Monthly Archives: August 2018

NDA Cadets from the early to mid eighties will remember the imposing frame of SM Darbara Singh. During the rehearsal for the Passing out Parade in 1985, the cadets were in a particularly rebellious mood. The noise did not die down even when the Nishan (Presidential Colours awarded to NDA) was brought into the QM fort, and this was a serious matter indeed, for the Nishan is held in high esteem by the cadet community.

The insult to the Nishan did not go down well with Subedar Major Darbara Singh. With his measured steps he stepped up to the podium and with a voice heavy with anger and gruff with emotions, he asked the cadets to lend him their ears.

Subedar Major Darbara Singh “Cadets, I have served in the Indian Army for 23 years. I have seen the 1962 operations, the 1965 and 1971 wars as a combatant. The Nishan that you have not acknowledged today, stands for me and countless others who have taken up the profession of arms and given their youth and lives for the honour of being given an opportunity to salute the Nishan, as the symbol of the supreme sacrifice made by our martyrs.

I will tell you a story that might indicate to you the feelings that we soldiers have for the Nishan. The SM drew a deep breath and continued, In this very academy we have a hut of remembrance,where the names of all the former alumni of this institution who have fallen in action are inscribed on the wall, I have been in this academy for the past three years and I have been able to enter that hut only once.

Because written on the wall is one name, Lt Palta of the 4th Battalion the Sikh regiment.

During the 1962 China War, my Paltan was posted in the Tawang sector. I was deployed right on the border, and my section commander was the same Lt Palta whose name is there on the wall in the hut of remembrance.

On the fateful day of 15 Nov 1962, the Chinese attacked our post and we were told to fight back to the last man, last bullet. Lt Palta was personally leading the fight back. It was a harrowing time, we were outnumbered, out gunned and desperately short of ammunition.

Yet we soldiered on , because Lt Palta did not know any other way.

I will carry this blood to my funeral pyre.” The SM’s voice became gruffer with verbalized emotion, “When I entered the hut of remembrance the first time, I saw Lt Palta’s name and picture on the wall.

In an instance I was transported back in time to 1962 and felt his cold stiff body on top of mine and his blood congealing on my face. Till date I haven’t been able to enter the hut again.

” Cadets, its for officers like these that the academy has been given the Nishan. It has been won by the blood of ex NDAofficers and it stands for all that is good and pure in these horrible times; I will not permit you to insult the Nishan and Lt Palta as long as I have breath.”

So saying the SM stepped off the dais and strode out of the QM fort in fragile silence. The silence of the QM fort was shattered only by the echoing word of of command of the parade commander some eight minutes later, ordering the passing out parade to coil its sinuous way out of the QM fort in to the drill square.

The Nishan is nothing but a piece of cloth for those who see it as such, but for Subedar Major Darbara Singh of the Ninth Battalion of the Sikh Regiment of the Indian Army, and countless others like him, it stood for Lt Palta and a cold winter night when a young Lieutenant died trying to protect and lead his men in to battle and to supreme honour.

It stood for a quintessential Indian army officer, who, even when dead, continued to shield a young frightened soldier who was out of ammunition and at the end of his wits.

A breed of officers who gave these grizzled old men the self-esteem and sense of honour, of belonging to a family, of mattering, of esprit-de-corps, and in the end, a way of life. And that, in my opinion is true leadership.

Suhail A Shah

Anantnag, November 20

Three days after a footballer-turned-militant shunned the gun, another youth from south Kashmir has renounced violence and given up arms to return to his family.The police have been tightlipped about the identity of the militant who gave up the gun today.Soon after the police announced that a militant in south Kashmir had returned home, paying heed to the pleas of his family, Deputy Inspector General, South Kashmir, SP Pani, confirmed the news.“Yes, a boy has returned to his family,” Pani said, but maintained that the police wouldn’t give out any details about the boy.“We will not disclose his identity for now, given the involvement of various issues in the process,” Pani said, remaining non-committal on whether the identity will be disclosed at all.Sources, however, revealed that the militant has been identified as Nasir Ahmad Dar, a 16-year-old from Czimmer village in the DH Pora area of Kulgam district.Dar had been missing from his home since September 27 this year. Meanwhile, Director General of Police SP Vaid took to Twitter and expressed happiness over the development.“On my visit to Kulgam, I was told another local militant has come back home in response to the appeal of his mother and other family members. Great news!” Vaid posted.

