Wounded, yet no wiser

Dinesh Kumar in Chandigarh

Another surprise attack, more precious lives lost, another humiliation, some strong condemnatory statements followed high-level visits to Srinagar and a flurry of high-level meetings in New Delhi, only to culminate in a return to ‘business as usual’. This sums up the standard sequence of events starting with security lapse and intelligence failure that gets repeated with monotonous regularity in a country that prides itself on being the world’s third largest military. 

History undoubtedly is replete with examples of intelligence failure and of countries being caught by surprise to attacks from adversaries. There is nothing unusual about that and there are library full of books to explain why it happens and why intelligence failures are difficult to prevent. But it takes only a few expressions to describe why in India it has become a habit to be caught unawares and to suffer attrition at the hands of a country one-third its size that brazenly resorts to terrorism as an instrument of state policy and unhesitatingly resorts to nuclear blackmail. And that is incompetence and repeated failure and inability to learn its lessons by the country’s security establishment that often finds it difficult to protect even itself leave aside its citizens.

Remember Haji Pir?

Uri, located close to the Line of Control (LoC), is a virtual gateway to the Kashmir Valley located not far from the 8,652-ft Haji Pir Pass, a dominating feature situated on the western fringe of the formidable Pir Panjal range that divides the Kashmir Valley from Jammu region. Most significantly, the Haji Pir bulge provides a direct ingress to both these regions of the state. It is through this militarily fortified Pass that was infamously returned to Pakistan after its capture by the Indian Army following a tough fight against all odds on August 28, 1965 that Islamabad has been infiltrating terrorists into the Jammu and Kashmir for over a quarter of a century. 

Again, it was this Pass through which prior to the start of the 1965 India-Pakistan War that the Pakistani Army, as part of its dubious Operation Gibraltar, had surreptitiously launched the main influx of its infiltration campaign into the Kashmir Valley.

The Indian Army is heavily deployed all along the jagged and militarily illogical 740-km long LoC that runs along mountain ranges starting from gentle heights of 3,000 feet near Naushera in Jammu region to hostile high altitudes of over 20,000 feet in barren and mountainous Ladakh. 

Harsh terrain and severe weather are the two biggest enemies for soldiers which on many occasions renders ineffective the high technology wiring and sensors positioned at many places along the LoC. A hundred percent prevention of infiltration is impossible considering that the Berlin Wall built by the Soviets and the East Germans during the Cold War as also the wall built by a highly security conscious Israel at its Palestinian border could not deter 100 per cent infiltration.

What goes wrong?

But how would one explain the Army’s inability to secure its own establishments and repeatedly suffer attrition from small groups of young illiterate terrorists armed with rifles and grenades? From the terrorist point of view, it makes sense to attack the very instrument entrusted with securing the state, especially along the LoC. But the fact that four terrorists could so easily breach the Army’s security reflects poorly on the men in olive green. It reflects adversely on the Army’s state of alertness and awareness to its immediate ‘environment’ (such as movement of people) in the vicinity of the cantonment. To top it all, the outrageous incident occurred when there is continuing violent unrest in the Valley and at a time when relations between India and a Kashmir-obsessed Pakistan are at a low. In fact this is the time when the Army and all security agencies ought to be in a heightened state of security. As was the case prior to the May-June 1999 Kargil War, the Army yet again was caught shamefully unawares.

Terrorists from Pakistan have been consciously targeting military installations along the LoC and the International Border - the attack on Pathankot airbase starting from last New Year eve being the last such major attack on a military establishment. Like Uri, Pathankot is located close to the border with Pakistan and was (and continues to be) both a target for Pakistan and a front-line fighter airbase for India during wars between the two countries. 

Only six months earlier, in July last year, terrorists from Pakistan had attacked a police station in Dinanagar, not far from Pathankot. 

Where it hurts most

Within a period of six months between December 2014 and May 2015, the security forces, mainly the Army, have been attacked by terrorists in their locations. Less than two years earlier (December 5, 2014), a group of heavily armed terrorists stormed the Army’s 31 Field Ordnance Depot (a major depot where ammunition for Army units in the area is stored), located at Mohra, near Uri, killing nine Army men including a Lieutenant Colonel and three policemen. Six terrorists were also killed. Three months later, on March 20, 2015, a group of terrorists stormed into Kathua police station killing five including three security force personnel and wounding 12. Yet, the very next day an Army Major and a soldier were injured in another terrorist attack on an Army camp located not far from Kathua on the Jammu-Pathankot highway. Another two months later (on May 31, 2015), an attack on the Army’s Brigade headquarters in Tangdhar, a bulge ahead of Kupwara that juts into PoK, was foiled. In all there have been over 20 attacks on security force installations in Jammu and Kashmir in the last two years.

Get to the basics

India, which is engaged in purchasing big-ticket items such as aircraft carriers, submarines and fighter aircraft, needs to very critically also ‘sweat the small stuff’ comprising equipment such as thermal imagers and other night fighting equipment, direction finding sensors, better close-quarter battle weapons, high-security perimeter fencing around cantonments etc considering that India has and will continue to be engaged in fighting Pakistan’s low-cost proxy war in a state on which it is not expected to give up until either a decisive and long-lasting action is taken or there is change of heart. 

Deficient — overtly, covertly 

What is obvious is that for many years now, India’s huge defence and security establishment and a current defence budget of a staggering Rs 3.5 lakh crore has failed to deter Pakistan. Despite the huge monetary budget, the armed forces are lacking in equipment, War Wastage reserves are restricted, and even the operational readiness of a significant percentage of existing military equipment is suspect. There are issues pertaining to the quality of leadership and training as also the fact that the Army has ceased to attract the best and the brightest among the youth for many years now made no better by grievous anomalies in successive Central Pay Commission awards. 

India’s covert operations capability is severely restricted while serious qualitative and quantitative deficiencies continue in the country’s operational intelligence gathering capability. The country’s higher defence organization remains structured in a manner whereby the armed forces remain ‘integrated’ with the Ministry of Defence only on paper while in reality remain outside the decision-making process on issues of national security. This leaves India with non-military options which are slower and time-consuming and, some would argue, a wiser approach.

More money and equipment apart, the question is whether India’s political executive is taking active interest in and ensuring qualitative supervision of India’s defence and security institutions. But then how could they when they themselves are militarily illiterate and disinterested, focused as they are on vote bank politics, political manipulations and making money and on seeking to secure themselves for the next election. Until then, Pathankot, Uri and the like will recur and the country continue to slowly bleed to which the response in all probability is likely to remain the passive application of bandages to a thousand cuts with statements only getting louder and shriller.