The fedayeen attack against an army camp near Akhnoor evoked a wide response in the media and through it amongst the public. One is accosted by strangers — who recognise me from TV appearances and writings — who ask why the army takes such casualties.
How long can it accept this burden, is another frequent question. Parents, wives and friends of those posted in J&K want to know if there is no way to prevent such waste of brave and trained youth. Some go so far as to ask if the political leadership lacks the will to do the right thing by teaching Pakistan a military lesson. Implied in these set of anxieties is the real question: about whether our soldiers and officers are mere grist to the mill of a failed political leadership.
The Indian military has been used for over fifty years by its political masters to fight insurgencies, secessionist movements, political groups using terror tactics, and terrorists masquerading as freedom fighters. As a former Army Chief once said, the army has been never out of combat since independence. Every classical study of terrorism insists that a liberal state should use the military only as a last resource. It is argued that a liberal state should respond to terrorism through police and constabulary resources. The use of the military by a liberal state, it is said, must remain in the unacceptable category.
The reality the world over is however different than the idealist notions of the classicists. Russia’s Chechnya and the Bosnian models are labeled as state terrorism. Yet the use of British Army in Northern Ireland is considered different because the army operated under the Chief Constable’s command. The British response to such movements in Kenya, Malaya, Borneo and other colonial outposts were primarily military operations. In fact the British approach in Malaya of General Gerald Templar being placed in overall command had been portrayed for many decades as the perfect model. Any number of other examples from the Philippines to Paraguay can be cited to show that modern terrorists cannot be subdued by police action.
As the Indian Army learnt at some considerable costs in Sri Lanka, a modern terrorist is no longer a lungi-wearing, machete-wielding, jungle-inhabiting creature. He or she is a technically savvy guerrilla who operates skillfully in urban centers, uses modern IT means as comfortably as explosives and engineering devices. In contrast, soldiers in most armies find it difficult to identify RDX from chalk powder. That does not mean a trained soldier cannot take on terrorists in combat. The Indian soldier is capable of standing ground and winning a combat action against terrorists under any conditions. The challenge lies in getting the terrorists to fight such combat actions. Terrorists in most cases do not wish to fight and use surprise, civilian areas and the general public as their ground of action.
The fedayeen is a different case altogether. He is willing to die, and moreso seeks an unequal fight. Small fedayeen groups attack large military targets, camps and well protected high value individuals. Fedayeens and their leaders are willing to lose some lives for spectacular publicity gains. The loss of some soldiers, officers or casualties to general public cannot by themselves bring down governments or create a new state. Such attacks however weaken public resolve and demonstrate the government’s inability to defend its interests. The terrorist hopes to destroy government’s credibility through such attacks.
J&K has seen a growth in fedayeen attacks. In every case the attack group of fedayeen have been killed. However in the process, some serious costs have been imposed on the military and other security forces. Since the attackers are small in numbers, are attacking the military in well defended camps, and the attack comes straight at the defended position, they will all fail and the fedayeen will die. What is required is to have drills and combat procedures which ensure that our soldiers, officers and others do not become casualties. Once the fedayeen leaders know that the ratios of dead and wounded are always against them, they will change tactics and look somewhere else. That is the critical lesson from all such attacks, whether it was on the Indian Parliament, the J&K Assembly, at Kaluchak or Akhnoor.
Even major powers are not immune to costs which faulty politico- military leadership can impose. Military costs in Vietnam were high but were still less than the perception of a purposeless war being fought. The latter tilted the balance irrevocably against both the political and military leaders. Iraq will go the same way for the USA, unless some quick political results are obtained to match the spectacular military victory its soldiers obtained. The Soviet leadership attempted to run the gauntlet of military losses in Afghanistan. It not only suffered a strategic loss internationally but went out of power altogether. Russia in Chechnya is already on the same slippery slope, where military losses will force the leadership into flawed political choices.
The great asset of the Indian Army has been its willingness to boldly engage the adversary by offensive action and its willingness to accept the necessary casualties. The need is to avoid unnecessary casualties. It will be not only tragic but unacceptable to turn the army into a constabulary, by going on the defensive through a fortress mentality. That is what the terrorists want to see happening. That is what raises the public questions listed above. It avoidably pushes the political leadership on the defensive. All that creates a negative spiral of despair, which as history shows can lead to defeat.
The Indian public will back military action that destroys fifty fedayeen for the loss of five to 10 military men. It will not do so if the ratio is against our soldiers even by a smaller margin. The fact that there were very senior military officers involved added to the effect in Akhnoor. If only NCOs and soldiers had died or been wounded, the picture would have been altogether different. The Raksha Mantri would have not flown out the next day to Akhnoor. It would however have left the avoidable impression that for the political leadership, some lives are important than others. Akhnoor demonstrates the cascading effect of adverse casualty ratios, even in small numbers
The political and military leadership needs to understand the implications of continuing casualties. In the 1980s, the Indian army was simultaneously taking casualties in Siachen and Sri Lanka. Public support to Siachen was complete, while Sri Lanka proved a disaster to the political leadership. There is an important lesson in that experience. No political leadership in India can be seen wasting the lives of its soldiers without a political strategy, or, on wrong causes. Equally, a military leadership that does not constantly find operational answers to an innovative terrorist adversary’s methods, will be ill serving its rank and file and soon get discredited.
(The author is a former DG, Military
Operations, and is Director, Delhi Policy Group.)