Omission Shakti: It may have been wiser to sit on A-Sat, now Pakistan will want one

There is one thing you have to hand to Prime Minister Narendra Modi: His vast marketing skills. They were evident this week when he took a routine, if significant, step in India’s strategic programme, and inserted it into the campaign for the general election that is just weeks away.

Naturally, he did not say that he was doing so, and even now the Election Commission is probably tying itself into knots to see how to play this one. The promotional skill was evident in the naming of the event as “Mission Shakti”, an attempt to conflate the importance of India’s first anti-satellite (A-Sat) test with the far more consequential and game-changing nuclear tests of 1998 which were code-named “Operation Shakti”.

A PM taking credit for an achievement during his tenure is not unusual, neither is the use of a national security event to seek a boost in the polls. But there are some other troubling issues that need to be considered as well. The test where a missile destroyed a satellite in low-earth orbit (LEO) was essentially a technology demonstration exercise, akin to the test of the Agni technology demonstrator in 1989, or that of the first Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) test in 2006. Neither of them saw an over-the-top prime ministerial response. Instead of deterring the adversary, you end up alarming them, well before your own system has matured. Given the as yet limited range of the Indian radar and the capability of its hit-to-kill missile, we have some way to go before we can claim to have an effective A-Sat system. The Indian way of broadcasting capabilities yet to be fully developed varies sharply with the Chinese who hide theirs for as long as they can.

On the other hand China has not only demonstrated in 2007 that it can knock out a satellite as India has done, it has also established several other technologies to “kill” satellites. Among these are satellites that come close to “inspect”, refuel and repair other satellites. This ability means they can also harm them and so they are seen as A-Sat systems. China is also quite advanced in the area of directed energy weapons like high powered microwaves, radio frequency weapons and ground based lasers to dazzle optical satellites and fry the electronics of the others. They carried out a successful experiment in blinding one of their own at an orbit of 600km as far back as 2005. Americans suspect that a 2013 test of a sounding rocket going up 30,000 km was, in fact, related to threatening GPS and communications satellites which are in medium and high earth orbits. It’s one thing to knock out a satellite in LEO, but destroying or disabling those in the geostationary orbit 36,000 km away is different by orders of magnitude.

Technology demonstration has its value. It is often the sensible means of warning off adversaries, without needlessly destabilising the environment. Also, it is much cheaper. The problem is that it doesn’t work when the adversary to be deterred is a neurotic neighbour called Pakistan. As for China, it will be some time before it actually feels threatened by an Indian A-Sat capability. Far from deterring, India’s civil nuclear programme in the 1950s and 1960s encouraged Pakistan to initiate its military nuclear programme well before the Indian nuclear test of 1974. Likewise, following India’s technology demonstration of the Agni in 1989, Pakistan got M-11 missiles from China in 1991, along with a factory to manufacture the M-9, which were ready to use well before India had a ready to deploy missile. And when India tested nuclear weapons in 1998, Pakistan responded within weeks with its already pre-tested Chinese bomb.

So don’t be surprised if India’s A-Sat technology demonstration is followed by one in Pakistan. The technologies to destroy LEO satellites are not all that complicated, especially since Pakistan’s “iron brother” China has all of them. It has a tested SC-19 missile which is both a BMD system and a satellite killer. The resulting situation will not be particularly comfortable for India which has, according to one count, 94 satellites in orbit today, as compared to just six for Pakistan.

Times of India March 30, 2019

India's ASAT Capability Has Been Around for Some Time Now

Shortly after the first test of India’s ballistic missile Agni V, Dr V.K. Saraswat told India Today in a wide-ranging interview that “India has all the building blocks for an anti-satellite system in place.” But he said India would avoid a physical test “because of the risk of space debris affecting other satellites,” and remain content to do the fine tuning electronically.

In another report, he was quoted as saying that India would field an ASAT weapon based on Agni and the AD-2 Ballistic Missile interceptor by 2014.

