Nine soldiers and two civilians were injured as militants targeted an Army patrol with an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) at Arihal in Pulwama district on Monday. File photo
Srinagar, June 18
The two soldiers who were injured in the IED blast in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir had succumbed to their injuries, a defence spokesman said on Tuesday.
Nine soldiers and two civilians were injured as militants targeted an Army patrol with an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) at Arihal in Pulwama district on Monday.
“Two soldiers, brought to hospital with severe contusions and concussions, have succumbed to their injuries at 92 Base Hospital,” the spokesman said.
On Monday, he had sought to play down the attack saying it was a “failed attempt” and except for a “few minor injuries, all troops were safe”.
“A failed attempt was made to attack a mobile vehicle patrol of 44 RR with a Vehicle Based IED while the Army patrol was moving in the general area Arihal in Pulwama on Monday evening,” the spokesman said in a statement here.
He said the reports of attack on an Army convoy are “unfounded and baseless”.
“Troops all safe. A few minor injuries,” the defence spokesman said, adding that the damage was minimised due to the alertness of the patrol party. PTI
Major, ultra killed in Anantnag gunfight
Anantnag, June 17
A Major and a Pakistani militant were killed, while another officer of the same rank and a soldier were injured during a daylong gunfight in Anantnag district today.
In another incident, at least five Army personnel were injured when militants triggered an improvised explosive device fitted in a vehicle near an Army patrol in the militancy-hit Pulwama district of south Kashmir today.
The slain Major, who hailed from Meerut, has been identified as Ketan Sharma of the 19RR. “More information about him will be shared after his family is informed about the incident,” an Army officer told The Tribune. He said the injured soldiers, including Major Rahul Verma, were being treated at the Army’s base hospital in Srinagar. “We will be sharing further details about their condition soon,” the officer said. The gunfight took place in Bidoora village of Achabal in Anantnag, around 67 km from Srinagar city.
“An operation was launched around 7 am and the militant started firing around 7.15 am. His initial firing left the Major and another soldier injured, but later in the day Major Ketan Sharma was killed in exchange of fire,” a senior police official said. He said the unidentified militant was killed after several hours of gunfight when the house, where he was hiding, was blown up using explosives.
Meanwhile, an Army patrol vehicle was targeted around 6 pm with a car bomb in Arihal area of Pulwama, leaving at least five soldiers and a civilian injured. “The bomb went off, leaving the army vehicle damaged and some soldiers injured,” a local police official said, adding that a civilian working in a nearby field also sustained injuries.
Defence spokesman Rajesh Kalia called the IED attack a “failed attempt”. “It was a failed attempt and reports of attack on Army convoy are unfounded and baseless. All troops are safe. Just a few suffered minor injuries,” he said.
Pak warned of terror attack
The Pulwama IED attack was carried out days after Pakistan shared intelligence reports with India regarding a possible IED attack in south Kashmir after which J&K was put on high alert
The car bomb is the third such attack in south Kashmir since the deadly Pulwama attack of February 14 that left 40 CRPF personnel dead
Another such failed attempt was made with a car bomb in Banihal on March 30 when six suspects, including a PhD scholar, were arrested by the NIA
DEHRADUN: When 23-year-old Afghan Gentleman Cadet, Ahmad Siyar passed from IMA on Saturday as an Afghan Army officer, he didn’t celebrate because he knew after returning home he had to mourn the loss of his father whom he lost to Taliban few weeks back.
His father was a Colonel in the Afghan National Army (ANA) and was ambushed by the Taliban while he was commanding an area of Afghan-Tajikistan border. He had planned to come to see him passing out on Saturday.
Siyar was undergoing training in IMA along with 44 other Afghan gentleman cadets who passed out on Saturday to be newly commissioned officers in ANA. He got the news of his father’s demise about two weeks back from his family back in Kabul.
“The day when he passed away, I was feeling restless even before getting the news. As I was leading the battalion here, I called my mother and asked if everything was fine but she said nothing had happened except that my father sustained some injuries in his hand,” he said.
Later it was through Facebook that he came to know of his father’s demise, Ahmad said.
Before his father, his grandfather also served in the Afghan army. However, his family’s life was not all smooth as they had to flee to Pakistan during the Taliban regime during 1990s.
