Stories of days gone by - the end of Op Woodrose in 1992 or Op Rakshak II (Punjab)
After Op Bluestar in 1983, the militancy in Punjab was put on the back foot. This forced the extremists to come out of the proverbial woodwork and the cycle of violence escalated in the immediate aftermath of Op Bluestar especially after that business by the river. Op Woodrose was launched to stabilize the situation.
Op Woodrose has been the subject of much criticism even by renowned experts like DGP KPS Gill, but one can pragmatically note that if nothing else watching the Army trample like a wild elephant over Punjab made the Punjab Police get their act together. (Yes I realize how this sounds - but c'mon we all know this is true.)
The Punjab Police (like the Indian Army at the time) had problems with infiltration. The core of Jarnail Singh Bhindran's message had resonated with a lot of Sikh men. Again this made complete sense - Sikh men are brought up from day one to fight oppression and corruption. Jarnail Singh Bhindran had successfully appropriated the teaching of the Sikh Gurus towards his own political ends and people can easily be misled by charismatic leaders.
The bulk of the effort in the case of Punjab Police was increasing its effectiveness through a process of weeding out extremists and carefully re-arming and retraining the force. It was very hard to do this while the militancy was raging and police officer families were being targeted on a daily basis. While DGP Julio Ribero put in the idea of "Bullet for Bullet" - it took many years to get that worked out in detail.
As the Punjab Armed Police came online - the Army began to take a back seat. Govt. of India signaled it's view in the matter by pushing back on demands to extend the Terrorism and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA). This offered a framework that allowed the Army to disengage from the Op Woodrose theater on acceptable terms - i.e. secure in the knowledge that it would not be abandoning the region to anti-national forces. This is what became known as
Op Rakshak II (Punjab).
This exact same process was started by the MMS Government in Kashmir and continued largely into 2013. I do NOT understand why this disengagement process stalled in 2014 and why it is so hard to restart this.
I get that Op Rakshak (yes I know the names are confusing but this is the Kashmiri end of Op Rakshak*) had to longer given the Pakistani efforts to encourage separatism in Kashmir were more intense than they were in Punjab, but I don't understand why the path of progress made from 2006-2013 was abandoned in 2014.
Please don't give me nonsense about "reunification" and "bye bye Art 370" - those are fantasies. None of that is achievable without credible commitments to peace in region. Pushing those ideas merely turns the Army into a political prop in a completely useless drama.
I do not deny that there are people in the Army who want to increase the coercion levels in the Op Rakshak theatre, but there is no evidence to support that this will lead to the desired disengagement. The key to disengagement remains bringing the JKAP to a point where they can take over from the Army units and the Army can go back to securing the LOC.
Scribbling RW fantasies on top of real Nat Sec debates does not help resolve the core debates. This needs to stop as it is immensely distracting. In an ideal world the Army would complete the disengagement form the region and revert the CIF's back to regular Army divisions and the J&K Police would take on the appropriate roles. Continually spouting nonsense about "Akhand Bharat" etc... DOES NOT HELP.
* "Rakshak" was the name given to all this COIN ops where the Army felt serious amounts of money would be spent. There were many parts to Op Rakshak but crudely they are divided into Kashmir and Punjab commitments and phase I, II & III. It is quite difficult to attribute specific operations to each of these especially if you try to do it from analyzing the medal citations (which most of us use as a quick guide to what is going on).
The Neelam Plan - a trip down memory lane.
You may recall the
Neelam Plan, I was one of the people who helped develop that idea that Arindam wrote up.
The background was simple - Gen. Musharraf and his guys kept pushing the Chenab Plan. At its core it looked like they wanted a free transit for Pakistanis in this region. Given the past experience of visiting SSG/LeT/JeM/Al Badr delegations, some of us on the BR Forum were not keen on Gen Musharraf's idea. In particular I felt that Burzil La was a gaping hole that only bring suffering in all future conflicts.