VBN Ram,Freelance journalist

A slew of setbacks in at least three nations for the OROB (One Road One Belt) initiative have dampened the spirit of Chinese economy policymakers. Pak calls off contractThe biggest setback has come from Pakistan, which has called off its $14 billion contract with China for the construction of the Daimer-Bhasa hydro-electric project. China had laid strict conditions, including ownership of the project. According to Muzammil Hussain, Chairman of the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA), the project is not viable and hence not doable, besides being against national interests. He stated so while briefing the Public Accounts Committee on the status of this mega water project. However, China might consider granting some concessions to ensure that its OROB remains unscathed — even though Pakistan has made it manifestly clear to China that it being shortchanged is tantamount to going against its national interest. After all, conditions imposed by China were as bad as the Merchant of Venice had imposed, and like the latter, it wanted its pound of flesh. What were the conditions imposed by Beijing: the securitisation of this project by Pakistan’s pledging of another operational project and taking charge of the entire operational and maintenance cost.Setback in NepalIn a tweet on November 13, 2017, the Deputy Prime-Minister of Nepal, Kamal Thapa, has stated that Nepal’s $2.5 billion contract with China’s Gezhouba Group in respect of the Budhi Gandhaki hydro-electric project has been scrapped. “The project was concluded in an irregular and thoughtless manner and rejected under the direction of Parliamentary Committee,” he said. The above was a bilateral deal — the MoU for which was signed in June 2017 — covered the building of a 1200-megawatt hydro-electric project at a location about 80 km from Kathmandu, as a follow-up to Nepal agreeing to join the OROB. This project is in the process of being awarded to India.

Myanmar alert

Nepal’s withdrawal from the bilateral contract comes a few years after Myanmar decided to cancel the $3.6 billion Myitsone dam, which was formalised by former President Thein Sein. China is continuing its efforts with Myanmar quite persuasively to revive this project.Myanmar has quite obviously seen how Sri Lanka has been shortchanged by China with respect to the Hambantota port project.China’s changed requirementsChina’s wily altruism to secure regional economic hegemony is being supplanted by its economic imperative, or more specifically, its necessity for reducing its debt to GDP ratio. The 19-party Congress has emphasised on market-based allocation of resources and a shift towards greater reward to risk the overall profile of investments.As a matter of coincidence, China is encountering these setbacks at a time when India’s outreach to its neighbours has become highly intense. The aftermath of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Philippines has seen significant achievements — the icing on the cake being the impelling need and commitment for a free and open Indo-Pacific region (a strategic initiative by the Quad, ie the US, Japan, India and Australia) to ensure freedom of navigation and overflight and lawful commerce in international waters and overall maritime security and infrastructure development and rule of law in the Indo-Pacific. The regional reference “Indo-Pacific” instead of Asia Pacific has added significance.Mandarins in India’s foreign office can pat themselves on the back because they have been able to convince many neighbourhood nations that commercial and non-commercial ties with India can rejuvenate their economies besides rendering them more secure. India should grab the opportunities. That India is bestowed with robust technological prowess is internationally acknowledged. 

While it’s incorrect to declare ‘victory’, India seems to be on the right path when it comes to anti-terror operations in Jammu and Kashmir.

Even as Dineshwar Sharma, the government-appointed interlocutor, returned after his first reconnaissance of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and a round of meetings was underway in Delhi, the government gave directions for the continuation of focussed and hard anti-terror operations in Kashmir. Within days of those directions, the Bandipur operation on 18 November resulted in one of the biggest achievements in anti-terrorist operations this year. Six terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Taiba were gunned down by the Army’s 13 Rashtriya Rifles, in conjunction with the J&K Police and the CRPF.