“I was born in a refugee camp in Pakistan. My father had lost his army job due to the Taliban. But when their regime ended and democracy came to the country, he was again inducted in the army,” Ahmad said adding, “I always wanted to join army.” He added, “Now after my dad’s demise at the hands of Taliban, I want to serve my nation. I am now more determined than ever.”
The Pakistan army resorted to unprovoked shelling on Indian forward posts and civilian areas along the Line of Control in Rajouri and Poonch districts this morning. The Commanding Officer (CO) of an Army unit deployed in Mankot sector of Poonch district and four soldiers were injured in the shelling, said sources.
Col AP Singh and soldiers DK Yadav, PT Arjun, M Singh and K Singh received splinter injuries and were taken to the Army hospital at Rajouri.
An Army porter was also injured in the Rattal area of Keri sector in Rajouri and was shifted to the Command Hospital in Udhampur.
Since the Balakot airstrikes in February, the Pakistan army has violated the ceasefire 517 times.
Anil Ambani in Rs 1,100-cr waiver row French daily claims concession after Rafale deal; no favouritsm: Rel Com
The controversy over the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets from France has taken a new turn following an article published in French daily claimed that Anil Ambani’s France-based company (not the same dealing with Dassault Aviation) was given a tax waiver of 143.7 million euros (over Rs 1,100 crore).
The waiver came in October 2015, six months after PM Narendra Modi announced the Rafale deal in April 2015, Le Monde reported. Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence is an offset partner of Dassault in the Rafale deal. Reacting to the report by the French daily, Reliance Communications said the tax demands were completely unsustainable and illegal, and denied any “favouritism or gain from settlement”.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the period of tax concession did not relate “even remotely” to the Rafale deal.
Anil Ambani’s France-based ‘Reliance Flag Atlantic France’ deals in under-sea cabling which carries telephone and internet traffic. French tax authorities, after a probe, found the company liable to pay 60 million euros in taxes for the period between 2007 and 2010. Reliance offered to pay 7.6 million euros as a settlement.
This offer was turned down, and the French authorities conducted a fresh probe from 2010 to 2012 and levied an additional 91 million euros, Le Monde reported.
However, six months after the Rafale announcement, the French tax authorities accepted 7.3 million euros from the company as a settlement, the daily reported.
“France has cancelled a tax recovery of a total amount of 143.7 million euros, yet claimed for years, in favour of a French company belonging to Reliance Communications,” it reported. The French daily cited an auditor’s report of January 30, 2015, saying Reliance Flag Atlantic France is subject to two tax adjustments. It claimed that the parent company of the French company of Anil Ambani, Reliance Globalcom Ltd, is domiciled in Bermuda, which is on the blacklist of tax havens in the EU. In a statement, Reliance Communications said: “Reliance Flag settled tax disputes as per legal framework available to all companies operating in France.”
The MoD said: “Any connections drawn between the tax issue and the Rafale matter is totally inaccurate and a mischievous attempt to disinform… neither the period of the tax concession nor the subject matter of the concession relate even remotely to the Rafale deal concluded during the tenure of the present government.”
No political interference: France
France has clarified a global settlement was reached between the French tax authorities and Reliance Flag, and that it was not subject to any political interference
“The settlement was conducted in full adherence with the legislative framework governing this common practice of the tax administration,” the French embassy said
It’s Modi’s kripa: Cong
“This is called zero sum choices, startling tax concession and Modi ‘kripa’… PM Modi is acting as middleman for Anil Ambani… It is clear only one watchman is the thief.” —Randeep Surjewala, Cong spokesperso
Pakistan at it again Cooks up conspiracy theory in bid to unnerve India
The more Pakistan plays the ‘victim’ card, the less credible it appears. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Sunday that India was devising a plan to attack Pakistan, probably between April 16 and 20, after staging a ‘mishap’ in Jammu and Kashmir. Citing ‘reliable’ intelligence, he stated that the purpose of the ‘misadventure’ would be to justify India’s offensive against Pakistan and increase diplomatic pressure on Islamabad. Crying wolf, the neighbour has already apprised five permanent members of the UN Security Council about the so-called conspiracy.