So it’s clear that India has had the capacity to test an ASAT system for a while. Why it chose to do it a couple of weeks short of the general elections has been made obvious by the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a special address to the nation to announce it. Note, Modi did not make any such address in the more trying circumstances of the Pulwama attack, when 40 CRPF jawans were killed by the Jaish-e-Mohammad. Note, too, that Saraswat is currently a political appointee in the NITI Aayog created by the Modi government.

Saraswat had himself explained what was needed – a Long Range Tracking Radar (LRTR) such as the one the DRDO had been using for its Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) tests. Once you acquire a satellite, it is easy to figure out its trajectory and use a missile that lofts a “kill vehicle” that may or may not have an explosive warhead and is guided by infra-red and radar frequency seekers to reach the target and knock it out. All that is needed in the case of the satellite is a physical hit that will send it spinning off its chosen orbit.

Narendra Modi addresses the nation about the Mission Shakti. Credit: Screenshot

Previous tests by China and the US

IN 2007, when China tested an SC-19 missile to destroy a Feng Yun IC weather satellite in low earth orbit 865 km away, more than 3,000 pieces of trackable and 32,000 untrackable pieces of debris were created, threatening other satellites and the international space station. Most satellite activity and the space station are parked in the LEO. The resulting furore ensured that Beijing did not carry out any more destructive ASAT tests.

The US was the first to conduct a destructive test in 1985 of a satellite orbiting at 555 km. But later, its programme was cancelled, though it did knock off another satellite using a ship-based missile, shortly after the 2007 Chinese test, saying that the ‘target’ was malfunctioning.

In 2013, a UN Group of Governmental Experts on Outer Space CBMS recommended a number of new confidence-building measures. One of these stipulated that intentional orbital breakups that left a debris tail must be avoided. They did not say that ASAT tests should be banned. All they said was that the test should ideally leave no debris, or low debris (which can be achieved by a test on a target sufficiently low so that the debris is not long-lived). The third recommendation was that these tests should be notified to others so as to avoid mis-perceptions.

Of the three known destructive tests, the Indian target was the lowest at 300 km or so. As indicated above, the 1985 American target was 555 km above, and the 2007 Chinese one was at 865 km. So, the likelihood is that there will be no dangerous debris, but that is something we will have to wait and see.

India’s BMD capability

Hopefully, there will be other independent confirmation that the test did indeed take place. The DRDO’s claimed BMD tests were overstated considerably since they were done in highly controlled conditions and sometimes the targets were electronically simulated and acquired. The missile used as the target was the short-range Prithvi, rather than an actual Medium Range Ballistic Missile like the Agni, which would be the kind of missile India would have to defend itself against.

Over the years, India has built up a BMD capability though it is far from mature. But any country that has such a capability can easily re-deploy it for ASAT purposes. India had acquired the Israeli Green Pine radar, and possibly the technology for the interceptor missile and the kill vehicle from the Israelis. Tracking a missile is considerably more difficult than tracking a satellite.

The Chinese have systematically tested their SC-19 in 2005, 2006, 2010 and 2013 and 2014, though they termed these tests as being BMD tests aimed at missiles. They have used their Dong Neng 2 and 3 sounding rockets as kinetic kill vehicles which can be used for both satellites and missiles. In August 2010, a Shijian satellite bumped off another satellite from orbit and in 2016 an Aolong satellite with a robotic arm was tested, allegedly to deal with space debris, but could also have been a simulated ASAT test.

ASAT weapons, while useful to knock out communications and imaging satellites, are not all that effective against those flying at higher orbits. The US has a number of imaging satellites at Geosynchronous orbits 36,000 km away, out of the range of the missiles that can hit them. GPS satellites, too, are at ranges of 20,000-36,000 km.

The Wire March 27, 2019

Three Recent Events Prove the Alarm Bells Are Ringing Louder Than Ever in Kashmir

We know that events in Jammu and Kashmir have been sliding backwards for some time now. The rising death toll in the Valley, the increased recruitment of Valley inhabitants into the armed militancy and the repeated crackdowns and curfews have been signalling this for a while. But three events in recent weeks are ringing the alarm bells louder than ever.

