my second book

Subcontinental Musings: Making a Difference

Home > Books > Subcontinental Musings: Making a Difference

Author: Firdaus Ahmed
Publisher: CinnamonTeal Publishing
Publication Year: 2014
ISBN: 978-93-84129-61-3

The book interrogates India's strategic trajectory, decisions and events from the
liberal perspective in
security and peace studies. The aim is to inform the public debate on security issues.
It is a record of the 'interesting times' in the security field since nuclear weaponisation in the subcontinent.

It is hoped that the book will serve the cause of peace as India Together with the 

rest of South Asia strides towards a prosperous future.

Book Overview

The book interrogates India’s strategic trajectory, decisions and events from the liberal perspective
in security and peace studies. The aim is to
inform the public debate on security issues. It is
a record of the ‘interesting times’ in the
security field since nuclear weaponisation
in the subcontinent. The articles in the book
dwell on national strategy, military issues,
internal and human security,nuclear matters and
minority affairs. The book will be of interest
to the attentive public, strategic enthusiasts,
peace activists, policy makers, practitioners and
students.

About the Author
Firdaus Ahmed is a freelance writer on security affairs, and writes a monthly column
on peace, and related issues for India Together (http://indiatogether.org/).
Author of Think South Asia: A Stand for Peace (Cinnamonteal Publishing, 2014),
he blogs at www.subcontinentalmusings.blogspot.in.

This book carries his commentaries in his monthly column Subcontinental Musings
(http://indiatogether.org/columns/subcontinental-musings) between 2003 and 2014.

363p/Paperback/5.83×8.27″

a quarter century since the start of troubles in Kashmir

Looking Back a Quarter Century On

http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=40625

The night of 19-20 January is traditionally taken as the beginning of the uprising in Kashmir. However, it can also be dated to the earlier release of the militants in exchange for safety of the daughter of the then Indian home minister and current chief ministerial candidate, Mufti Sayeed. In the run up to the Republic Day, the fear was that there could be a unilateral declaration of independence either in the assembly or on the streets. To pre-empt this, the police launched what was perhaps the first crack down, of innumerable to follow in the decade. 

Some claim that the police was ordered in to herald the arrival of 'no nonsense' Jagmohan back into Kashmir. His autobiography of the period records that he was himself at the time in Jammu, preparing for moving to Srinagar. Others insinuate that the inexperienced DGP, recently back from a longish stint in Delhi, wanted to please his new boss, Jagmohan, due to arrive the next day in the vacuum created by Farooq Abdullah's resignation. In the event, the culmination of the events was in the killings at Gaw Kadal. 

The twenty fifth anniversary of the event finds that the situation in Kashmir, though much improved security wise, continues to be fragile. This is best indicated by the lack of return of Kashmiri Pandits to their homes in Kashmir. Discussion revolving around events of the period have centered on the departure of the Pandits. This has been variously attributed to their own sense of vulnerability brought on by prior killings of about 200 Pandits. The atmosphere of intimidation and anarchy prompted many to leave. 

There has been a view that Jagmohan facilitated this exit in order in this perspective to have a free hand to crack down on the militancy. Their presence would have diverted security forces into protective operations, besides making them vulnerable to backlash. Jagmohan himself has not taken responsibility for their departure, though it is possible that once the choice was made to upstake, the administration would have pitched in with assistance. This makes possible the impression to onlookers that the government hastened the departure as it prepared for the long haul of recusing Kashmir from militancy.

From a strategic point of view, it makes sense for removing the vulnerable minority in order to come to grips with a situation virtually out of control. Jagmohan records the atmosphere of gloom as he arrived in Raj Bhawan. In the presence of his adviser, Ved Marwah, he requested the be-medelled corps commander who came to welcome him from Badami Bagh to retrieve the situation. On being handed over the situation, the corps commander, General Zaki, proceeded to change into his combat uniform and marched off with a column of troops into the city. An army column had already deployed in the city earlier as part of aid to civil authority, but the major force was police and CRPF. After a few hours of fearlessly circuiting the city in his open jeep with his escort, he reported back to Jagmohan that the city was secure. 

The situation had deteriorated to this pass since the needlessly rigged elections that kept the MUF out. Pakistan's ISI, suitably enabled by its operation, the Bear Trap in Afghanistan, was ready to divert resources and expertise received from the Americans to it favourite hobby horse, Kashmir. The timing of departure of the Soviets from Afghanistan was just right for the ISI. Therefore, while it did not forge the subsequent insurgency, it did fuel it. The insurgency was primarily an Indian creation. Not to expect Pakistan to profit from the gross misstep would be to take a naïve view of international relations. 