The preemptive move betrays Pakistan’s nervousness in the light of its abject failure to rein in terror outfits operating from its soil. India has rightly dismissed Pakistan’s statement as irresponsible and preposterous and seen through the ploy of absolving itself of responsibility in case there is a repeat of the Pulwama terror strike. With several terror assets in place across the border, Pakistan has every reason to be nervous about one of its modules trying its luck with or without explicit instructions from Rawalpindi. Even though the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) had promptly owned up the February 14 attack on a CRPF convoy, Pakistan is suggesting that India orchestrated it all to justify the Balakot airstrike. This laughable theory will cut no ice with the international community, which is already distrustful of Pakistan’s claims and intentions. The Imran Khan government’s purported crackdown on banned militant outfits has proved to be an eyewash. In late February, India had handed over a dossier to Pakistan with details of the JeM’s complicity in the Pulwama attack and the presence of JeM terror camps and its leadership in the neighbouring country. A month later, Pakistan announced that it had found no evidence to prosecute 50-odd persons who were detained in connection with the terror strike.
Thanks to the Balakot operation, India managed to call Pakistan’s nuclear bluff. The neighbour’s latest act of desperation won’t help it defend the indefensible. India should remain on guard and resist getting provoked into taking any rash step. Sooner than later, and not for the first time, Pakistan could end up with egg on its face.
Army constructs Maitri Bridge on Indus river to link villages in Leh
he 260 feet Maitri Bridge, the longest cable suspension bridge over the Indus river, has been built by Combat Engineers using innovative engineering methods in a record time of 40 days
War veterans of 1947-48, 1962, 1971 and 1999 operations in the Ladakh region led by Naik Phunchok Angdus (Retd), an 89-year-old war veteran, on Monday dedicated a cable suspension bridge constructed by the Indian Army’s Fire and Fury Corps over the mighty Indus river at Choglamsar in Leh. The Army undertook the task of building the Maitri Bridge on Indus river following requests received from the civil administration to help the locals of Choglamsar, Stok and Chuchot villages (largest villages of Ladakh region).
The bridge was opened to the public by war veterans in the presence of Lt Gen YK Joshi, General Officer Commanding, Fire and Fury Corps, in a brief ceremony which was attended by a large number of local Army veterans besides senior Army and civil administration officials.
The 260 feet cable suspension bridge, which has been built using innovative engineering methods, is the longest suspension bridge over the Indus river. It was constructed by the Combat Engineers (Sahas aur Yogyata Regiment) of the Fire & Fury Corps in a record time of 40 days, ferrying almost 500 tonnes of bridging equipment and construction material.
Symbolising the excellent civil-military relations existing in the Leh-Ladakh region, the bridge, named Maitri Bridge, has been constructed in the year when the Fire and Fury Corps is celebrating 20 years of Kargil Vijay Diwas.
Locals of the area thanked the Army for constructing the bridge, which has brought much relief to people of the area.
The Ferozepur police today nabbed a former Army driver who had absconded after killing a Chandigarh resident while attending a relative’s marriage five years ago. He was staying with a changed identity in Ludhiana for the past five years.
Sandeep Goyal, SSP, said the accused identified as Ranjit Singh, who was booked in a murder case five years ago, had been working as a driver in 11 Fd unit of the Army in Bathinda in 2014.
The SSP said Ranjit had gone to attend his cousin’s marriage on December 11, 2014, in Makhu where he allegedly killed Gulshan Dhiman of Chandigarh with his licensed revolver following an altercation.
After committing the crime, Ranjit reached Bathinda Military Station, where he continued his service in the Army for the next three months.
When the police reached Bathinda, Ranjit escaped. Later, he was declared as Proclaimed Offender (PO) on August 7, 2015. Subsequently, he was declared PO by the Army also due to his continued absence. For the next five years, Ranjit kept evading arrest and continued to dodge the police, the SSP said.
“At present, he was working as a driver with a local businessman from where he was nabbed,” the SSP added.
Rahul Gandhi pays tribute to Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev on ‘Shaheed Diwas’ BJP not given a thought till now
Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday paid tribute to freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on their death anniversary observed as ‘Shaheed Diwas’ (Martyr’s Day), saying the spirit of revolution espoused by them is running in our veins.
Gandhi said we will continue to fight the battle for their thoughts and ideals.
“Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru are not mere names, they are the spirit of revolution running in our veins,” he tweeted in Hindi.