The first was the custodial death of Rizwan Asad Pandit earlier this month. He was reportedly a Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu & Kashmir (JIJK) activist and school principal, who had been arrested by the National Investigation Agency. The second was the banning of the JIJK itself and the third, the ban on the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front.

These events seem to suggest that the clock is being turned back in Jammu and Kashmir. It almost seems as though we are back in the 1990s with its unrelenting violence, the use of torture and mass repression. And all this is being done as a deliberate act of policy.

The most alarming development was Pandit’s death. A preliminary autopsy submitted by the Government Medical College, Srinagar has said that he died of “excessive bleeding caused by deep wounds on his body”. Though the final report will only be out in two weeks or so, the indications are that he was beaten to death.

Explaining the JIJK and JKLF

As for the JIJK, it has had a chequered history. Popular with the educated middle classes and the young, it has moved from constitutionalism to militant radicalism and back to constitutionalism in the last 50 years. The JIJK is distinct from either the Jamaat-e-Islami-Hind or counterpart organisations in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and, indeed, Pakistan itself.

In the 1970s, it openly advocated participation in elections in the state. Its top leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani was elected as an MLA thrice. It was loss in the rigged elections of 1987 that triggered Mohammed Yusuf Shah aka Syed Salahuddin’s radicalism.

Subsequently, under the leadership of Geelani and Salahuddin, the history of the organisation and the insurgency that broke out in 1990 were intertwined. It was the JIJK which was openly pro-Pakistan, that provided the leadership and the bulk of the cadre for the Hizbul Mujahideen which had worked to turn the JKLF uprising for “azadi” into one for a merger with Pakistan.

But the Indian response, which led to the deaths and arrests of hundreds of its cadre, led to a re-think in the Jamaat under the leadership of Ghulam Mohammed Bhat. It self-consciously distanced itself from the militant group, which meant distancing itself from both Syed Ali Shah Gilani and Hizbul Muhaideen leader Syed Salahuddin who now  lives in Muzaffarabad. Gilani protested, but Bhat’s views prevailed in the organisation and Gilani was sidelined in the JIJK.

Bhat was instrumental in getting the All Parties Hurriyat Conference to adopt a resolution saying that it would not oppose the state assembly elections that were later held in 2002. Subsequently, Geelani was dropped as a political adviser. In 2004, the top-most decision-making body of the organisation, the Majlis-e-Shoora, committed itself to “democratic and constitutional struggle”.  In 2008, the then Amir, Sheikh Mohammed Hassan, officially announced that it would not participate in the boycott of the assembly elections called for by the Hurriyat.

Over the years, Jamaat chiefs had realised that involvement with the militancy was costing them their ability to function as a socio-religious group. The JIJK leadership therefore led the organisation back to the point where it was running educational institutions and organising campaigns against Westernisation of the youth.

As for the JKLF, it initiated the Kashmir insurgency, but they were soon a spent force. With their leaders killed or under arrest – some betrayed by the Hizbul Mujahideen cadre – they officially declared a unilateral ceasefire and their leader Yasin Malik was released from jail in mid 1994. Having burnt their bridges in Pakistan, the JKLF remain a token force in J&K. Indeed, it was soon acceptable enough for Yasin Malik to be presented at a meeting with the new prime minister, Manmohan Singh, in 2005. That nothing came of this is another matter.

Have they moved back to violence?

The government actions now would suggest that both the JIJK and JKLF have backtracked, and are once again committed to violent separatism. If so, the government itself is squarely to blame. A judicious mix of tough policing and political outreach had more or less neutralised these organisations. If the government is now cracking down on them, it must ask itself as to why things have come to this pass.

The government may cite Pulwama as the reason for its action, but the mess in Kashmir predates that. It goes back to 2016 and Operation All Out, aimed at an all-or-nothing approach that has refused to discriminate between political dissidence and armed militancy.

With reference to Pulwama, there are still a lot of explanations the government must provide over its intelligence failure that allowed a huge amount of explosives to get through the Line of Control and for Pakistani terrorists to fabricate a sophisticated car bomb and use it with devastating effect against the hapless CRPF convoy. Wrapping themselves with the national flag cannot be an alibi for the failure.