While the Kashmiris went across largely due to India's doing, an equally surprised Pakistan's army and ISI took care to arm and hastily train them. It is doubtful Pakistan's government itself was much aware of what was afoot since it was relatively quiet through the period, in part because the pact that enabled return of civil government to power was that it forswore control of Pakistan's India policy, as much as the fact that its head, Mohtarma Bhutto was pregnant. It was only in early February, using the opportunity of marking of Maqbool Butt's handing, that Ms. Bhutto lent her fiery voice in support of the movement that had quite broken out by then. 

The 'uprising' caught India on the backfoot, resulting in it turning into a 'movement'. National elections had placed a minority coalition in power, marking the beginning of the coalition era that persisted through the decade. The government was greeted in its very first month by the Rubaiya Sayeed crisis. International relations were in the vortex of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the outbreak of the spirit of liberation. India's army had been exhausted by its foray into Sri Lanka and had yet to pull out of that island completely. India did not readily have the political and military resources necessary to over awe the movement carried equally on the backs of common people in Kashmir as much as by militants. 

The army did not have the formations to spare for Kashmir. It was not quite out of Sri Lanka, even as it prioritised stabilising Punjab, critical from a strategic point of view. Therefore, it continued for a time in 'aid to civil authority' mode and it was only in mid year, after incidents such as the killings at the funeral procession of the Mirwaiz in May, that the government imposed the Armed Forces Special Power's Act. To keep Pakistan from being any more venturesome than it was already, the army shifted formations from the eastern front. Their movement prompted the crisis of 1990 with Pakistan, taken in strategic literature as the second crisis of the nuclear era in South Asia (the first being Exercise Brasstacks/Operation Trident of 1987). This was to prevent the long anticipated scenario in which Pakistan, under cover of nuclear asymmetry would exploit unsettled conditions in Kashmir by sending in regulars. 

Clearly, given this bleak picture, India did well to keep a hold of Kashmir and to progressively recapture the political high ground. A panicked Indian state could have done worse by presenting the 'international community' with a handle to interfere in South Asia such as occurred in the Balkans and later in East Timor. While India's record is not impeccable, in light of dark examples elsewhere in the world, including from the region for instance in Sri Lanka, it has managed both politically and military, credibly and, indeed, creditably. 

However, whether it has managed to retake the moral high ground is an open question. That the Kashmiri Pandits have not returned to their homes and hearths in the Valley testifies to the deficit in India's control over Kashmir. The ultimate barometer of return of normalcy would be the voluntary return of Pandits, incentivised by an irreversible security situation. This has not happened. The key question therefore at this observation of the twenty fifth anniversary of outbreak of the troubles in Kashmir is less belabouring the fact of their continuing internal exile, but as to why this is so. 

It would be too easy to attribute this to Pakistani chicanery and to leave it at that. Kashmir has enabled the military there to retain control despite the return of democracy in the nineties and in the subsequent decade to return to center stage by displacing it altogether post Kargil War. That said, introspection in India is equally in order. 

There are far too many gainers in unsettled security conditions in Kashmir, not least of which are political formations of the right which have continually prevented the political and moral reaching out necessary to win over the Kashmiris and to interface with Pakistan, recurrently acknowledged in all treaties with it as a legitimate party to the conflict, for a viable solution. Centrist governments too profited by using Kashmir to show they are not soft on security. Security forces have expanded incessantly using Kashmir as excuse. Ethnic groups advantaged by this expansion, including those in the Jammu region and immediately southwards till Delhi, have no complaints. India's great power claims have had a military boost, including from a nuclear capability, furnished by credible recourse to an uncertain regional security situation anchored on the hardy perennial, the Kashmir problem. 

The imposition on the people in Kashmir, including its minority Pandits, has therefore proven a windfall for many political, ethnic and institutional actors and groups, making for several vested interests in the troubles in Kashmir. By this yardstick, the unfortunate Pandits are in quite the same boat as the benighted Kashmiris.

The non-incident on high seas

http://indiatogether.org/india-pakistan-relations-and-security-strategy-in-the-light-of-terror-boat-incident-government

What the maritime 'non-incident' on New Year’s Eve tells us

UA-58538765-1

The government's tying itself into knots to explain how the mysterious boat, allegedly with four Pakistani terrorists on board, went up in flames when intercepted by the Coast Guard at the turn of the year suggests there is more to the incident than the government has let us in on.