I was very keen to see the Pakistani end of the Kashmir conflict sealed. I strongly believed it would bring violence levels down and reduce the number of weapons caches in the valley. Based on several interactions I sensed a kind of war fatigue in Kashmiris. I hope to exploit this and prevent the place from turning into "another Afghanistan" (as I told a Kashmiri visitor). With the flow of munitions shut, I thought perhaps HM OGWs could be brought back into the fold completely - the entire HM UGW presence cleared out.
I felt the AIOS would be up and running in the south in a few years and so there would progressively less to worry about there. I also felt that a similar arrangement would be needed in the north - specifically in the Neelam River valley. I felt any Pakistani movement there was undesirable and cutting off the Neelum Valley road would keep the 80 Inf Bde at Minimarg from getting too active. This was desirable as I didn't know if I could trust Gen Musharraf to keep his promise of not interfering in the 1-Alpha. They had too many guns in positions where the temptation to interfere would be great. So ceding the Neelam Valley to India would make a more enduring contribution in my opinion.
At the time there were discussions on the possibility of a large Indian industrial conglomerate opening a natural gas fired plant and stabilizing the problematic northern grids. This would provide a much needed relief in the region and allow for a significant improvement in the quality of life of hundreds of millions of Indians.
Obviously I supported that idea. As the actual natural gas could only come from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan and Pakistan, I looked forward to going to these places and working with key stakeholders and making it work*.
In my mind with Pakistan - despite hostile feelings - the sense of common good would hold and a meaningful exchange could occur. The Pakistanis would emerge as partners in India's progress and India would be able to avoid putting dams on the Northern rivers and appearing to interfere in Pakistan's lifeline. I knew Pakistan too was deficient in electricity but there was no way they would able to secure the funding needed for the complex hydel projects that would be needed to overcome that. That had more to do with the internals of the Pakistani debt market and I didn't feel there was anything India could have done about that.
Anyway all this turned out to be a pipe dream. The PA acted like the Neelam Plan didn't exists and so did GoI (in its infinite wisdom). Instead they chose to accept Gen. Musharraf's promises and then for reasons no one wants to talk about relentlessly shelled the Neelam River Valley road. This posted significant collateral damage and I guess it achieved what was proposed in the plan but at a cost that no one was really keen to go into. I watched in horror as respected Army people openly shared that distaste for what was going on and I felt like asking then "then why are you doing this?" - but out of fear of their disapproval I kept quiet. I was young and afraid to speak my mind. The last thing I wanted to was to have a friend of my family chew me out over this. So like an idiot I kept my mouth shut figuring that perhaps some good will come of it.
The plan to open TAP pipeline also failed - the Pakistanis kept asking for giant sums of money and there was no leverage to get them to back down. And India had to turn to boosting coal imports and open hydroelectric options in Kashmir. That has created lots of problems which I am sure you are all familiar with.
* That didn't work out for reasons that are too long to detail here.
Pulwama - the extremely high cost of stupidity
Tragically - in the India I grew up in - moral compromises in the context of COIN were inevitable. Soldiers who had taken an oath to defend the country and it's people were asked to perform dirty, disgusting work of murdering unarmed civilians and children in the hope of stamping out the contagion of ultra-violent extremism in many parts of the country. I still don't know if it really worked.
Too often I swallowed my guilt for supporting ideas of COIN that didn't make sense in the broader sense of what India was - a secular, democratic order with a government that at least in theory was working for the benefit of its people. Too long did I turn a deaf ear to the sufferings of the Kashmiris, the various people of the North East and to the "Naxals" of East India. Too far I went in searching for an evil Pakistani hand behind all anti-state violence in India.
How could I not support extreme measures? How could I not back the Army and the MHA? Everyone was aligned - the Jihadis were blowing up bridges on a weekly basis, they were murdering IC operatives in broad daylight, the Pandits had been ethnically cleansed and police officer families targeted? and those Assamese separatists - Lord if the people found out the things they had done. And these Naxals - they were hindering India from exploiting vital domestic mineral reserves that could provide a massive buffer against import of Uranium and other energetic materials.
