review ( APR) of its explosives and ammunition holdings.The idea is to determine deficiencies after taking into account the war wastage reserves, scales of ammunition authorised to basic units such as battalions and regiments of infantry, artillery and armour, outstanding supplies against earlier orders and the quantity held in stock.

Thereafter, it places an indent to the Ordnance Factory Board ( OFB) for the coming year. The two then get together and fix production targets before the financial year begins.While this is the theory, the reality is that the Army and the ministry of defence do not like to keep too large an inventory of ammunition and explosives because they have a shelf- life and after that they must be used up or thrown away. The Army brass figure that the money saved can then be fruitfully employed elsewhere.

So, as the Comptroller and Auditor General ( C& AG) discovered according to a report issued in October 2008, annual production targets are suspiciously low. The Army had an outstanding order of 68,000 filled shells for the top- of- the- line extended range base bleed ammunition for its Bofors 155mm guns in 2006- 07. But it only set a target of 20,000 to the ordnance factories at Chanda and Badmal who have a combined capacity of 1,70,000 shells per annum. This is despite the fact that the Army’s outstanding demand for this ammunition was 2,41,721 shells.

Likewise the Army had an outstanding demand of 1.15 lakh FSAPDS anti- tank ammunition in the same year; the ordnance factory at Khamaria has a capacity of 90,000 shells per annum. But the Army only set a target of 45,000 to the factory for the year. The story is the same for other types of tank and field gun ammunition for the artillery.

In another instance, the C& AG examined five selected items relating to explosives and found that in 16 out of 23 instances, the target fixed was 80 per cent below the capacity available and no target was fixed in some years “ despite capacity available in the factories and substantial requirements projected by the Army in their annual provisioning review”. The Army gave a gobbledygook response to this: “ The targets were fixed taking into account the operation environment, storage capacity, training requirement, level of war wastage reserve and availability of funds.” The C& AG rejected this saying this ought to have been taken into account when the Army came up with its APR in the first place.

The mismatch between the ordnance factories and the Army are a legend. The Army complains that it is not kept abreast about the production capacity of various factories by the OFB. On its part, the board said the Army first projected a requirement and then ended up reducing the targets or fixing no targets at all, which means no orders.

In 2006- 07, for example, the ordnance factory at Khamaria had an installed capacity of 5 lakh 30mm canon shells used by the Infantry Combat Vehicles, but the target they were given was a mere 75,000. At this time, the total shortfall was of the order of 10,54,039. No target at all had been set for the past eight years for the 106mm recoilless antitank gun for which the factory has a capacity of 30,000 per annum. This is understandable since the gun is being phased out. But the same was true of 130mm high explosive shells used by the artillery for its mainstay medium guns, being made at the ordnance factory at Chanda. Its annual capacity was 80,000 ( it had been scaled up to 3 lakh during the Kargil war). But the 2006- 07 target was a mere 40,000.

The C& AG was quite clear, “ low fixation of production targets… substantial underutilisation of capacities in the ( ordnance) factories indicated poor planning on the part of Army/ ministry in procuring necessary ammunition….”. Is it any wonder that the Army found itself short of ammunition in December 2008?