भगत सिंह, सुखदेव, राजगुरु, सिर्फ़ नाम नहीं हैं; हमारे रगों में दौड़ता क्रांति का एक जज़्बा हैं।
उनका जीवन, आज भी, हमें मज़बूत बनाता है, आज़ाद बनाता है, इंसान बनाता है।
शहीद दिवस पर हमारे वीरों को शत् शत् नमन।
उनके विचारों और आदर्शो की लड़ाई हम जारी रखेंगे।#ShaheedDiwas
“Their lives make us strong even today and make us free and human. On Martyrs Day, we bow our heads to our bravehearts. We will continue to fight the battle for their thoughts and ideals,” Gandhi wrote. — PTI
‘Horses for courses’ lesson for Pakistan by Vikash Narain Rai
The significance of the Balakot airstrike will wane if the gains do not lead to stabilisation of the turbulent internal security scenario in Kashmir. The stress and strain on national security from LoC intrusions or airspace violations are not as complex to deal with as the internal security stress arising from tackling the Kashmir unrest.
Flawed: The Balakot episode has confirmed that the predominantly national security approach to the Kashmir issue is fraught with the danger of war with Pakistan.
Vikash Narain Rai Former Director, National Police Academy, Hyderabad
NEED we view separately the Pulwama and Balakot incidents? The two seem cause and consequence; the sheer magnitude of the Pulwama attack shocked the nation and culminated in the Balakot bombing; the expanse of India’s political and diplomatic response against Pakistan was extended to include economic sanctions and military strikes. However, there is no denying that keeping the peace in Kashmir has continued to be as arduous after Balakot as it was before Pulwama. Simply put, the internal security dimensions need a fact check independently too.
According to an old aphorism, a specific racehorse may perform differently depending on the course on which the race is held. The laws of operational surprise are supportive of a small and swift profile. These could be seen, on the fateful day in Pulwama, arraigned against the vast target of slow-moving CRPF convoy of vehicles. ‘Horses for courses’, or lack of clarity thereon has again proved to be the nemesis of our internal security policy-makers. Both the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) have so far refrained from making any exclusive statement explaining the Pulwama attack. Both are operating without the services of credible advisers in the field of internal security.
Based on national interest perceptions, the profile of a border between two countries may be offensive, defensive, restrictive, facilitative, neutral or a combination of such orientations. Or, like the Indo-Pak border, the picture may be an amalgamation of all possible shades. From the adrenaline-pumping Retreat ceremony at Attari-Wagah to surgical strikes in terrorist-infested stretches, from the Lahore bus and Samjhauta Express friendship journeys to the smuggling of jihadis and armament under intensive fire cover, from trade and religious corridors to hi-tech barriers, it is a strategic map drawn along the contours of peace talks and war histories. The story has gone on too long, inconclusive and uninterrupted.
From the national security angle, it was only waiting to be announced that India, too, had added a third-dimension border perspective to the conflict over the Kashmir issue. The highly publicised Balakot airstrike in response to the Pulwama terror attack was exactly that. Since the Simla Agreement, the two countries officially acknowledged the existence of a two-character border in Kashmir: International Border (IB) in the settled area and the Line of Control (LoC) in the claimed area. Pakistan, or rather the Pakistan army, in due course, managed to push terrorism wider and deeper into Indian territory and supported it as the third character of the hostile border. India paid them back regularly through its intelligence and security operations, and now with the Balakot strike, the third dimension in its border response has been formally unleashed.
The significance of the Balakot strike, however, will wane if the gains do not lead to stabilisation of the turbulent internal security scenario in Kashmir. The stress and strain on national security from LoC intrusions or airspace violations are not as complex to deal with as the internal security stress arising from tackling the Kashmir unrest. While the Balakot air response is a typical ‘horses for courses’ lesson for Pakistan, the Pulwama attack is to be bracketed as a suicidal setback, the result of a long-term faltering of political will to apply this time-tested strategic doctrine in limiting Kashmir militancy. Here the familiar sequence of events cannot be lost sight of: Pulwama preceded Balakot, the internal security catastrophe leading to a national security situation. It was made to look like a compelling threat of war between nuclear neighbours over an operationally avoidable tragedy!
