ITS three decades since Pakistan has been fermenting trouble in India. It started with Punjab and later in Jammu and Kashmir, followed by sporadic terrorist attacks in rest of India. While it is a cheap option for Pakistan, it has cost India thousands of lives and has been a heavy burden on the exchequer. India has failed to deter Pakistan from pursuing this nefarious activity. Pakistan’s policy of bleeding India by a thousand cuts has never been suitably addressed by us. There have been somewhat feeble and ill-conceived attempts, both military and diplomatic, to make Pakistan desist from is activities, but to no avail. India has simply failed to come up with a viable strategy to deal with this menace.
If the aim of Operation Parakam, launched after the terrorist attack on the Parliament in 2001, was to coerce Pakistan and deter it from sponsoring terrorist attacks, then the manner of implementation of this operation conveyed a different message. Civil rail and road traffic was not to be disrupted and consequently it took rather long to concentrate troops at their battle locations. Since there was no urgency, it gave the impression that India was not serious and was merely saber-rattling. At the same time, Pakistani intelligence had that much more time to gather information on the movement and forward locations of these formations and take suitable counter measures. Surprise had been lost!
Some experts have been talking of air strikes on terrorist training camps. In this case the Indian intelligence is more likely to have incomplete information on their exact location, number under training, routine at these camps or the best time for an air strike.
Later, some on this side opined that India missed a “window of opportunity”, though no one defined this “window”. Even under the best conditions for mobilisation, when the highest priority over road and rail traffic is accorded to the military in India, Pakistan is still able to mobilise in about half that time because of shorter distances and the advantage of operating on interior lines, more so in the North. So, per se, Pakistan will leave no “window” open for India to exploit. Nor was there any such “window” during Op Parakaram. The term “window of opportunity” was brought into use to cover up certain other failings.
On the other hand, being able to mobilize 5 to 6 days earlier, Pakistan has a ‘widow’ to mount an offensive, before India’s ‘Big Daddies’ (strike formations) arrive on the scene. However India has closed this window by making the defensive formations sufficiently strong to not only contain Pak offensive, should it materialize, but seriously embroil offensive forces, in other words bog these down. In such a case, when Indian strike formations arrive on the scene they will have many ‘widows’ to exploit. Thus what may appear a ‘window of opportunity’ to Pakistan, will infact turn out to be a trap.
In the Indo-Pak context, a “window” will have to be created or rather pried open by holding back strike formations at locations from where multiple options for offensive(s) are available. This will keep the enemy guessing and, in fact, bring in uncertainty and put him on the horns of a dilemma. Thereafter, through surprise and deception, create that “window” in the enemy’s defences and then with rapid movement of troops and competent generalship fully exploit the developing situation. Gen J.N. Chaudhuri did this in the 1965 war against Pakistan.
Concurrently, some defence experts and perhaps those at Army HQs and the Training Command propagated another concept, “Cold Start”. Reference to this recently surfaced in the Wikileaks expose, where the US ambassador to India talked about India adopting the Cold Start concept, and that was the excuse Pakistan advanced for not shifting more troops from its eastern front against India to the AF-Pak border for anti-Taliban operations.
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Cold start implies that offensives can be launched “at a moment’s notice”. This would require either pre-positioning of offensive formations well forward or their components grouped with defensive elements for a quick but limited offensive. In both cases the enemy can acquire information regarding their presence and take adequate counter-measures. Further there will be no surprise in such type of operations. Splitting resources of strike formations and locating these with defensive elements have their own implications. It also carries the risk of permanent deployment of troops at the forward locations: similar to those in J and K. Be that as it may, the Army Chief has stated that the army does not subscribe to such a concept.
Kargil presented a great opportunity to put an end the repeated needling by Pakistan once for all, but unfortunately the weak politico-military leadership proved quite incapable of grasping it.
Some other armchair experts have been propagating that a number of battle-groups should be launched over a wide front, in line with what Germans did in the second World war. Germany invaded France with nearly 300 infantry divisions! So there can be no comparison and such suggestions have no merit. Perhaps they also appear to be ignorant of the time-honoured principal of concentration of forces and the prospects of defeat in detail. Defensive formations would merely unbalance themselves were they to undertake any offensives, even a limited strike, on their own.
Indian defence experts have been seeking solutions to problems and scenarios of their own making but missing out on the core issue of factors inhibiting military response to continuing Pakistani mischief. India’s option for punitive military action is completely overshadowed by Pakistan’s threat of retaliation by nuclear weapons. Pakistan is well aware that threat of nuclear strike frightens India. This deterrence works well on India, because we have some how convinced ourselves, that Pakistan will be rash enough to press the nuclear button, as soon as an Indian offensive takes off. Equally, some in Delhi feel that it is the Pakistani military that controls the nuclear button and would act on its own.
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Indian soft state policy destroying us and encouraging pakistan to keep proxy war on against india. India never attacked Pakistan but always Pakistan initiated war and took success in initial days of wars and when india was in full justification and right to retaliate then international pressure mount to india to cease fire. Pakistan attacked in 1947, 1965, 1971 and even in 1999 Kargil war. Coward politicians like Attal Vajpayee missed the attacking Pakistan during kargil war where India reserved the right to attack back and break Pakistan. Even Pakistani trained and backed terrorists attacked parliament and operation parakram was launched but later BJP govt bowed down before international pressure and war was cancelled. Bomabai attacks, Pathankot, Uri and beheading of soldiers knock our doors to use Baluchistan card.