The Army couldn't be anything but unready

The country may have been shocked by the revelation that the armed forces, especially the army, were not ready to go to war because of key shortages of equipment and ammunition, but for the Ministry of Defence, this is business as usual.
A 2007 Comptroller and Auditor General’s report looked at the “achievement” of the five year plans on acquisitions and was shocked to find that out that the number of items that could be procured during the plan-- out the items listed for acquisition-- was very low. For example, the acquisition of armour in the 8th plan (1992-1997) was just 5 per cent of the planned acquisition. While this could be excused because the country and its principal supplier, Russia, were undergoing economic crises at the time, there is no explanation why in the period of the 9th plan (1997-2002) only 10 per cent of the targeted acquisitions could be made. Or why in the more recent 10th Plan (2002-2007) period only 30 per cent of the tanks could be acquired.
The story is the same for other arms, in the 2002-2007 period, infantry could only manage 48 per cent of their target, the mechanized infantry 42, artillery 48, air defence 23, signals, 35 per cent. The report goes on to add, “of the 250 items planned for acquisition in the 10th plan, only 96 items were acquired up to March 2006.” Some 46 items in the list of items that could not be acquired “were identified as capability gaps in the Army plans.”
On paper, our defence acquisitions take place in a systematic planned process led by the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC). But the practice is something else altogether. The government is yet to accord approval to the 11th Defence Plan that began in April 2007. The 10th plan (2002-2007) never received approval from the Ministry of Finance. As for the DAC’s long-term integrated perspective plan (LTIPP) that would span a 15-year time horizon, it is nowhere in sight, though the Defence ministry babus now say it will be approved in October 2009.
Just how the Ministry mandarins handle the issue is evident from this exchange revealed in a report of the standing committee of the Lok Sabha for the ministry of defence. In an earlier report, the committee had said that the annual plan for 2007-2008 be based on targets set by the Ministry for the 11th five year plan and that the LTIPP be also periodically updated. The Ministry’s response was that the ministry was making concerted efforts to “get the 11th Defence Plan approved” but at the same time noted that the ministry was working on the 2007-2017 LTIPP.
The committee’s tart response was that the committee “are distressed to note that the 11th plan had not been approved” and that “the committee are unable to comprehend as to how the Ministry actually work out the priorities for incorporating the same in the LTIPP in the absence of any perception about the current Defence Five Year Plan.”
Besides the contortions of the Ministry babus, there is a serious mismatch between the demands of the armed forces and the government response. For example, the army projected a demand of Rs 56,491 crore for acquiring weapons and equipment in the 2002-2007 period. The government actually budgeted Rs 21,290 crore. This could be one reason for why the army is reeling from shortages. On the other hand, the army planning process itself had problems that resulted in some unplanned acquisitions in this period. Among these were anti-mine boots which were proposed for procurement in 2000, yet not included in the plan.
If you think that the problem was the complexity of the weapons and systems needed and its import, you would be wrong. The system is not even able to supply the troops ordinary things like clothing. India has been in the Siachen glacier since 1984, but the shortage of special clothing ranged from 44 to a staggering 70 per cent, according to a C&AG report in the 10th plan 2002-2007) period. A survey conducted by the auditors revealed that 50 per cent of the users were not satisfied by the quality and fitting of clothing—mismatch trousers and shirts of the wrong size, boots that are useless after 10-12 months against a claimed life of 26 months, and “lack of water-proofing in respect of water-proof cap.”

Was the Indian Army ready for war?

In the wake of the Mumbai attack, the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy were ready to strike, but the army was not

The Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy were ready to strike almost immediately after the Mumbai carnage on November 26—the former activating its forward bases and the latter fueling its anti-ship missiles—but the government stayed its hand when the Indian Army told the government that it would take them several weeks before it could prudently commence operations.

Sources have told Mail Today that the army said it lacked ammunition, key elements of artillery and other equipment. This was confirmed by a well-connected retired general who said “The four hundred odd Bofors guns we bought in the 1980s are falling apart for the want of spares, the (600-odd) Shilka anti-aircraft cannon are in desperate need of upgradation, and this is just the tip of the iceberg”. He added that India’s numerically vast tank fleet was in poor shape, and it did not have any mobile artillery to speak of.

The government’s mantra in all this has been that “all options are open.” Earlier this month, Defence Minister A.K. Antony declared that “They (the armed forces) are in a state of full preparedness,” on Thursday, on the occasion of Army Day, the Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Deepak Kapoor repeated for the nth time that “all our options are open” though he carefully insisted that war would be the last one.

So, given the imperative of striking immediately, the Manmohan Singh government could not press ahead because with its army in an unready state, there could be no guarantee that Pakistan would not make counter-moves across the border into Indian territory, gains which could have proved to be politically, rather than militarily, costly.

According to officers familiar with the developments, the Air Force was prepared to strike specified targtets using a variety of weapons such as the Israeli-made Popeye—a very destructive 100km range flying bomb of remarkable accuracy, or the Paveway GPS equipped guided bombs. In fact, Air Marshal P.K. Barbora who heads the Western Command that would lead the air campaign against Pakistan, publicly declared that the IAF had plans that would target as many as 5,000 key Pakistani targets in the event of an all out war.

