Full Spectrum: India's Wars, 1972-2020 by Arjun Subramaniam

Author:Arjun Subramaniam [Subramaniam, Arjun]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2020-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

14

THE INDIAN ARMY RESPONDS

‘ISI is our first line of defence and stands out as the best intelligence agency in the world.’ 1

– PRIME MINISTER OF PAKISTAN IMRAN KHAN IN 2018

STRATEGIZING AFTER PUNJAB

P unjab was India’s first brush with terrorism. Terrorism differs from insurgency in that the perpetrators coerce non-combatants instead of seeking popular support for a cause. A largely urban and semi-urban phenomenon in India, it has similarities with violent and organized crime. 2 The change in character of the terrorism in J&K and its morphing into externally abetted communal terrorism from the late 1980s, was not surprising to Indian intelligence agencies. Intelligence officers like Surendra Nath with extensive experience in J&K between the 1960s and 1980s had recommended a judicious mix of force and good governance to ensure that the indigenous terrorism led by the JKLF and HM was not hijacked by Pakistan-based jihadis led by the LeT and HuA. 3 Not helping matters was the weak and dilatory leadership in New Delhi starting with Prime Minister V.P. Singh’s coalition government, which had little stomach for using force as an enabler of statecraft and allowed Kashmir to drift for much of the late 1980s and early 1990s. They let the situation fester till there was no choice but to deploy the Indian Army in strength in counter-infiltration and counterterrorism roles in the early 1990s, also called CI and CT operations in the Indian Army.

The absence of any strategic and operational analysis of secessionist terrorism in Punjab resulted in the fading away of the lessons from that period. Consequently, its impact on the contours of the terrorism and proxy war in J&K rarely figures in current discussions on the subject. A deeper examination of the Kashmir crisis by Swami and Hamish Telford – a Canadian professor of political science – reveals its linkages with the Punjab’s secessionist movement in the 1980s and early 1990s. It escalated the covert war in J&K from a mere irritant for India’s security forces to a siege from within. 4 Telford is a keen analyst of counterterrorism operations in Punjab and J&K and writes that India’s current counterterrorism strategy in J&K is much like the one it followed in Punjab. Any further evolution has come through ‘trial and error’. 5 While he may be right to some extent, the evolution of India’s counterterrorism strategy has also come from a flexible process driven by experiential learning.

The lessons of the Naga insurgency and the experience of the IPKF in Sri Lanka are studied at the counterinsurgency school in Vairangte in Mizoram. This is also being undertaken at the corps battle schools that have been set up in 15 and 16 Corps; the two corps of the Indian Army that are actively involved in CI and CT operations in J&K. Army intellectuals like Chibber and Nanavatty have contributed immensely to the evolution of the CI/CT strategy as it exists today. Adding value to the discourse have been academics like Rajesh Rajagopalan who have written extensively on issues such as counterinsurgency operations.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.