On the positive side, and as the government would have it, the episode bespeaks of an alert India, ready to take on terrorists out to disrupt India's party for the Obama visit to Delhi month later this month. However, since the incident was not quite straight forward, it apparently has a telling underside.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - indiatogether.org

Though this would unlikely have been a direct hand, for example in terms of choosing the target, in Pakistan's view, it is more of an indirect one in terms of propping up the Fazlullah-led Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Afghanistan, where India has an expanding footprint. Therefore, for India to be alert makes strategic sense and may explain the incident at the tri-junction of the maritime boundary between the two states and high seas.

In the government's explanation, it is the result of alacrity in response. Alternatively, as the opposition appears to suggest, it was an over-reaction to what may perhaps have been merely a smuggling operation. Yet another explanation, from the conspiracy theorist's cupboard, could well be that it is an Indian intelligence operation to demonstrate Indian alertness levels to Pakistan so as to deter the latter from any disruptive action. The last cannot be discounted since the national security establishment has now acquired an intelligence czar as its head. 

From an intelligence perspective, there are several benefits from a staged event followed by deft information management. One, it helps deter Pakistani adventurism. Two, it serves to put Pakistan on the defensive, having to explain that it had nothing to do with the incident. The seaboard opens up as a third location of pressure on Pakistan, expanded engagement with Afghanistan and its security forces and resumed firing on the Line of Control and working boundary in J&K being the other two.

Three, it announces India's reservations about the US policy of continued engagement with Pakistan, including the release of an additional  tranche of monies for fighting terrorism, by demonstrating that Pakistan is not doing enough on that score. This sets the stage for the Obama visit during which this could figure as one of the talking points in order to get the US to shift to reliance on India for its regional aims, as against its practice of leaning on Pakistan.

Four, it helps create a narrative in which India is at the cross hairs of terrorism. This has multiple benefits including bringing intelligence operations to the fore in the bureaucratic game of security policy making. More broadly, this helps justify the hard line turn in India's Pakistan policy, and most importantly, it is in keeping with the ideologically-inspired strategic doctrine of the new government. 

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - indiatogether.org

It is a long-held national security myth that there needs to be a bipartisan approach to national security. This is untenable theoretically in the light of political parties necessarily reflecting divergent national security approaches. Conservative parties tend towards structural realism-inspired strategic doctrines, while liberal parties, of the centre-right and centre-left, can be expected to lean towards the other end of the realist-conservative/liberal-rationalist continuum.

With the ascent of Narendra Modi to power, the right wing government has made extensive efforts to make itself distinct from its predecessor, including in the foreign and strategic policy domains. This includes the Pakistan policy in which there has been a decided shift from deterrence in strategic doctrine, which implied keeping Pakistan from adventurism, to compellence, which implies making Pakistan fall in line finally. Modi’s Pakistan policy of compellence is currently a work in progress, with the episode in question being only the latest of plenty more to come.

The opposition therefore cannot be expected to compliantly cheer from the gallery. 

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - indiatogether.org

Also, universally, agencies of government such as the intelligence and the military have a realist bias, best exemplified by the government having within its ranks a former intelligence head and military chief. The Congress, therefore, was content to carve out its space at the centre of the realist-liberal spectrum on security.

However, the Modi government, not having to look over its shoulder, has placed itself unapologetically within the conservative-realist framework. This is in keeping with its ideological underpinnings in cultural nationalism. It also helps it ingratiate itself with the intelligence and military arms of government – the two arms it requires by its side as it goes about the more extensive task of resetting India socio-culturally over the coming decade, which promises to be the Modi-era.

The current dominance of the ruling party, assisted by an assorted support base of saffron pseudo-cultural outfits, enables it to unilaterally redefine the security sphere. Clearly, opposition is warranted not only for its own sake, but also for the fact that opposing national security perspectives cannot but differ on both the overarching principles to which national security is pegged, as well as on the detail.

Finally, an ideological strategic approach inevitably leads to catastrophe. While there is no end to examples on this score, the neo-con years under ‘Dubya’ Bush in the US is an obvious one. While US had the money and Obama to bail itself out, India may be less able - and lucky - to survive its home grown neo-cons at the helm.

Therefore, this first stirring of the opposition in the Modi era is to be welcomed. It is an exercise of democratic parliamentary control over the government. It compensates for the erosion in checks and balances and for the deficit opening up in professionalism of the national security apparatus resulting from the increased like-mindedness between it and the government.