Less is known of the Navy’s plans. But besides preparing for general war by fueling its old liquid propellant missiles, the Navy was also ready to use its conventional solid-fueled Klub land-attack missiles that have a range of 220 kms for any mission. However, the government was concerned over the fact that any attack on shore targets could entangle the Navy with the US which uses the Karachi port for supplying its forces in Afghanistan.

While all three services were keen to strike, one source said that they were not ready to guarantee that any “surgical strike” would not spiral into a all-out war, one for which they were prepared only at varying levels of readiness. Currently, by any reckoning, India enjoys a qualitative and quantitative edge over Pakistan in its air and naval assets. But even the edge India has in the air and sea cannot prevent a Pakistani riposte. General Pervez Ashfaq Kiyani threatened that Pakistan would respond “within minutes” to an Indian surgical strike. “This obviously means a missile strike which could be aimed at an Indian air base,” said an air force officer. “How would we then respond ? If we hit their base, then we have entered into an escalation scenario,” he added.

Experts admit that notwithstanding the numbers, the armies of the two countries are evenly matched. This means that if India can capture territory in Pakistan, the latter could also do the same in India. On paper, India’s 1.3 million-man army with more than 12,000 tanks, artillery guns, rocket launchers and infantry combat vehicles is almost twice the size of Pakistan’s 620,000, force with some 6,000 tanks and artillery guns. But minus 9 divisions that are committed to deal with China, the two armies are approximately equal in size. As it is, a big chunk of the Indian army is involved in counter-insurgency operations. As the Kargil review committee report had noted “the heavy involvement of the Army in counter-insurgency operations cannot but affect its preparedness for its primary role, which is to defend the country against external aggression.”

Sources say that the armed forces were concerned about four aspects of the situation-- shortages and obsolescence of equipment and the quality and quantity of the holdings. The latest Comptroller and Auditor General’s report reveals, the Ordnance Factory Board’s manufacture of 23mm ammunition for the Shilka and 30mm guns mounted on Infantry Combat Vehicles was riddled with bad production planning, inefficient and uneconomic production of components and ammunition and inadequate quality control. As a result, the OFB’s supply was 34 per cent short of what the Army needed and in February 2007, the army had to import Rs 45 crores of 23mm ammunition.

The 2003 CAG report had pointed out that an ordnance factory had landed the army with as many as 135,000 defective tank ammunition worth Rs 600 crore. The defect which was detected after one shell had killed a tank commander and injured a crew member is yet to be rectified.

In 1999, when the Navy mobilised in the wake of the Kargil war, they found that their plans were crimped because some of their newest frigates did not have any air defence missiles because the DRDO’s failed Trishul project. This was the reason why the Barak missile was subsequently sourced from Israel. These are just two of the many horror stories that afflict the Indian defence setup.

The key worry of all three services is in what constitutes their “war wastage reserves.” This is the stock of missiles, munitions and equipment that is kept as a reserve and is equivalent to the time we calculate that an actual Indo-Pak war would last—usually around three weeks. Because stocking ammunition and missiles cost a great deal of money—the material has a shelf-life and must be thrown away after that—the Ministry of Defence has pared the reserve in some types of munitions to a couple of days to a week. A government report of 2003 has pointed out that “at the commencement of OP Vijay ( the 1999 Kargil war), the stocks of Laser Guidance Kits with the Air Force were sufficient for only 12 days’ requirements as against then applicable War Wastage Reserve of 30 days’ requirements.” The same report pointed out that another type of a bomb and its tail units held by the mother depot at the beginning of the war was only “ 23 per cent and 2.2 per cent respectively of the mandatory minimum reserves, while no fuzes were held in stock by the depot.” You can be sure that the same story, multiplied by 100, is repeated across the three services.

In September 2002, after the crisis that developed after the December 2001 attack on the Parliament had waned, President Pervez Musharraf traveled to the US and in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, he had this to say: “… my military judgment was that they[Indians] would not attack us… Militarily…there is a certain ratio required for an offensive force to succeed. The ratios that we maintain are far above that – far above what a defensive force requires to defend itself...”