Operations against terrorists have two connotations in J&K. First is the counter-infiltration (CI) mode, in which the Army has established a strong and dominating grid along the LoC belt, in depth up to 20 km. This deployment is in layers. Since the strength of infiltrating terrorists can be very high, the attrition levels too are high, resulting in operations in the past where as many as 10-15 terrorists have been killed in a single encounter. These days this number rarely exceeds six infiltrators because terrorists have reduced the size of infiltrating groups to avoid high attrition.

The second mode is that of hinterland operations, or what may also be termed as counter-terror (CT) operations. In the late 1990s and before, the elimination of six or more terrorists in an encounter was considered normal and the frequency was reasonably high. That was because the Valley was full of terrorists who roamed in bands. When the attrition levels increased, the mathematics of terror started to fall in our favour. This was from 2004 onwards, once the LoC fence was operationalised. The Army could eliminate more terrorists in the hinterland than the rate at which they infiltrated.

The terrorist leadership evaluated the situation and decided to reduce the strength in the operational groups. Instead of the usual six, the terrorists began living in pairs, sometimes trios. This reduced the quantum of terrorists killed in contact operations. It was a strategy of the LeT in particular, which then needed many more over-ground workers (OGWs) for guidance to the foreign terrorists (all LeT terrorists are generally Pakistanis) for frequent movement to avoid the security dragnet.

Of course the most important issue here was the need for and existence of a large network of ‘safe houses’ in which foreign terrorists resided. In fact, I once celebrated when one of my units killed five high-level terrorist leaders who had got together for a conference in the Lolab Valley on 13 July 2011.

Ominous signs for terrorists

While a single operation is never sufficient to give us a trend, I can see a few ominous signs for the terrorist cadres. One is the drying of funding. Even OGWs need funding. The call for azadi and radical ideology can only keep passion and commitment going up to a point. Beyond that, it is a question of money.

The NIA’s recent actions and maintenance of continuity with these is having its effect. The lower strength of OGWs means a smaller number of safe houses too. So, terrorists from Pakistan have to stay for shorter periods in fewer homes, and thus have to be in larger groups. This offers greater potential for success to the ever-hungry Rashtriya Rifles troops.

Post-operation analysis will soon tell us whether this eliminated group was a resident terrorist group or a recently infiltrated one. Either way, there can be no denying that the phenomenon of infiltration is impossible to stop; the most the Army can do is contain it as much as possible. Secondly, more youth have been recruited to terrorist ranks in South Kashmir than the number killed or neutralised this campaigning season. So, we are almost back to square one in the numbers game.

The direction of the central government to the forces to not dilute the focus and intensity of operations is wise. Winter can sometimes be a period for a tactical pause when the Army, in particular, gets on to other things like reviewing conventional warfare plans and conducting war games.

My experience in Kashmir tells me that winter is a ‘high kill’ period, but this fact is not registered in the psyche of the forces due to lack of continuity management. With changed circumstances, now is the time to ginger up intelligence. But intelligence does not come cheap. There is a need to spend more money. If this advice is heeded I am quite certain we have a partridge hunt in the offing this winter.

Too many times in the past we have declared premature victory in the fight against Pakistan-sponsored terrorists and separatists. My sincere advice — victory is not on the horizon yet; it’s too complex a term. We just have to ensure that the CI/CT grids remain intact, and there is no attempt at premature dilution.

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 14Army Chief General Bipin Rawat is learnt to have told officers at an Army’s internal function that the issue of rank parity is being addressed and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has promised full support on it.General Rawat was addressing a gathering of officers who are to retire at the end of this month. This was a customary farewell meeting of the Chief with officers who were in the ranks of Colonel and above. Sources in the know of things said the Chief clearly brought out that certain oversights and anomalies were made by the service headquarters in the past. These were being addressed and amendments were being carried out. The Tribune was the first to report the matter in October following which the Army headquarters made corrections.General Rawat talked in great detail about the classification of various services and why the Army was not categorised as ‘group-A’ service. The Army, he said, had a pyramid structure and it should not be compared with others. Terms and conditions of service are very challenging and difficult, he reportedly told the officers.

With interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma in Srinagar for talks with all stakeholders, the separatists are not too keen on joining the dialogue process initiated by the Modi government.

