The Intense Indian
Debate on How to Tackle ISI, Pak Army
NEW
DELHI: The following is part of a series of articles on the Indian
Army, published by an Indian web magazine, Newsinsight.
It deals with how the Indian Army was trying to deal with the
Pakistan Army and its intelligence services, after the Kargil
episode of 1999:
"Insurgency,"
says a Kashmir intelligence warhorse, "is never a purely
military problem. It is always a politico-military problem. Whichever
is the prime agency fighting insurgency cannot shut its eyes to
what is happening in its territory. It has to tackle it in a politico-military
manner."
"The
brigade commander has to have good communication with his local
MLAs. They are his sources of information. He has to have the
political arguments with him. He has to cultivate lower-level
politicians. Otherwise, he will be fighting in isolation. He has
to have his eyes and ears open. Otherwise, he will never be able
to fight successfully."
"The
GOC," he continues, "has to be close to 13 to 14 MLAs.
Block pramukhs are his best sources of intelligence.
Such intelligence is not always actionable intelligence. But they
are the best sources to give the right approach to tackle the
problem. Yes, MI or any military organisation should not influence
the rise or fall of any particular politician or political party.
But to say that the MI was involved in politicking is poppycock."
"The
army in Kashmir is not giving aid to civil power. It is fighting
a full-blown insurgency, a low-intensity conflict."
To
fight it better, ex-Indian Army C-in-C, General Padmanabhan wanted
to finesse and increase the ambit of Military Intelligence (MI).
The army made recommendations to the Kargil committee that, in
effect, wanted to divide the MI charter, reconstitute it, and
modify its relations with such agencies as RAW and IB. The IB
does not like the looming picture where a revamped MI would cut
into its territory in India: the northern army already had an
intelligence set up outside of the MI. And RAW was enormously
apprehensive of the other fall out of the army recommendations:
an army-run external intelligence unit functioning parallel to
RAW in at least the "neighbouring target countries".
General
Padmanabhan touched on this in a rare interview to Outlook magazine.
"We have our own people there along with them (RAW),"
he said, "but not in the kind of numbers we would like, or
the way we would like to utilise them." Adds a key military
official, "RAW says something. I have no way to check it.
I have to accept whatever is given." Its new handle against
RAW is RAW’s recent botched assassination attempt of the
ULFA chief, Paresh Barua, in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Its old
one has been, of course, RAW’s failure to foresee the Kargil
war.
Can
the army do better than RAW in, say, Pakistan?
Traditionally,
Indian military officers posted as military attaches (MAs) have
found easy access to Pakistani power / military circles (often
the same) and society (in thrall to its own army). A RAW man stationed
in Islamabad is marked from day 1 and so boxed in by Pakistani
security services as to be rendered ineffectual. An MA on the
other hand has access to MAs of other countries who are privy
to several secrets as so much of Pakistan is controlled by its
army.
It
is not unoften also that a Pakistani divisional commander may
bone up to an Indian MA (more likely if both happen to be Punjabis)
and invite him up to his division. And, Pakistan’s tony
society feels safer in the friendship of an Indian MA who is left
well alone by Pakistan security services than in the acquaintance
of RAW and embassy staff who are hounded (often brutally). Some
former Indian MAs say that they frequently inputted for the RAW
man’s report to New Delhi!
So,
the MI directorate is well-placed to gather intelligence within
Pakistan. (RAW gets its booty outside Pakistan.) It is best-informed
about Pakistan Army’s higher command. Its field intelligence
(order of battle details, troop movements, wireless intercepts,
and so on) is fair. But its analysis and conclusions may be suspect.
For
example, there were all the signs that the Pakistan army was preparing
for an offensive. Yet, the Indian army was unalert and eventually
surprised by the Kargil incursion. There was growing evidence
that General Parvez Musharraf would topple Nawaz Sharief. Yet,
its internal analysis ruled out a coup and shared the government’s
perception that Sharief would show the Pakistan army to its proper
constitutional place.
But
MI’s analytical limitations are hardly unique: RAW and IB
also failed to see the Kargil war and gave Sharief a long political
life. And it is not this that is slowing the army’s ambitious
intelligence programme. It is the spin being put on it that is.
"They want an ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)," snapped
an IB official. And, the ISI’s record of political interference
in Pakistan would scare any government off that model.
The
army, at best, may like to pattern something after the ISI’s
foreign intelligence arm. It would be a symbolic tit-for-tat:
it is this wing that is spearheading the "proxy war"
against India using modular agents and jihadis whose brunt, at
least in Kashmir, is being felt by the Indian army. Also, what
works in the Pakistan army may suit the Indian army. They share
a common parent, the British Indian army, and despite General
Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamic attempts, the Pakistan army is professional
like the Indian army.
And,
contrary to its image, the ISI is not a rouge force. "Visiting
Pakistani generals have told us that the Pakistan army exercises
complete control over it," said a defence official. Nawaz
Sharif tried to wag the dog by getting the ISI chief, Ziauddin,
to take over the Pakistan army when Pervez Musharraf was in Sri
Lanka. The army preserved itself by overthrowing Sharif and seizing
Ziauddin. It was the first and last mutiny of the ISI against
the Pakistan army.
But
an ISI model may not snugfit India’s Pakistan objectives.
