Operation Khukri: Faraway land, hard-earned win

Sandeep Sinha

The Indian Army is known for its professionalism and coming up trumps against all odds. Besides the wars fought and the constant task of keeping the borders safe, the Army gets to enrich its experience by taking part in international peacekeeping operations supervised by the United Nations in conflict zones, a challenge because of the unfamiliar terrain and bringing the warring sides to the talking table.

The book is an account of the role played by the Indian Army as part of the United Nations peacekeeping force, or Blue Berets as they are called, under Major Rajpal Punia in Sierra Leone. A small former British colony in West Africa, it was battered by years of civil war, military coups and rebel movements. The turmoil had seen an estimated 50,000 people lose their lives and more than 10 lakh displaced.

A total of 233 Indian peacekeepers, there for the discharge of their duty, were kept hostage at Kailahun, the heartland of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). While the rebels had forced peacekeepers from other nations to lay down their arms and take off their uniforms, the Indian soldiers refused to do so and mounted a valiant counter-attack to free their men.

The account of Operation Khukri is gripping. How Major Punia, because of shortage of arms, used just his black umbrella amid torrential rain to march ahead in the face of bullets and motivate his troops. The reality of the battlefield, when resources can prove to be of not much use and work has to be done by thinking on one’s feet, is brought alive. The role of coordination in the combat zone, between units commanded by different officers and between wings like the Infantry and Air Force, is also amply underlined.

Inside the combat zone, there is the task of dealing with recalcitrant individuals who may question an order or not like it. The commanding officer has to prevail, through persuasion and by instilling discipline if necessary. There is human emotion involved and Punia has described how it is usual for soldiers to write letters to their families before the battle begins, not knowing whether they would return home alive. Punia’s own letter to his wife is a telling description of this psyche. The book is dedicated to Havildar Krishan Kumar, the only casualty in the war, who had a foreboding of it before he left, and died when hit by a rocket while driving an ammunition-laden vehicle. He was awarded the Sena Medal posthumously.

The challenge of bringing all 233 Indian soldiers back home alive meant losing the lives of the locals whom they had been safeguarding; the destruction in Kailahun bore testimony to it. The loss of lives has troubled the writer ever since, for they had become his friends, like Papa Giema, Colonel Martin and Sister, who had no one left to take care of her.

Damini Punia writes how when she went to stay with her father, who was posted at Danapur near Patna in Bihar, she found diaries about the story of Kailahun, about how her father had led the Indian Army in the 2000 operation, a year after the Kargil War, fetching him the Yudh Seva Medal for gallantry, an apt account of the occupational hazards that the men in olive green face, in faraway lands, for the sake of peace and security.