Let us count the types of hostile borders and lines of control that presently divide Kashmir from the rest of India. The status of Masood Azhar as a global terrorist is one of the foremost issues on the mind of a nation kept obsessed with the national security threat from Pakistan. Either way, though, it would resolve nothing in Kashmir. In contrast, lying uncertain is the relevance of Kashmiri nationalism, which is based on a special status under Article 370 of the Constitution and is equated with deshdroh under the compulsion of supremacist majoritarianism. Simultaneously, it seems Kashmir is destined to be policed differently from the rest of India, by the Army and CRPF. Instead of integrating the trust of a civil police system in day-to-day affairs in Kashmir and using the CRPF as a subsidiary armed support against militants, there is an offensive reliance on strengthening the boastful presence of the Army and the CRPF. There exists, therefore, a visible ‘LoC’ between the Indian Army and the Kashmiri people.
The Balakot episode has confirmed what the Kargil conflict, coming months after the Lahore peace declaration, had warned about, that the predominantly national security approach to the Kashmir imbroglio is fraught with the danger of war with Pakistan. Irrespective of India’s insistence on bilateralism, this approach can at best hope to bag a geo-political solution in the long run. It presupposes strong diplomacy and a capable military — and India boasts of both. A predominantly internal security approach will require bipartisan politics and statesman-like leadership; India has none at present.
It is perceived that Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf had almost resolved the Kashmir dispute at the Agra summit in 2001. I was a witness to both leaders looking disappointed at not signing the prepared draft. However, the fragility of such a document could never have been in doubt. Parliament was attacked in December that year by Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, two Pakistan-based terrorist organisations, resulting in a prolonged standoff. Even the much-referred Vajpayee peace doctrine of Kashmiriyat-Jamhooriyat-Insaniyat, testimony to his statesmanship, will have no chance to grow in soil kept infertile by the manure of outdated internal security.
When Pakistan handed back Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman to India, the spectacle of the graciously quick return of the MiG-21 pilot, shot down and captured by Pakistan, elicited both international plaudits and misplaced triumphalism. But the spectacle also masked more important military and political factors at play.
The two military rounds played between Pakistan and India on February 26/27 in the wake of New Delhi’s aggression against Islamabad, after the February 14 Pulwama attack, have important lessons for deterrence as well as the question of whether limited war options are possible between a nuclear dyad.
India has, since long, accused Pakistan of playing the conflict game at the sub-conventional level while denying India its superior conventional capabilities by signalling the resolve to introduce nuclear weapons first and early into a conventional conflict. This line of reasoning, simplistic though it is, has been widely lapped up, not only by Indian analysts but also Western scholars.
Meanwhile, India, since the limited conflict in Kargil (1999) and then the 10-month long Twin Peaks crisis (2001-02) has been conceptualising how to punish Pakistan conventionally while remaining below the nuclear threshold.
Pakistan and India came closer to a devastating war than they have in almost 17 years. As the dark clouds of impending all-out conflict begin to dissipate, it is important for both to see what the current tensions can teach us about deterrence and preventing a repeat
Put another way, India thought — and many experts agreed — that there was a band in which India could act militarily and punitively. That, if India were to play within that band, it would make it extremely difficult for Pakistan to escalate to the nuclear level because such escalation would be considered highly disproportionate and would draw international opprobrium and consequences. The argument was that the certainty of international diplomatic and economic isolation would force Pakistan to stay its hand and not escalate to the nuclear level.
The banal equivalent of such a situation would be someone punching another person in a crowded bazaar and the victim, instead of keeping the fight to fisticuffs, chooses to draw and fire a pistol. Not only would such a person lose the sympathy of the crowd, he would also invite the full coercive and normative weight of the law.
Corollary: whoever ups the ante in a basic fight ends up as the loser.
India’s Cold Start doctrine dates back to 2001-02 but has only now been deployed by PM Narendra Modi | Reuters
However, while the Indian military planners were thinking about this for the past two decades, until the arrival on India’s political scene of Narendra Modi and his éminence grise, Ajit Doval, New Delhi shied away from actualising a short, sharp military option against Pakistan, focusing instead on exploiting diplomatic channels using its diplomatic heft.
According to India’s official figures, the 2001-02 standoff cost India three billion dollars with hundreds of soldiers killed without any exchange with Pakistan. The mobilisation was a political decision and as then-Indian Chief of Army Staff S Padmanabhan noted, in an interview to The Hindu, “You could certainly question why we are so dependent on our strike formations and why my holding corps don’t have the capability to do the same tasks from a cold start. This is something I have worked on while in office. Perhaps, in time, it will be our military doctrine.”
