Someone wise, once said, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. For the ill fated Paramilitary, CRPF men in that damned convoy, the road to Srinagar was paved with a JeM’ IED. Unarmed men returning to their posts from leave, blown up in cold and wet infamy, on the Jammu Awantipura Highway. The carnage at Pulwama was broadcast by media in a kafkaesque image strewn with body parts and metal smithereens. The media as is won’t made the attack spectacular, amplifying JeM (Jaish e Mohammad) Social Media propaganda. Lets add to that the mobile phone voyeurism of death, blood and gore. Lessons not learnt included convoy security protocols, intelligence and information warfare failure.
Despite blunt promises of revenge by Modi Cabinet and a CCS (a Cabinet Committee on Security bereft on any domain experts in Security or Military Uniform) there is a an air of alarm. The mood of the nation is sombre as the bodies of the CRPF men arrive for cremation across India’s many States.
Cries of kin: widows, old parents and children in grief and mourning, are a sad consequence of the strategic policy failure in Kashmir.
The Modi journey from sincerity and Achhiniyat, to failure hasn’t been without brief periods of luck. Despite the obvious poor judgement calls, no lessons were learnt after Uri, Pathankot and Nagrota. The Nehruvian babudom that plagued Congress, continued to resist all attempts at Police, Intelligence and Defence reform, successfully in BJP too run, directly by Modi. The inexperience of a CM propelled to a PM role and rest of the NDA2 Cabinet, full of weak leaders without popular support or competence, in Defence and Finance, has obtained the current security scenario.
The Army Special Forces’ Surgical Strike post Uri became an echo chamber of self-congratulation. The monumental blunder of Modi’s opportunistic alliance with soft separatist Mufti and PDP, saw anger and disaffection, in loyal Jammu and Ladakh, both key BJP constituencies betrayed for power.
To add injury to insult, the Indian Army reputation was also tarnished in Kashmir by Ram Madhav and Mehbooba Mufti, which saw several Rashtriya Rifles (specialist counterterrorism and counterinsurgency Indian Army unit) troops doing their jobs, court-martialled, and implicated falsely in cases, that they continue to fight to date.
A political appointee, Army Chief that lowballed legitimate demands of his men in media, and an Army Commander that had to apologise, for soldiers and officers doing their job, destroyed troop morale. Brave and tough, battle hardened men who have kept Kashmir in India, at the cost of huge sacrifice, despite the treachery and incompetence of our politicians and bureaucrats.
Defence Reform Paralysis
Defence Reform has remained a low priority with the Modi Government. Starting from the distasteful twin-forked tongue of Arun Jaitley, the patron saint of Lutyens Babudom, to Manohar Parrikar. The current, woman empowerment, lightening rod, Raksha Mantri (RM) in Nirmala Sitharaman, is a controversial figure, and one of the worst NDA2 Defence Ministers, in decades. She has seen huge media criticism on Defence budget, plagued yet by the non-delivery of OROP (One Rank One Pension).
The RM has a penchant for poor decisions coached no doubt by wily MoD bureaucrats inviting controversy galore from omissions like denial of NFU (Non Functional Upgradation since given to CAPFs / Paramilitary but not Military). The Defence Procurement paralysis has seen a chronic inability to equip the Army with an assault rifle, Infantry squad weapons, and body armour. Other apathy concerns funds for perimeter protection of military installations and garrisons, among a long angry list of unfulfilled legitimate asks.
In this self-inflicted injury to MoD (Ministry of Defence) image, the list of commissions is equally long starting with controversy over opening of military cantonments to civilians, creating an avoidable security crisis in peace areas. The latest howler has been allowing civilian non-combat MoD staff in military, unit run canteens. Telescoping of ranks and knee jerk cuts in senior fighting ranks has created a discomfort in military experts, on both competence, and intent of austerity.
The degradation of Military rank, equivalent status of the fighting man, relative to the bureaucrats, in MoD has worsened, under Modi led BJP. The HQ IDS’ whitewash of Land, Air and Water Forces in jointness remains stuck in criminal indecision. 5 years of NDA2 saw zero integration of Army, Air Force and Navy without the creation of a single Military Commander or CDS.
The aggressive litigation by MoD against Widows, Veterans and disabled soldiers has created huge perception damage for a Government that came to power on a nationalist and security mandate.
For the Military, things went from bad to worse under Modi led NDA2, as sycophants were appointed as top brass, abdicating their command for self-serving patronage, and post retirement gubernatorial largesse. This shows in bad decisions and sycophancy in politically polarised Military brass unable to speak with the straight spine required for military realism.
The debilitating narrative of Nehruvian import substitution is back in Modi’s lexicon as MakeInIndia, another lemon sold to a NDA2 Government, that promised Defence Reform, but has since been paralysed in Defence Procurement and saw the lowest Defence Budget since 1962 China Debacle.
A direct consequence of this failure of defence reform is an inability to fulfil desperate needs of a fast ageing military with 70 per cent obsolete equipment. Indirectly, it eats up a huge pie of the defence budget, which could then be redeployed for capital acquisitions to modernise the Military.