Over the weekend, two sets of explanations appeared for the JIJK and JKLF bans. Both appear to be post-facto explanations.

A reporter known for her excellent sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs said in a report that the ban was an outcome of the Jammu and Kashmir high court’s dismissal of a plea for the transfer of a case relating to the killing of four unarmed IAF personnel in 1990. What the report suggests is that the government plans to revisit the entire outbreak of the militancy in 1988-1990. How much of this will be justiciable 30 years later is the big question, especially when it relates to insurgency and terrorism.

A second report attributed to a “senior official” says that the JIJK was responsible for channelling Kashmiri youth back into the militancy in the last couple of years. They had been using their network of schools to promote an anti-Indian feeling. The report seems to contradict other reportage that suggests that the enhanced recruitment in the Valley had very local factors and were often linked to the emotions aroused by the killing of local militants and their funerals.

But perhaps there is a simpler explanation for all that has been  happening. The Bharatiya Janata Party has seen the Pulwama blasts and the subsequent clash with Pakistan as a golden opportunity to give life to its election campaign. To show to the electorate that it is tough on terror, it is cynically torching the existing Kashmir policy, aimed at bringing reconciliation with the separatists. This was a policy that had achieved a great deal and brought the state back from the brink.

The Wire March 25, 2019

Tactics at work, grand strategy unclear

The steps and missteps of the Modi government’s Pakistan policy are well known. Their general range has been from naivete to realism and petulance. The policy has been all tactics — surgical strikes, airstrikes, diplomatic moves and declarations. What we can’t get a measure of is its grand strategy. What is the endpoint that the government is aiming for when it comes to Pakistan?

Does it want to: (a) Hammer Pakistan militarily to the point of surrender? (b) Use covert instruments to break up the country or economic instruments to make it bankrupt? (c) Make it an international pariah like South Africa (of apartheid infamy)? (d) Persist with the older policy of transforming Pakistan into a mirror image of India?

India and Pakistan’s higher strategy in relation to each other goes back to their troubled birth. So, both aimed at ways and means of making the other a copy of themselves — India sought a secular, democratic Pakistan, while the latter kept pushing policies that would make India into some version of an authoritarian Hindu nation.

The stalwarts of the freedom struggle — Gandhi, Nehru, Patel or, for that matter, Subhas Chandra Bose — envisaged a country where religious identity would be submerged by identification with the nation. They were, however, blindsided by the Pakistan Movement that convinced a section of Indian Muslims that they needed their own State; they would never get political equality in a Hindu-dominated India.

Pakistan’s strategy has worked along the need to create ‘effective parity’ with India through heavy military expenditure, alliances with great powers, developing nuclear weapons, and using covert operations and terrorism to break up its larger neighbour. Its eventual goal was a smaller, more Hindu-oriented India, an entity it could manage, and one that would justify its own existence.

India’s primary goal has been the consolidation of an enormously diverse nation and effecting its economic transformation. Within this larger goal, India has wanted to get Pakistan off its back. It did not want to divert resources to a policy that would dismantle or degrade Pakistan, simply manage it to the lowest level of violence.

India and its leaders, from Jawaharlal Nehru to Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, believed that since India was much more powerful, it could adopt a strategy of strategic restraint. They believed this could eventually yield a Pakistan that was more like India — tolerant, democratic and liberal. So, New Delhi engaged the Pakistani State, even as it became a military dictatorship, threw tantrums over Kashmir and, after 1980, began to use terrorists and separatists to destabilise India behind a shield of nuclear weapons.

A high point of sorts was reached in the Vajpayee-Manmohan years. In January 2004, Islamabad hosted the SAARC summit; its great achievement was an agreement on creating a South Asian Free Trade Area. Through meetings on the sidelines, Prime Minister Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf came up with an agreement for a comprehensive dialogue between the two countries relating to a range of issues, including terrorism and Jammu and Kashmir.