COLD START DOCTRINE
This was the beginning of India’s Cold Start doctrine that envisaged creating eight Independent Battle Groups, placed closer to the border and capable of a short, sharp, punitive action against Pakistan without the long mobilisation delays India experienced in 2001-02. Interestingly, while India for long denied that such a doctrine existed — despite having done some field exercises to validate it — the current Indian army chief, Bipin Rawat, acknowledged its existence in an interview barely three weeks after taking office on December 31, 2016.
As an explainer in The Economist put it, “Cold Start is the name given to a limited-war strategy designed to seize Pakistani territory swiftly without, in theory, risking a nuclear conflict. It has its roots in an attack on India’s parliament in 2001 … by the time its [India’s] lumbering Strike Corps were mobilised and positioned on the frontier, Pakistan had already bulked up its defences, raising both the costs of incursion and the risk that it would escalate into a nuclear conflict. Cold Start is an attempt to draw lessons from this: having nimbler, integrated units stationed closer to the border would allow India to inflict significant harm before international powers demanded a ceasefire; by pursuing narrow aims, it would also deny Pakistan a justification for triggering a nuclear strike.”
Let’s consider the underlying assumptions in all this.
The ‘theory’ assumes that:
(1) There is a band in which India can use its conventional military option;
(2) that band can be exploited;
(3) India has the conventional superiority to make it work;
(4) if it does so in response to an attack it can pin on Pakistan, it has enough diplomatic weight to have the world opinion on its side for such a strike;
(5) it can make it work through a military surprise which can gain its objectives;
(6) Pakistan, having suffered a setback, will be hard pressed to retaliate because it will have to climb up the escalation ladder, a costly proposition both for reasons of the earlier military setback as well as international diplomatic pressure;
(7) given India’s upper hand, both militarily and diplomatically, Pakistan will choose to not escalate;
(8) if, however, Pakistan did choose to escalate, India will still enjoy escalation dominance because of its superior capabilities and because it will have international diplomatic support; and
(9) India, given its diplomatic and military heft, will be able to raise the costs for Pakistan in an escalation spiral.
Result: Pakistan will weigh the consequences as a rational-choice actor and prefer to climb down.
Modi from the word go has been hyping his masculinity and informing his right-wing Hindutva vote bank that he could and would act where his Congress predecessors failed to, namely that he would teach Pakistan a lesson and create a “new normal”.
The interesting assumption in all this, and one that should not be missed is this: the first-round result. Every subsequent assumption flows from what India could achieve militarily in the opening hand.
Pakistan’s jointly developed JF-17 Thunder jets acquitted themselves well in the current tensions
Somehow, barring a few analysts, most literature took for granted that the first round would, of necessity, go in favour of India. And therefore, Pakistan’s cost for retaliation would increase both militarily and diplomatically. In fact, this does make sense if it can be guaranteed that India’s gambit will work. Except, the opening round success could be guaranteed only if India were applying force on an inanimate object or if its conventional capabilities were far superior to Pakistan’s.
As Clausewitz noted, “War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.”
The second crucial point in unpacking these assumptions is the limited nature of the engagement. It should be clear that India’s politico-military strategy post the 2001-02 standoff looked at any punitive military action in a limited, not full-scale, mode: military action below the nuclear threshold.
Pakistan has never drawn clear red lines, managing risk through ambiguity. The only time a former — and longest-serving — Director-General Strategic Plans Division, Lt-General Khalid Kidwai, enunciated four parameters for resorting to nukes was during an interview to two visiting Italian physicists:
(1) India attacks Pakistan and conquers a large part of its territory (space threshold);
(2) India destroys a large part of Pakistan’s military forces/assets (military threshold);
(3) India strangulates Pakistan economically;
(4) India destabilises Pakistan politically or through internal subversion.
As Dr Nitin Prasad says in his book, Contemporary Pakistan: Political System, Military and Changing Scenario, Kidwai was using hypothetical scenarios, and his four thresholds — geographic, military, economic, domestic-political — were not red lines, defined and understood by the adversary or other parties, because clearly defined red lines dilute deterrence and provide room for conventional force manoeuvring.