The Two-Nation Theory that Hindus and Muslims cannot coexist as
a nation is Pakistan’s national ideology. It came into being
because of it. And it seeks to separate Kashmir and break up a
secular and multi-religious India in pursuance of it. The ISI’s
foreign intelligence arm is pursuing that through jihad and other
means.
Post-1971,
though, India sees little gain in partitioning Pakistan along
its warring provinces or on Shia-Sunni/ Mohajir-Punjabi lines.
And Pakistan’s nuclear weapons ensure that India can never
again launch a full-scale war. The best that the Indian army can
do is to work something in the interstices. There are more fighting
opportunities in Afghanistan.
Anyhow,
Pakistan and Taliban’s Afghanistan are the army’s
main "target neighbouring countries". "RAW can
keep Washington, London and whatever else," said a defence
official. The army may be keener to build impressive retaliatory
capabilities within Pakistan (and Afghanistan) against terrorist
attacks in India: A sort of crushing non-nuclear second-strike
capability that will discourage a first strike. This could ultimately
test General Padmanabhan’s arguments against RAW/IB opposition
to an expanded military intelligence. And,
in the army’s perspective, he must not fail.
India
has publicised the militant-training camps in Pakistan since 1990.
Pakistan has routinely denied them. Sabre-rattlers like LK Advani
have threatened hot pursuit. The army says this will only roll
up staging camps near the LoC/ border and not hurt the hard-core
training camps in the interiors.
India
has not night-bombed them as the Israelis would have. Now it cannot.
Since 2000, Pakistan’s military regime has nestled the largish
training camps existing near cantonments at Kotli (opposite Indian
Rajourie), Sialkot (Punjab), Muzaffarabad (in Pakistan’s
Kashmir), Forward Kahuta (near Haji Pir), Rawlakot (opposite Indian
Poonch) and Bagh (further south in Punjab) within large towns.
"This is to raise the collateral damage to the civil population
if Indian warplanes raid these camps," said an inter-ministry
coordinator. "For example, the Kotli camp was lodged in a
hospital."
The
army would like but may not be able to destroy these camps through
the only option left of ground attacks. The logistics of using
even such irregulars as the Ikhwan or Mohajir or Shia desperadoes
near cantonments is daunting. So a small retaliatory capacity
– a fire-bombing of a group’s HQ – may provide
quiescence from its terrorism (when none was forthcoming) and
establish a two-way fear process (where there was one). By and
by, this capacity could be built up on the axiom that nothing
succeeds like success.
And
succeed, the army must, somehow. Leaks to the press suggest that
the group of ministers considering an expanded military intelligence
program stymied some of the proposals. The army said these were
"speculations". But if that was to happen, the army
would have conceded the secret war in Kashmir. It had reports
that the Pakistan army is directly financing the militant groups.
The Jaish-e-Mohammad had undertaken to train 5 lakh jihadis while
the Lahore (Muridke-based) Lashkar-e-Toiba had apparently already
prepared 3 lakh fidayeen or suicide warriors. Only a
sumptuous retaliatory capacity in Pakistan could discourage such
attacks as the one on Red Fort and the XV corps headquarters,
and the Lashkar-e-Toiba attempt to storm Srinagar airport.
The
general perception is that since Indian and Pakistan are atomic
powers, they cannot fight a conventional war anymore because of
the risks of triggering an all out nuclear war. The army has been
uncomfortable with this notion. It destroys in one stroke India’s
2.5 times conventional weapons superiority over Pakistan (including
fighter planes, ships and submarines). And, it leaves Pakistan
free to launch a local war like Kargil because India has volunteered
not to use its nuclear weapons first.
So,
after the Kargil war, the army has been articulating the possibility
of a "limited war" to regain its edge with Pakistan.
Defence analysts say that the Soviet Union and China fought a
"limited war" (it was actually a small skirmish) on
their common borders in the late-60s without starting a nuclear
war and that that could well happen here. General Padmanabhan
pushed that line. He was of the view that "between low intensity
conflict and nuclear warfare, there was space for conventional
warfare."
What
sort of war could this be? That
depends on who starts it, and why. India
has little reason to start a war since it cannot hope to recapture
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. ("Not possible," says a general.
"Also, Pakistan could launch a nuclear first-strike.")
And as India does not wish to break up Pakistan, it makes little
sense to try to grab Sind or Punjab. The risk of nuclear war is
still greater since Pakistan has everything to lose. And a full-blown
war against Pakistan is too high a price to pay for its involvement
in Kashmir. A "low-intensity war" calls a "low-intensity"
answer.
What
about Pakistan starting the hostilities? The Kargil war shows
that this is entirely possible. Does that leave the Indian army
in a reactive position? Only in the beginning. After absorbing
the first shock of attack, the army is quite prepared to deal
counterblows. It is here that the army will bring into full play
its concept and operation of a "limited war".
Nor
can it have come sooner. The Kargil war has been a terrible learning
experience for the army. "We needed a Kargil to jolt us,"
said a key defence official. "A Kargil-like situation was
visualised but not on such a large scale." It exposed the
desert-and-plains-preoccupied Indian army’s vulnerabilities
in mountain warfare and weak artillery power. The army is now
redesigning its fighting tactics around various 155mm howitzers
that will equip all its 200-plus artillery regiments in the next
25 years.