India’s grand strategy was now clearer — embed Pakistan in a larger South Asian economic area, resolve issues large and small and gradually ‘normalise’ its conduct through trade, commerce, tourism and educational exchanges. Over the next couple of years, violence began to come down and the two sides came close to resolving the Kashmir issue as well.

Alarmed, the Pakistani deep state unleashed the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008, an action that successfully poisoned relations between the two countries and prevented the Manmohan Singh government from putting its Pakistan policy back on an even keel. The Mumbai attacks succeeded in disrupting the unfolding Indian strategy in relation to Pakistan.

After a year and a half in power, Modi shifted away decisively from the strategy of ‘normalising’ Pakistan. We have seen tactical manifestations of a new Modi doctrine, but are yet to get a measure of the strategy itself. Perhaps there is none since the shift may be occasioned only by electoral considerations.

What we do, alarmingly, notice is that Pakistan’s larger project of dividing the subcontinent into its ‘Muslim’ and ‘Hindu’ components has moved ahead several notches in the Modi years. It has been helped, ironically, by the BJP and Sangh Parivar scheme of marginalising domestic Muslims and demonising Pakistan.

The gau raksha movement has seen increased coercion and physical attacks on Indian Muslims. In Kashmir, political dialogue has been abandoned for a policy of relentless military pressure. The Citizenship Amendment Bill is seeking to facilitate the grant of Indian citizenship to religious communities from South Asia, but it pointedly excludes Muslims.

As for Pakistan, the Modi team’s views are hazy, but there is a lot of tactical noise about defeating and degrading the country through a mix of military and diplomatic means. But there is nothing in the military balance to suggest that we can transform Pakistan into the South Asian equivalent of the Palestinian West Bank. Even if Pakistan is broken up and left with only the rump of Punjab, it would still be twice the size of North Korea.

India simply lacks the resources of the US, which has degraded adversaries in Iraq, and is now attempting it in Iran. There are other key differences too — in both instances, nuclear weapons are/were not in play and neither of them is a neighbour of the US.

There is a saying, attributed to Chinese master Sun Tzu, that strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory, while tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Just what ‘victory’ and ‘defeat’ could mean in the India-Pakistan contest of grand strategies remains up in the air.

Tribune March 19, 2019

China Saves Masood Azhar: Fighting Terror Needs Action, Not the UN

There should be little surprise that China has blocked the designation of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist once again. It was clear on Monday, when the Chinese official spokesman Lu Kang, read off the usual rigmarole, in response to a question on the listing, “China has all along participated in relevant discussions in a responsible manner and in strict accordance with the rules of procedure and provisions of the (UN’s) 1267 Committee.”

Blocking the move for the fourth time, China sent a note to the UNSC on Wednesday night, saying that it needed more time to examine the request. With this technical hold, the move has been frozen for the next six months.

Why China Blocked Bid to List Masood Azhar as Global Terrorist

China has played a similar role in earlier efforts – in 2009, 2016 and 2017. However, it had gone along with the listing of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Mohammed Saeed and his deputy Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, in 2009, in the wake of the November 2008 Mumbai attack. Those designated by the Committee have their assets frozen and are prohibited from foreign travel.

Beijing claims that there are some technical and procedural issues that need to be resolved before it can support the move. Yet, other prominent permanent members of the UN’s Security Council—US, UK, and France—backed the move, along with a number of non-permanent members. It is obvious that China’s “deeper than the seas and higher than the mountains” friendship with Pakistan has guided its action.

In his Monday statement, spokesman Lu had said that “China will continue to communicate and work with relevant parties in a responsible manner so as to properly resolve this matter.” It was referring, of course, to Pakistan, where Beijing had, on 6 March, sent Vice Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou (to Islamabad).

The Chinese were keen to have Kong visit New Delhi as well, but the latter demurred. India is not keen to allow China’s claim that it is mediating on the issue. It did, however, welcome a junior Saudi Minister Adel al-Jubeir to come to New Delhi on Monday, following his earlier visit to Islamabad. But this was ostensibly a follow-up visit to that of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in February.