But that time went away. The deal made with Musharraf in 2002 has held (full disclosure I was opposed to the deal - I wanted to see the PA vacate the Neelum Valley but you get what you can and frankly they got what they asked for!). Barring the occasional eruption at the LOC - the situation in Kashmir has improved significantly.
Then in 2014 came the great election of the Most Exalted One with the 56 Million Foot Chest. And all the stupid ideas that had been buried along with thousands of Kashmiris in mass graves - resurfaced. "Take back POK", "Akhand Bharat", "End Art 370" etc... etc...
People like me who were carefully pushing ideas to remove all knowable arms caches in the valley were thrown completely off balance. The core idea during Sri. Manmohan Singh's time - to improve the logistical position in the region to keep up with Chinese posture changes to the East while assuring Kashmiris that no harm to their ethnic uniqueness was intended went out the window. Gone was the picture of building hydel resources in the region so as to provide a generation ballast to the failing northern portion of PGCILs operations. The Bhakt Brigade scrawled "Kill all Kashmiris" and "Mere Purkhon ki Zameen" (My Ancestral Lands) on everything. Every last word was poisoned!
A decade of work was basically burned to the ground. People were appointed in positions of power and these people brought out the worst in everyone. Kashmiris groaned at the prospect of another three decades of war and the *real* Nat Sec crowd in Delhi threw up their hands in despair. And the Army defaulted to the last set of ideas it knows worked in the context of the situation.
Violence started afresh. The Pakistanis feeling already threatened by the overly aggressive posturing of the Most Brilliant NSA since God - felt it was time to do their due diligence in Kashmir. After all if He who is Most Holier than Allah Himself, was going around giving public lectures on donations to anti-Pakistan groups - then surely they could be expected to counter that forcefully? Why would they react positively to the idea of India doing hydel power production in the region when they facing declining water flow in Mangla and Tarbela? They reacted as any rational person would have expected.
So where are we now you ask?
Well delicately put - the situation is completely fucked. Everything has been thrown under the bus for a grand plan of securing Bhakt votes in some imaginary election.
I don't know if it can unfucked - I hope it can - but the Army is left with no recourse to go back to old models of using the heaviest hand possible. And let me spell that out in plain text for you - that means going way beyond the genteel "No Dadhiwalla Left Alive" stance, this means reacting to situations like they *are* Convoy Challenges. This kind of thing has only existed in the past in a specific context, now with flaccid enforcement of codes of conduct (see that Maj. Gogoi situation) and a complete disregard for framing meaningful ROEs - one is heading down a hell hole incredibly fast.
Why is the Army going along with this? - because what else will they do? They have to keep their troops alive and end this on terms they feel comfortable with. Everyone in business knows that you can't use the Army to end the situation. The more you use the Army - the more it will inflame the situation. But they have orders and they will carry them out - however vaguely those orders are worded or regardless of what the cost in personal moral and psychological terms is. It is their job to follow order and die if needed. Most of them will privately acknowledge that this kind of thing will bring with it a moral corrosion and breakdown of discipline. (Incidents like that business in Leh with the Arty unit will become more commonplace - but hey its not like anyone in South Block gives a shit!)
The people who give the orders are the problem. The culture of permissiveness on misapplied force is where the rubber is hitting the road. That culture needs to go.
Can that be done with a group of people like this at the helm? Is democracy possible with people who perpetually worship dictatorial behavior and reject facts about being robbed blind? I don't think so - but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
I am tired. I am sick of watching innocents killed pointlessly in the name of Nat Sec. I can't make up stupid excuses for why that happened. I am disgusted after decades of watching some of most talented, smart and physically fit people India has to offer be turned into common murderers and hitmen. Call me names if you life - but I am fucking done with this shit.
But it is your India - you decide what you want to do with it. I cannot and will not defend the misuse of resources like this.