Women separatists protest the visit of Dineshwar Sharma, the Centre’s interlocutor for J-K, in Srinagar on Monday. Pic: Mohammad Amin War

Arun Joshi

Kashmiri   separatists declared on Sunday that they “cannot disappoint” their people by talking to the Centre’s new interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma as that would be a betrayal of “sacrifices” made for the “sacred cause”. The “sacred cause”, in common perception in Kashmir, is “azadi” or independence from India and Pakistan. It is a rejection of the two-nation theory as also plebiscite.Syed Ali Shah Geelani, speaking on behalf of the separatists, particularly moderates Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front chief Yasin Malik who had collected more than three million signatures from Kashmiris for “azadi”, decreed that no section of the Hurriyat Conference would talk to the interlocutor. The gag order has a ripple effect in non-separatist camps as well. The civil society has maintained a distance from Sharma.Geelani’s aim is to discredit the dialogue process initiated by the Modi government. The majority in the Valley is for “azadi”. Thousands have died for this cause and the end to the conflict is not in sight. Although Geelani, the Hizb-ul-Mujahadeen and some other groups have been asking for right to self-determination as envisaged in the United Nations Security Council resolutions of 1948-49, the fact is that those fighting the Indian security forces were doing so for their “complete independence,” and not for Pakistan. They were grateful to Pakistan for its help to the militants, but not obliged to let Pakistan declare Kashmir as its fifth province.Just when Dineshwar Sharma arrived in Srinagar, Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told an audience in London that “an independent Kashmir is not possible.” This has poured cold water on the hopes of those believing that Pakistan was helping them achieve freedom and since then, separatists have gone in a silent mode.The current Kashmir “mood” can be understood in three constituencies:  (1) the sections of silent people who want peace and normal relations with Pakistan with status quo on borders and some dignified measures to give them a sense that they got something at the end of the day. (2) the vast majority that have made their political, geostrategic and economic calculations in which an independent Kashmir is viable and internationally important place; and (3) the traditional pro-Pakistanis since 1947. It would be wrong to assume that the sections that want to live with India will ever speak out. These sections are mute and they live in peripheries and sectarian enclaves in the Valley. Given this scenario, the public mood is to air day-to-day grievances before the interlocutor. This way, their calls for economic and political uplift and good governance would reach Delhi.The separatists are caught in their own web. For 30 years, they have been promising “azadi”. Over 50,000 people have died, a few thousands have disappeared or are languishing in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. A vast majority of them are desperate to come back to their homes here from across the Line of Control. This raises a question:  why are the misguided youth, fired to “liberate their motherland”, are desperate to return home if Pakistan was such a heaven.Even if separatists’ argument is taken at its face value that it is fruitless to meet the Centre’s interlocutor, what is the option — Pakistan  is promoting the idea of Pakistan-only option for Kashmiris. The PoK is better known to them  as a “terrorist state’. Geelani’s skepticism to talks emerges from the past experience with Delhi in which the Centre flinched at implementing the reports of its own men to resolve the Kashmir issue. Even National Conference President Farooq Abdullah has said: “Not much is expected of the new interlocutor.” But a larger point is being missed. Apart from Pakistan’s machinations to stall any Delhi-Srinagar dialogue, there is a problem with the Kashmiri leadership, particularly with the separatists: their clock is stuck in the mid-twentieth century. The electoral parties — National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party — have their agendas rooted in autonomy and self-rule, respectively, but the separatists have no such roadmap. Separatists have only their assertions: “We will not disappoint our people,” “they will not hesitate to offer sacrifices, even at the cost of their life.”Since Sharma has not challenged the Pakistan premier, it is spreading disappointment among the people here. They want to know the status of “azadi”.Any leadership should have asked Sharma what he has to offer (essentially, a direct question to Modi). Delhi cannot afford to repeat its mistake if it has to replace the disappointment on the ground with optimism. The Kashmir imbroglio

• The majority in the Valley is for “azadi” and an end to the conflict is not in sight even after thousands of deaths.
• Pakistan Prime Minister SK Abbasi told an audience in London that “an independent Kashmir is not possible.”
• The Kashmiris want to know the status of “azadi” since despite Pakistan’s help, they have never wanted Pakistan to  rule over them. Their “sacrifices” have been for “azadi” only.

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