India Needn’t Fret Over China Blocking Anti-Masood Azhar Bid

The Chinese view is that not only should India “exercise restraint”, it should help create an “enabling atmosphere” so that Pakistan can cooperate with others on this issue. China simply ignores Islamabad’s mendacity, if not criminality, in supporting terrorist groups as instruments on foreign policy. But in international relations, it’s interests that matter, not aesthetics.

In line with this, New Delhi has taken the setback on its chin. Expressing disappointment over the development, it has been careful to avoid naming China in its official statement, following the Chinese hold. All it has said is that “a member” of the 1267 Committee had placed the proposal on hold.

India had hoped that this time around, Beijing would cooperate. It had, after all, made a major shift in its posture towards China through the Wuhan Summit. This shift involved an informal Indian commitment to abjure from using the “Tibet card” with China. Incidentally, in 2016, when Beijing had put a hold, New Delhi had named Beijing and excoriated it for not showing greater “understanding of the danger posed to all by terrorism.”

It would be foolish for New Delhi to get worked up about the Chinese hold. The listing by itself does little to restrain either Islamabad or the terrorists. After all it has meant little that Hafiz Saeed has been on the list since 2009, or that the Jaish as an organisation has been on the list since 2001. Terrorism and terrorists are not fought by paper listings, but through kinetic actions.

There is certain value to the listing, but only if it is taken in conjunction with other actions, which include wider diplomacy, covert action, air strikes and ground attacks on terrorist facilities.

Getting China Around to Pressurise Pakistan Isn’t Impossible

New Delhi has now learnt that it cannot work its international relations or counter-terrorist policy along with its election cycle. The project of getting China around to pressure Pakistan needs to be pursued along its own time-line, just as the goal of persuading Pakistan to abandon the instrumentality of terrorist proxies.

There are enough indications that this is not an impossible task. India was able to bring around Beijing to placing Pakistan on the FATF ‘grey list’ in this manner. And, after all, Beijing did act against Hafiz Saeed and Lakhvi.

In an interview with The Hindu the former Indian Ambassador to China, Gautam Bambawale had noted that India’s only option to a Chinese barracking was to keep trying. He suggested that India needed to be more transactional, and perhaps look for things Beijing would like in exchange for the Azhar listing.

The global community’s response to the Pulwama attack and the Indian response was generally sympathetic. There are enough indications that countries like the US, Saudi Arabia and China, all friendly to Islamabad, are nudging Pakistan in the right direction. India needs to keep working with them, just as it does need to keep sharpening its more kinetic instruments to deal with terrorists.

Quint March 14, 2019

Death of ‘War’ Journalism: Controlling Govt, Suicidal Media Groups

Field reporting of conflict is dying in India—assaulted by a government which seeks to control the narrative tightly. But there is also a suicidal impulse in media groups who no longer want to challenge the government’s version of events. The result is that in our era, “war” reporters are jokers who act out their scenes dressed in faux bullet proof vests and combat jackets—but inside “war rooms” constructed in a TV studio.

Indian journalism has not produced great war reportage of the caliber of Ernie Ple, Wilfred Burchett, Dickey Chapelle, Marie Colvin, Robert Fisk,  Ryszard Kapuscinski, John Simpson, Peter Arnett, and scores of others, mainly from the west. But there have been journalists who have done the profession proud.

War Reporting During India’s Intervention in Sri Lanka

Without doubt, the highest point in the war journalism of independent India was during our ill-fated Sri Lankan venture in 1987.  Sumir Lal, a young reporter for The Telegraph of Kolkata went from Colombo and reached the LTTE positions facing the Indian Peace Keeping Force. Equally intrepid was Anita Pratap who, with photographer Shyam Tekwani, also managed to reach LTTE lines. Her searing reportage and Tekwani’s photographs in India Today showing Indian troops lying dead after an LTTE ambush, are forgotten now, just as the India’s Sri Lanka venture is.

But their reportage would have led to a riot in today’s hyper patriotic atmosphere.