Cocky Musharraf was not wrong. Fire-eaters across the country have been egging the government to go to war with Pakistan over the Mumbai massacre. But the uncomfortable reality that we have an army that is simply not ready for one. Who is responsible ? Everyone from the generals who have become progressively bureaucratized, to bureaucrats whose only concern is over their empanelments and time-scales. And, above all, their political bosses who are content to let things be the way they are and allow hundreds of thousands of crore rupees be spent for an armed force that is not ready when needed.

This was the lead story in Mail Today January 17, 2009

Military weakness shapes our policy

India is being caught between a rock and a hard place in dealing with Pakistan’s culpability for the Mumbai massacre of November 26. If it had militarily struck Pakistan in the heat of the moment, the world would have understood. But at the time it had no evidence of direct Pakistani complicity, so it risked being branded an aggressor and blowing up four years of the peace process. The dilemma is that today, when it has the evidence, it still cannot strike.
But the reasons are different. First, Pakistan is ready. Second, because it is not the heat of the moment, and there is a sharp awareness in New Delhi that India lacks the military capacity to ensure the outcome is anything other than a messy stalemate. In other words, it can punish Pakistan, but it will have to take some punishment itself, along with the possibility that the situation spirals out of control and imposes damage which will close the country’s economic window of opportunity.
As a result, India is in an uncomfortable — but by no means hopeless — position of having to use international diplomacy to contain the terrorist threat from Pakistan. We have had some success — the UN Security Council has mandated that Pakistan shut down the Jamaat-ud-dawa. Islamabad may try and brazen it out by claiming that it is anything but a terrorist organisation, but that will work only for a while. Maneuvering desperately at the sunset of a US administration which was tolerant of its deviant ways, Pakistan may find the going difficult. There is a signal of sorts in Barack Obama’s decision to send the US Vice President-elect Joe Biden to Islamabad.


But all this is little comfort for India which must now think of a longer-term politico-military strategy to contain and possibly bring about the end of the Pakistan of today — the state which uses terrorism as an instrument of state policy and sees nothing wrong in running a nuclear Walmart that has sold nuclear weapons technology to anyone and everyone.

Armies

The first item in this agenda is the need for a military that can deliver its part of the strategy we pursue. As of now, besides saying that all options were open and that the armed forces were “in a state of full preparedness,” our politicians have not said much about the military option. But the military is cribbing about the politicians’ lack of will to press a conflict with Pakistan, while politicians grumble that our armed forces don’t have the kind of military capability that enables the United States and Israel to use military power without the fear of any significant retribution.
This is exactly what happened in 2001. The NDA government says that they authorised the armed forces to “do something” in the wake of the attack on the Parliament House. The army mobilised, the air force and navy readied themselves, but in the end the political authorities hesitated to give the final orders because no general could give them the guarantee of a clean and controlled outcome.
In September 2002, after the crisis had waned and India had done nothing after the second terrorist attack on the families of military personnel at Kaluchak, President Pervez Musharraf traveled to the US and in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, he had this to say: “… my military judgment was that they [Indians] would not attack us… Militarily…there is a certain ratio required for an offensive force to succeed. The ratios that we maintain are far above that — far above what a defensive force requires to defend itself...”
What he was saying was that our million-man army was not sufficient to overawe Pakistan.
After Mumbai, the country has pushed through several long overdue steps in the domestic arena to fight terrorism.

Culture

This is also then an opportune moment to reflect as to why we do not have a military force that can dissuade continued Pakistani adventurism which could one day take on a much more dangerous edge. Currently, by any reckoning, India enjoys a qualitative and quantitative edge over Pakistan in its air and naval assets, but the armies of the two countries are evenly matched, which means that if India can capture territory in Pakistan, the latter could also do the same in India.
On paper, India’s 1.3 million-man army with more than 12,000 tanks, artillery guns, rocket launchers and infantry combat vehicles is almost twice the size of Pakistan’s 620,000 force with some 6,000 tanks and artillery guns. But fully one-quarter of the Indian army is involved in counter-insurgency operations, and a significant number are committed to defence on the Sino-Indian border.


