No Win-Win: Neither side is gaining, only casualties are rising.

IN India, the term ‘surgical strike’ has become a metaphor for bold, unexpected and punitive  action. It is being liberally employed by paanwallahs, chaiwallahs and white-collar boardwallahs. For a country historically known for its strategic restraint and patience induced partly by being trapped between four cartographic  lines — LoC, LAC, Durand and McMahon — but mainly due to a passive and reactive temperament and philosophy, the strikes across the LoC on September 29 when internalised were pathbreaking. In Pakistan it was called  a storm in a tea cup. A month later, PM Narendra Modi’s second  surgical strike against corruption and terrorism was against  high value currency. Neither strike was thought  through. To start with, the military terminology used was imprecise. Surgical strikes are predominantly in the domain of the air forces and missile and nuclear warfare. Initially, the operation was described by the military as surgical strikes along the LoC against multiple terrorist launch pads causing significant casualties. Later, the Foreign Office refined it to ‘cross-LoC, target-specific, limited calibre counter-terrorist operations’. If the political objective for crossing the LoC and claiming ownership was to lift the immunity enjoyed by Pakistan for stoking militancy and unrest in J&K by employing non-state actors through infiltration and ending cross-border terrorism (CBT), the aim has not and will not be achieved. Pakistan’s low-cost high- yield CBT strategy cannot be deterred without further escalation and risk of war, given the finite capacities of the military and special forces in covert and overt cross-border operations. The political and military leadership is aware of this strategic deficiency.Let us examine the content of the surgical strikes. These were carried out by Army commandos 2 to 5 km across the LoC. The operation was circumscribed by two riders: no escalation; and no own casualties. This limited the option to one above the lowest rung of response — fire assaults to shallow cross-LoC multiple raids. The Pakistan army denied any cross-LoC operation had taken place though BBC’s Ilyas Khan has verified that attacks took place at five different targets north and south of the Pir Panjal. While such strikes have been executed earlier, though not on the same scale and clandestinely, for the first time they were accompanied with a declaration.Doing the rounds are a few questions. Is 19 soldiers killed at Uri the new normal for an Indian response? Has strategic restraint been abandoned? Has Pakistan’s nuclear bluff been called? Has Pakistan’s CBT been deterred? The answer to these queries is ‘no’. On the other hand, Pakistan has spiked the heat and tension on the LoC and IB as an initial reprisal to the strikes by conducting fidayeen attacks, including the beheading of a soldier and intense fire assaults. In these cross-LoC games, Pakistan enjoys the asymmetric advantage of having nearly 300 ready-to-die terrorists on the Indian side of the LoC.  As India does not want to be provoked  into  a war with  Pakistan, control over escalation is vital. It is instructive to rewind to 1965 to recall the spiral of escalation. Pakistan’s trial-balloon  in the Rann of Kutch was ended quickly by British intervention after neither side used its Air Force. Later, Pakistan launched insurgency  through Operation Gibraltar in J&K. India  retaliated with Operations Bakshi and Faulad in Haji Pir and Kishenganga whereupon Pakistan’s   Operation Grand Slam was unleashed in Chhamb-Jaurian forcing India to call in the Air Force and cross IB in Lahore and Sialkot sectors. The operations escalated from insurgency in J&K to war across the Punjab plains as both countries then were non-nuclear.The post-Uri escalation story so far in two months is that the surgical strikes were followed by fidayeen attack and beheading of an Indian soldier. In retaliation, four Pakistan posts were destroyed eliciting Pakistani response of widespread shelling and firing on the LoC. Since September 29, over 200 ceasefire violations have resulted in 11 Indian soldiers and 16 civilians being killed with considerable displacement of civilians to rear areas. Pakistani casualties are much higher, including seven soldiers killed on November 14  and at least 26 civilians having died earlier. Artillery has rarely been used to avoid escalation. Following 10 months of fire assaults and cross-LoC raids after the attack on Parliament in 2001, Pakistan sought a ceasefire on November 26, 2003, which held till around 2008. In J&K, due to CBT, nearly 6,245 security force personnel have been killed between 1972 and 2016, of which 4,675 were accounted between  2001 and 2015. Include figures pre-1972, more combatants were killed through CBT than in all wars  between India and Pakistan.India’s maiden declared surgical strikes since 1971, however grandly  eulogised, have not raised costs for Pakistan nor strengthened deterrence to disincentivise Pakistan’s CBT. Recently, at Mirpur in the PoK,  LeT chief Hafiz Saeed warned India that mujahideen will teach India how to launch a proper strike. Given the Panama dynamics and tenuous civil-military ties in Pakistan his threat has to be taken seriously till the appointment of Gen Raheel Sharif’s successor by November 29. India’s options for a meaningful retribution are conspicuously limited — repeat of September 29; or do nothing. In his book Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy, former NSA Shiv Shankar Menon has said after 26/11 Mumbai, he pressed for immediate military retaliation either against the LeT Muridke in Punjab or against their camps in the PoK or against the ISI because it would have been ‘emotionally satisfying’. It would also have erased the shame of the incompetence of the security agencies displayed in the full glare of TV lights in dealing with it, he added. His predecessor, MK Narayanan, recently wrote that the options being bandied about after Uri of striking terrorist camps in the PoK were considered unviable in 2008 after a cost-benefit analysis. He elaborated: ‘The reality is that the armed forces still do not have adequate capabilities for surgical operations despite claims to the contrary’. In their speeches, NSA Ajit Doval and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar have espoused unconventional strategies to counter Pakistan’s CBT but done little to create capabilities to do so.Against this background, it is clear that Mr Modi ordered the surgical strike for political and emotional satisfaction and to justify his pre-poll promise of dealing with Pakistan with greater manliness. He has raised expectations for a more robust response to the next Pakistani cross-border strike. But one swallow does not a summer make. Nor does the September 29 riposte constitute a befitting reply. If India is to stop being bled by a thousand cuts, it must create assets and capacities to pay back Pakistan in the same coin as Messers Parrikar and Doval have suggested. In the interim, the tragic trail of martyrs coffins will continue to be flashed on TV screens as the strikes were too little too late.

18 troopers lost since Sept 29, Pak toll more

400 ceasefire violations since surgical strike

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, november 22

In the past fifty-three days after the September 29 ‘surgical strike’, India and Pakistan have been locked in a tit-for-tat firing along the Line of Control (LoC).    India has lost 18 of its troops — that includes the Army and the Border Security Force (BSF), while Pakistan is estimated to have lost more men even as it downplays its own casualties.(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)Today, when reports filtered in that three Army men have lost their lives at Machil close to the Line of Control in the Kashmir valley, the death toll for the Army reached 13 martyrs, either killed by firing from across the LoC by Pakistan army or by militants aided by the Pakistan army.Pakistan has publically admitted to 13-14 deaths of its own, though the Indian assessment based on ground reports from local informers and radio intercepts is that Pakistan has lost 24 soldiers.Even this morning when the encounter with militants was on in Machil, Pakistan army was giving cover fire, sources said, adding that the LoC has been ‘very active’ as the snow will soon close down the high passes in the Himalayas. “Be aggressive” is the message to formation commanders on ground, who have been told to respond to all ceasefire violations. The decision of time of strike is left to the local units while the nature of weapons has been small arms and mortars. There have been some 400 violations of the November 2003 ceasefire.  Not only have the number of violations gone up,  the intensity and periodicity is up several notches across the LoC and the 198-km international boundary.