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From the outset, courageous reporting of the Sri Lankan adventure was able to inform the country of the somewhat questionable assumptions behind India’s decision to commit the so-called peace force in our neighbouring country. This brand of journalism provided a forewarning to the Generals who had assumed that dealing with the LTTE would be a two-week affair.

The Defence Ministry has always insisted in maintaining total control on information relating to a conflict. As a result, in Sri Lanka, soldiers died, were cremated on the island, and forgotten. Great acts of sacrifice and bravery remained unreported, except when the government chose to provide the information.

Accidental and Independent Conflict Reporting

Even today, the Ministry has this attitude to information, guarding it tightly in an era when commercially available satellite imagery can challenge their narrative. Time and again it has been shown that accurate reporting, howsoever painful it is for the armed forces, is a bigger battle-winning and morale-raising factor than inept news management that lacks integrity.

The first Indian war correspondent, as it were, was inadvertent. Journalist G K Reddy was stranded on the wrong side of the lines when the Pakistani-led tribal raiders attacked Kashmir in October 1947. He escaped from “Azad Kashmir” and wrote a series of reports that made his name across the country.

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In India in the 1980s, the commercially successful newsmagazines like India Todayand Sunday began to change things by sending journalists to conflict zones, independent of government support. This was  a major factor in encouraging a climate of professionalism and objectivity. Emulating the trend, soon TV news channels, too, began to spend considerable sums of money to send teams of journalists to cover the second Gulf War or the Afghan conflict.

Kargil Reporting Changed the Game

Many others may argue that the coming of age of Indian war reporting was during the Kargil war. It is true that there was some graphic reportage from that event, but it was from the relative safety of the National Highway 1D linking Srinagar with Leh. We say “relative” because the reporters there were in danger of being hit by Pakistani shelling and some were injured. The frontline was 4 or 5 kilometres as a crow flies from the highway.

The Kargil war changed the dynamics of the relationship between the government and the media.

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Since the usual route to Kargil was via Srinagar, it was easy to prevent journalists going up. But the reporters soon took flights to Leh and motored down to Kargil and began reporting before the Army press organization got its act together.

However, the government soon realized that conflict reporting was a huge bonus. Private TV channels, who were relatively new, brought the impact of the war to the average Indian home. Emotions were heightened by the footage of funerals of the soldiers, who had died in the front. The government of the day, facing a General Election soon, decided to use the reportage to whip up nationalistic fervor and hoped to cash in on it at the ballot box. Never mind the fact that it was intelligence failure of the instruments of the same government that were responsible for the war that eventually saw the deaths of over 500 soldiers and officers.

Truth Vs Propaganda in Conflict Reporting

Reporters in the west have often covered war from the adversaries’ side as well and many have died and continue to die in the process. There has never been a question of any Indian reporter being able to report from the adversaries’ side in the wars with Pakistan and China It is unusual for combatants to allow reporters from adversary countries to report from their territory. But skillful insurgent groups use it to further their aims.

This is, however, a matter of the geographical location of the battlefield and the intensity of operations. So, even as a Peter Arnett or Rageh Omar could report from Baghdad under the American aerial attack in 1991 and 2003, those who went in with the US forces into Iraq and Afghanistan were often “embedded” with military units.

Philip Knightley’s The First Casualty is a useful work to understand the nature of war reporting. The book’s title refers to the fact that truth is often the first casualty in a war. The subtitle, The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker speaks for itself.

‘Patriotic’ Journalists

Total war like World War II saw journalists, too,  conscripted into the war effort. Patriotic reporting was the norm and reporting was of the embedded  variety. The brush wars of the 1950s and 1960s enabled journalists, especially from countries neutral in a conflict to cover both sides.

In times of open war, media almost everywhere sheds even-handedness to become “patriotic”. War is a situation when national feelings are heightened and most newspapers won’t go against the grain, if for purely commercial considerations. However, what marks out great reporting from what we see in India today is the effort made by journalists to seek and report the truth, and for great editors to publish or broadcast it without fear of consequences.

Quint March 9, 2019