The Kargil review committee report had noted that “the heavy involvement of the Army in counter-insurgency operations cannot but affect its preparedness for its primary role, which is to defend the country against external aggression.” India spends some Rs 150,000 crores on its defence every year. It is unlikely that it can afford to spend more without compromising its economic development and social welfare goals.
Also, bean-count assessments, of course, do not take into account what a SIPRI study on military capacity and the risk of war pointed out: That traditional analyses do not provide an adequate measure of “military capacity or effectiveness.” It points towards “cultural” factors, as well as the role of organisational and political issues, as additional factors. Pakistan is a case in point. The state which uses terrorism as policy and which casually plays around with nuclear technology has a pathology whose characteristic is a morbid fear and historical loathing of India. Militarily deterring Pakistan has not been and is not, an easy proposition.
There is another problem arising from our own cultural mind-sets. India has a political-bureaucratic class that profoundly distrusts its own armed forces. Through our history as an independent country we have paid a price for this.
The incomplete outcome of the 1947 and 1965 wars with Pakistan and the disaster that India suffered at the hands of China in 1962 are examples of this. The latest manifestation of this is the refusal of the United Progressive Alliance government to press ahead with deep structural reforms suggested by the NDA government designed to make our armed forces a much more capable fighting unit.
Some of the reforms such as the establishment of a Defence Intelligence Agency have been accepted. But despite the creation of a Defence Acquisition Board, the process of acquiring new weapons system remains slow and encumbered with all manner of problems. As for the Defence science establishment, it remains beyond reform and repair.

Purpose

But this is small change. The big ticket item that would make a difference is the creation of the office of the Chief of Defence Staff who would become the principal military adviser to the Minister of Defence. The Integrated Defence set-up that the CDS would head would ensure that there was no duplication in the acquisition of equipment or training facilities. But his most important function would have been to oversee the creation of integrated theatre commands where all the arms — the army, navy, air force — would function under one command. Not only would this be a major measure of economy, it will vastly increase the combat power of our armed forces.
Unfortunately, the UPA has let things be. Its top leaders have refused to appoint a CDS and the three services are happy because they are able to retain their own respective commands and privileges. But the price we pay is in the bureaucratised military which has little or no taste for war, and lacks the kind of ambience which will produce generals who can guarantee results.
This article appeared first in Mail Today January 7, 2009

2009 could be Jammu and Kashmir's year of deliverance

Once again democratic elections have proved to be the life- blood of Jammu & Kashmir. For a while, last year, it appeared that nothing could stop the state’s selfdestructive plunge into chaos.

The Sangh Parivar’s irresponsible counter- agitation on the Amarnath land issue tipped public opinion in the Valley in favour of the separatists led by the most- hardline of them all — Syed Ali Shah Geelani. But, the voters have spoken. The 62- odd per cent that have voted have clearly laid out an agenda which we can live with.

Clearly, that agenda is centrist and secular. The elections have also provided us with a leader whose family roots take him to the very origin of what is called the Kashmir “ problem” and whose personality is well- suited to respond to the twin demands of roti, kapda aur makan , as well as a political settlement based on a restoration of genuine autonomy to the state. There is only way to go: forward. By now we have gathered an enormous of data on what can be done in the state. And what does the data say ?

Data

First , though 60 years have passed and a huge volume of water has flowed down the Jhelum, the state has not yet had a closure on its political demand of some kind of a distinct political status vis- à- vis the rest of India.

Second , status quo ante is not possible. There are many, especially in the security establishment, who believe that with the decline of armed militancy and Pakistan’s difficulties, India has the opportunity to return things to what they believe was the “ pristine state” of pre- rebellion Kashmir.

Unfortunately, things have not been pristine in J& K, ever. There have been periods of relative peace — 1953- 1964, 1975- 1983 — but mostly there has been an undercurrent of turbulence which goes back to the 1930s. In the two decades since 1989, the cultural and social fabric of the state has been ripped so thoroughly that there can be no return to the past. As it is it will take a herculean effort to repair the trauma caused by the death and violence that has visited the people of the state.

Third , notwithstanding this, the political fabric of the state has shown remarkable resilience. The recent election and its outcome reveals that the centrist and secular forces retain an edge over those who would seek to split the state, or run it on theological lines.