The point about the limited nature of India’s military plans is important because, while a case can be made for India possibly overwhelming Pakistan in a drawn full-scale conventional conflict which brings in other factors, a limited thrust or strike — if there’s not a huge differential in technical and other capabilities — may not necessarily play to the stronger adversary’s advantage.
Put another way, if the presumably weaker side denies the stronger side success in the opening round, draws its own blood successfully while showing restraint, it can raise the costs for the stronger actor by upending the latter’s assumptions based on the success of the opening round.
DIMENSIONS OF DETERRENCE
This is exactly what has happened in the two rounds fought this time. One can put it thus: deterrence has held because the aggressor has to factor in the nuclear dimension and keep its military options below that threshold. The defender, having defended successfully and then drawn blood, shows restraint. Third parties get involved knowing and realising that any attempt by one or both sides at escalation dominance could spiral. [Note: Dr Moeed Yusuf has a brilliant book on third party brokering (2018), which studies US diplomacy during three crises — Kargil (1999), Twin Peaks (2001-02) and Mumbai (2008).]
But what exactly is deterrence?
After his capture, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman being escorted to a military facility | APP
It can have both the conventional and the nuclear dimensions. Essentially, deterrence is the ability to discourage an actor from undertaking an unwanted action, including an armed attack. It is, in other words, about prevention, i.e. convincingly stopping an actor from an action. The sister concept, what Thomas Schelling described as compellence, is about forcing an actor to do something in line with what the compeller (adversary) wants it to do.
By India’s reasoning, its limited military options are about deterring Pakistan to undertake actions at the sub-conventional level and to deter India from making use of its conventional strength because of the existence of nuclear weapons.
This is where the problem begins.
Deterrence is not just about threatening an adversary with punitive action. In order for it to be successful, it must shape the adversary’s perceptions, i.e., force the adversary to change its behaviour by estimating that it has options other than aggression and which are more cost-effective. Shaping perceptions of the adversary that needs to be deterred would then require the deterrer to understand the motives of the actor who has to be deterred. Without that exercise, any limited action, even if it were temporarily successful, would fail to impact a behaviour change or incentivise a state actor to do something different.
Also, deterrence by denial, the ability to deter an action by making it infeasible is a far better strategy than deterrence by punishment which, as the term implies, promises the resolve and the capability to take punitive action(s) and inflict severe punishment.
So, in the case of the rounds played, deterrence has worked at two levels.
First, the overall, umbrella deterrence that flows from the possession of nuclear weapons on both sides. This level ensures that even if one or the other side decides to undertake military action, it must keep it limited.
Kashmiri children hold placards and shout freedom slogans in Srinagar: the root cause of Indo-Pak tensions is ignored by India | AP
The second level is about conventional deterrence. If X has undertaken a military action, Y can prevent it from achieving its objective and, by successfully undertaking its own action, can force X to rethink its use of any military option. The rethink is important because, in such a play, if Y has prevented X’s action and successfully undertaken its own, X cannot simply retaliate to a reprisal. X will have to climb up the escalation ladder, i.e., it has to scale up by using an escalatory option to defend his commitment. Escalation is about a higher cost and the rethink is a function of forcing X into that cost-benefit analysis.
It is precisely for this reason that the opening round is so crucial for the aggressor, in this case India. To recap, as noted above in the list of assumptions, every subsequent assumption flows from the success of the opening round.
MODI-DOVAL CALCULATION
At this point it would be instructive to view all this from the perspective of the Modi-Doval duo. Both men believe, or at least had convinced themselves into believing, that the previous Indian governments did not make use of a conventional military option because they were weak-kneed. Modi, by referring to his 56-inch chest, from the word go has been hyping his masculinity and informing his right-wing Hindutva vote bank that he could and would act where his Congress predecessors failed to, namely that he would teach Pakistan a lesson and create a “new normal”.
In September 2016, following an attack on an army camp in Uri in Occupied Kashmir, one morning the Indian Director-General Military Operations announced to a packed press conference that India had conducted “surgical strikes” in Azad Kashmir, across the Line of Control (LoC) and destroyed “terrorist” bases. He also said that he had told his Pakistani counterpart that India did not intend to take any further action and that its action was only directed towards non-state actors.