This inability to shed fat from MoD civilian bureaucracy and soviet era DPSUs (Defence Public Sector Units) and OFBs (Ordnance factory Boards) has resulted in scandalous fatalities in the Military, as well as defective and poorly maintained equipment and dangerous ammunition.
Modi’s Reform Blindspot called Babudom
Modi for all his canny gifts is unable to break, either himself, or through the sizeable lateral talent base in BJP (and larger RSS organisation) the socialist mediocrity mafia of Babudom. Generalist clerks with no accountability or domain competence- these colonial self-serving parasites have created a bureaucratic gridlock that blocks and constrains all reform, change and governance.
A poor legacy for a man with achhiniyat but serial debacles. Inability to reform bureaucratic stranglehold in both MoD and MHA remains a red mark in the NDA2 report card. It has seen the image of Modi, BJP come to grief.
Asymmetric War denial
The Modi strategic security construct is practically run by a single policeman turned Intelligence Bureau Veteran, in Ajit Doval, who has been appointed NSA, an uncrowned security tzar of NDA2. While it is expected of a Prime Minister to choose his confidantes and his Security team, this is a fraud on the constitution of India.
There is no legal legitimacy to the office of NSA or its appropriation of of Police, Intelligence, Diplomacy and now strangely even the Military, given sycophant Service Chiefs and kowtowing top brass.
A dozen Intelligence Agencies remain illegitimate entities without accountability owing their to colonial executive orders not legislation 70 years into freedom, and Declaration of Independence. That they have no accountability beyond their political masters prone to be misused in intrigue doesn’t inspire confidence in a Republic.
This is a recipe for hiding failure and living in a schizophrenic echo chamber. There are no checks and balances that are a must in a democracy with a parliament.
The brunt of Internal Security is unfairly borne by the Indian Army in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. These deputations destroy both training and peacetime rotation of troops, retrofitted into built up area warfare units like Rashtriya Rifles (RR) in Kashmir, and Assam Rifles (AR) in the North East.
The Home Ministry with its CAPFs remain only in real charge of Maoist operations, where they fare poorly with mass casualties from repeat ambushes, given a divorce between parent cadres, and generalist IPS Babudom foisted on top as colonial brown sahibs. The resentment in the CAPF lowers morale and results in headquarter mentality and dangerous decisions far from the action that cause bloody carnages like Pulwama.
Bureaucrats, who have not grown in parent organisations are also given to surrendering to opportunism of their political masters. A surrender of the kind that allowed diluted Security protocols that results in Convoys like CRPF getting bombed and ambushed, as well as render roadside security barricades ineffective, against distributed asymmetric warfare attacks.
Weapons, Gear, Infowar, Abdication of Cybersecurity in Kashmir
The troops of RR and AR remain poorly equipped with small platoon level weapons, troop transport and body armour, Helicopter as well as aerial intelligence support remain a missing piece, with Army Aviation facing rivalry from a turf conscious Air Force. This forces counterterrorism units to fight with the worse resources than the suicidal fidayeen they are tasked to kill in Kashmir and North East.
Cyberwar as a component is a missing piece in Kashmir, with encryption based messaging being used to channel propaganda content being employed by ISI propped Tanzeems.
As Social Media fuelled information warfare is waged by the Pakistan Army and its proxies, generating and disseminating Jihadi propaganda, the security bureaucracy has no effective answers in either containment or denial of service, besides ham handed, Internet shutdown, outage that creates resentment in the population.
The Wisdom of Crowds; Elections and Warmongering
It is a curious sight to see Government sponsored unrest on Television. The Modi led BJP is riding a tiger called outrage, this is the tiger that eats you when you try to get off its back.
The lack of defence reform and building of covert and subconventional warfare infrastructure, then forces answering of asymmetric warfare defeats, by conventional warfare actions. This along an already hot border that risks escalation and creates misery for populations living along the LoC due to indiscriminate shelling and firing .
In the heady election jingoism on social media and the lazy war cries of myopic politicians, to satisfy the blood lust of revenge, there are sobering realities. Realities like the fact that India has no Special Forces Command or covert cross border resources to prosecute such a campaign of righteous wrath.
This sabre rattling without asymmetric war capability makes a long term policy of deterrence against subconventional war toothless. The escalation cycle up the nuclear bluff and the current geopolitics of US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Chinese colonisation of Pakistan make all retaliatory options uncomfortable.
The JeM claim to Pulwama is blunt and aggressive and represents a trend in escalation of Terrorism in Kashmir and points further. This is a return to the pre Musharraf days, and India is unprepared, its guard down! The retribution against the Pulwama provocation in the current state of preparedness scenario risks becoming a mass media whitewash like post Uri Surgical Strikes since proven inadequate messaging of intent or creating deterrence against the Pakistan Army deep state, now grandfathered by a revisionist China.
Modi had the mandate, the money and the opportunity to prepare for such an eventuality but this was whittled in a lack of strategic realism and poor babudom advice. India remains at risk. Modi will not be able to shed the continued taint on security failure unless the future of Bharat gets emergency legislative Administrative, Police, Intelligence and Defence Reform. The rest is politics!