Fourth , notwithstanding pundits who say that the result represents a decoupling of the demand for aazadi with the roti, kapda, makan issues, the election signals a desire of the people of the Valley to seek a political settlement of their grievances.

Fifth , that India’s physical control of the Valley cannot be shaken by any armed movement. In the heady days of 1990, when thousands of young men went across the Line of Control for training, everything seemed possible.

Jehadis had driven the mighty Soviet armies from Afghanistan, indeed, the Soviet Union itself had collapsed. With insurgency raging in Punjab, perhaps a push could lead to the dissolution of the Union of India as well. That did not happen.

Sixth , India can absorb anything Pakistan can throw at it in J& K. Pakistan first used the pro- independence JKLF’s enthusiastic cadres to launch the rebellion and then sought to subsume it under the banner of the pro- Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen.

These forces were leavened by hardened Afghan cadre sent by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Afghanistantrained groups of Pakistanis in the Harkat- ul- mujahideen and Harkatul- Ansar. When even these flagged, Pakistan sent in the Lashkar- e- Tayyeba. But the ISI could not replicate its Afghan success because there was no way it could push stand- off weapons into the Valley, as it was able to do in Afghanistan.

Seventh , we know that J& K is not a religious or ethnic monolith. Its varied ethno- religious composition requires special political attention and that the numerical majority of the Kashmiri- speaking Muslims should not be translated into political overlordship over other regions.

Eighth , we know that though the entire world community considers Jammu & Kashmir to be disputed territory, there is a broad consensus that the state’s international boundaries should be drawn along the Line of Control. Disturbing this could cause uncontrollable political eddies not only in the state but throughout the Indian subcontinent.

Process

With these verities which would now appear to be immutable in the near term, there is no reason why those — including self- professedly the Pakistanis — who see themselves as wellwishers of Jammu and Kashmir cannot press ahead this year and bring the long- running political dispute in the state to a closure.

The election outcome offers a last chance of sorts for an internal settlement.

Militancy may have been defeated by a blood and iron policy, but the Amarnath agitation has shown us the abyss that remains.

That the separatists could transform a trivial issue like the transfer of a small piece of land for housing Amarnath pilgrims into a huge agitation, betokens the distance that needs to be covered to address the political demands of the people of J & K. Since 2004, we have witnessed a process between India and Pakistan that acknowledges that the dispute needs settlement. Whether or not the Indian and Pakistani governments are strong enough to effect a compromise remains to seen, and at least in the Indian case, it’s clear that the government is not so weak that a compromise is unavoidable. Though a formula that can be hailed, or at least be acceptable in New Delhi, Islamabad and Srinagar still remains to be worked out, a commonly accepted diplomatic process is underway.

The problem today is the state of Pakistan. The dragons teeth it had sowed have grown into monstrous jehadi warriors. These now menace not just India and Afghanistan, but Pakistan itself. The loss of Indian authority in the Valley of Kashmir will not lead to the aazadi of Kashmir, but its immediate Talibanisation.

Closure

Till 2005, the ISI had the Lashkar- e- Tayyeba firmly under its control. But after the earthquake in the region, the Lashkar has taken a life of its own as a major social and political force in the Azad Kashmir area. Lashkar militants have major camps there, supported by a growing web of educational and medical institutions that provide the people of the region the only services they get any way.

The decline of militant violence, the serious efforts underway by India and Pakistan to resolve their differences, the political temper of the state, as reflected by the elections, indicates that we are at the cusp of a historical moment.

While the negotiations with Pakistan continue apace — and their parameters have been well established— there is need for New Delhi to press ahead with a plan for achieving closure of the domestic debate on Kashmir’s status.

Fortuitously, the state is set to get a chief minister who may be able to provide not just the good governance needed by the ordinary Kashmiris, but the background to press the political settlement that was aborted in 2000, when the BJP- led NDA government rejected the autonomy report prepared by the National Conference government and adopted by the J& K state assembly.

In the years since, all that we have learnt is that the BJP has no new answers for Kashmir and that its single- minded focus remains on the grievances of the Jammu region.

All the cards are now open on the table. What we need is the political will to move forward. The price of procastination will be steep because Kashmir remains the poison pill stuck in the throat of “ Emerging India.”

This article appeared in Mail Today January 2, 2009