The Indian media, as well as serious analysts, went into a tizzy. Days on end, there was nothing on Indian TV channels and newspapers other than this “great victory” against Pakistan. We were told that Pakistan had not retaliated because Pakistan Army posts and troops in the area were caught off-guard and Pakistan was playing it down because the action was an embarrassment for it. Even serious analysts began talking about a new normal.
This is what Shashank Joshi, then based at the Royal United Services Institute in London, wrote in the opening paragraph of his op-edin The Hindustan Times: “India’s ‘surgical strikes’ on Wednesday night… — barely a few kilometres across the Line of Control (LoC) — … represent one of the most important changes in India’s military posture to Pakistan in over a decade.” He did acknowledge that this hadn’t happened for the first time and the fact, as he put it, “that Pakistan will not reverse seven decades of policy without a diplomatic process” but there was headiness, nonetheless. And this is just one example. There are scores of others.
Pakistan did not retaliate because it was a fire raid where Indian troops were blocked at two points of ingress but managed to sneak in at the third, fired at some hutments and withdrew.
Pakistani Kashmiris carry the coffin of a civilian who was killed in a gunfight between Indian and Pakistan troops on the Line of Control | AFP
By hyping it, Modi locked himself further into a commitment trap. Apart from some discerning commentators in India, everyone chose to forget that such actions had been undertaken at the LoC by both sides in the past and that there was nothing ‘surgical’ about India’s fire raid.
On February 14, therefore, when a bomber mounted the deadliest attackon Indian paramilitary troops in recent times, Modi was left with no option but to act. With a tough election staring him in the face and his chest blocking a clear view of rationality, he decided to use a limited military option. Only this time it had to be more than just a raid across the LoC. He jumped a few rungs on the escalation ladder by deciding to use his air force.
The story about what happened on the morning of February 26 has now become a laugh and it has been walked back a few miles and some more by India itself, so those details are not necessary. Whatever little was left of India’s fantastic claim about hitting a “training camp” and killing “terrorists” has been finally laid to rest by a Reuters story that reviewed satellite imagery from Planet Labs Inc.
However, what is important is not whether Indian planes came into Pakistan (original claim), whether they struck in a stand-off mode (i.e. when aerial platforms are used from a safe distance, away from defensive weapons, and use precision munitions such as glide bombs to attack a distant target without actually coming upon the target and swooping down for a bombing run) or even whether they could or could not make a hit. The important and crucial point was that India had challenged Pakistan and Pakistan needed to put an end to the “new normal” talk. Pakistan chose its targets, struck to show resolve and capability and then also won the dogfight.
Later, we are told that India had thought of using missiles to hit nine targets in Pakistan. But Pakistan readied its missiles and informed India that it will hit back. That forced India to back off. If this is true — and it comes to us from a briefing by Prime Minister Imran Khan — then it seems that Modi had nursed the idea of playing a very dangerous hand, which he couldn’t because that would have meant exchange of missiles between a nuclear dyad — a development which has remarkable escalation potential. Missilery between nuclear powers is a big no. There’s no known technology in the world that can determine whether the incoming missile has a tactical or a strategic (nuclear) warhead and that can lead to response miscalculation.
The two sides are back to the ‘old normal’ — artillery and small-arms duelling across the LoC. The attempt by an Indian submarine to enter Pakistan’s territorial waters was also deftly picked up by Pakistan Navy, with the sub forced to return. It could have been sunk but Pakistan, in keeping with its policy of not escalating, chose not to make a hit.
From here on, there’s nothing more for India but to understand the imperative of positive engagement through a sustained dialogue. The framework for such engagement is already in place. There is no alternative to talking and walking that talk. But that will not happen until we see the electoral contest in India and its results.
At the same time, Pakistan must not underestimate India based on these limited rounds. While India could not coerce Pakistan militarily at this moment, if the growth differential between Pakistan and India continues to grow, the technological asymmetry will increase to the point where strategies of coercion could kick into play. That scenario could see very different results on the ground. For instance, India will possess the anti-access, area-denial (A2/AD) S-400 system by 2020. That system is not just defensive but can also be employed in a preemptive offensive role. Typically, A2/AD systems ensure that they can deny a mission to incoming hostiles (anti-access) and ensure safety of their own area against any hostile action (area denial mode). If things do not change through engagement, we could see India use the S-400 in any future round. That would be an entirely different ballgame altogether.
The writer is Executive Editor at Indus News and specialises in defence and security.
