Wanted: A Counter Proxy War Doctrine
In the absence of a meaningful and effective response from our side, it is India, which has been bleeding at the hands of this Army of Islam, with the Pakistan Army remaining untouched. Unless and until the Pakistan Army is made to realise that a proxy war is a game which two can play and that India can play it more effectively and conclusively than Pakistan, there is going to be no respite from the ravages of this war.
Also read: How Pakistan’s Proxy War Began – I
Till now, we have been restricting ourselves to the conventional counter-terrorism strategy based on the principle of passive defence in our, own territory in response to Pakistan’s proxy war. This strategy has not brought this war to an end and is unlikely to do so. We have to adopt a counter proxy war strategy based on the principle of active defence through a mix of overt and covert actions.
Click to buy: A Terrorist State as a Frontline Ally
Nations, which become incapable of feeling a sense of indignation and anger when attacked and let their will and readiness to retaliate, when warranted by circumstances, be weakened by misplaced forbearance, invite greater aggression. Perceived over-anxiety for peace with a State-sponsor of terrorism does not lead to peace. It leads to only more violence and more suffering for innocent people.
In the absence of a meaningful and effective response from our side, it is India, which has been bleeding at the hands of this Army of Islam, with the Pakistan Army remaining untouched.
What we are facing in Kashmir today is not indigenous terrorism, but undeclared incremental invasion from across the border. Kashmir is only a pretext and a bilaterally negotiated settlement of the differences is unlikely to lead to an end to Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.
Pakistan looks upon terrorism as a political tool to frustrate India’s aspirations of emerging as a major regional power, as an equaliser to neutralise the quantitative and qualitative superiority of the Indian armed forces over their Pakistani counterparts, and as a para-military weapon to keep the Indian Army bleeding and preoccupied with internal security duties, in the hope that this would ultimately contribute to the over-all weakening and break-up of India.
The policy of active defence is based on a recognition of the need not only to deny success to the State-sponsor, but also to hurt and continue hurting the State-sponsor politically, economically, para-militarily and militarily till it abandons its sponsorship. Political and diplomatic options work, only if they are backed by the threat of para-military and military retaliatory options, if the former fail.
India’s policy till now has been to rely essentially on the political and diplomatic options. It needs to be examined whether the time has come for bringing the para-military and military options into our counter-terrorism tactical repertoire and, if so, whether this should be through a formal declaration of our intention to exercise these options in future or whether the options should be exercised covertly and non-conventionally without an overt declaration of a change of policy.
What we are facing in Kashmir today is not indigenous terrorism, but undeclared incremental invasion from across the border.
The USA and Israel follow a policy of an overtly declared retaliatory determination depending on the circumstances. They can afford to do so because none of the State-sponsors, confronting them, is a nuclear power and, even in respect of conventional military strength, there is a large asymmetry in their favour. They can, therefore, ensure that the exercise of the para-military and military retaliatory options does not lead to an uncontrollable military escalation.
India faces constraints due to Pakistan being a nuclear power and the conventional asymmetry in India’s favour being not as great as in the case of the US and Israel. Keeping these constraints in view, an appropriate response for India would be a mix of continued diplomatic offensive to have international sanctions imposed against Pakistan and a simultaneous undeclared policy of economic and para-military retaliatory options.
Indias policy till now has been to rely essentially on the political and diplomatic options. It needs to be examined whether the time has come for bringing the para-military and military options into our counter-terrorism tactical repertoire”¦
A credible counter proxy war strategy against Pakistan has to have an overt and a covert component. The overt component relates to extending political, moral and diplomatic support to the alienated sections of PoK and the Northern Areas (NA) in their agitations/ struggle against the Government of Pakistan. Islamabad goes to the world promptly with exaggerated accounts of every incident taking place in J&K in order to keep the issue constantly in the media and before international public opinion. At the same time, it has imposed a virtual iron curtain on developments in PoK and the NA in order to keep world media and public opinion in the dark about the real situation there.
For nearly two years the world was not aware of the massacre of the Shias in Gilgit in 1988 by the tribal hordes of bin Laden instigated by Musharraf. The world was ignorant of the demonstrations all over PoK in 2000 against the proposal of the military junta to raise the height of the Mangla dam to benefit the farmers of Punjab. Amnesty International’s report on the Pakistani ban on pro-independence groups/ individuals contesting elections in PoK has hardly received any publicity.
The policies followed by the Zia and the Musharraf regimes of settling Punjabi and Pakhtoon ex-servicemen in the NA in order to weaken the nationalist forces there are hardly known even in the rest of Pakistan. The outbreak of sectarian riots in Gilgit in the second fortnight of June before Musharrafs visit to India and the way, after Agra, Musharraf forced the PoK Assembly to elect Maj Gen Mohammed Anwar Khan, the Vice Chief of the General Staff in the GHQ, as the President of the PoK after he had prematurely retired from the Army to contest the election have not been brought to the attention of the world.
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The world does not know that the PoK Assembly does not have any financial powers, that the budgets are prepared in Islamabad, that the Chief Secretary and other senior officials of the NA are either Punjabis or Pakhtoons, that the people of the NA have never participated in the elections to Pakistan’s National Assembly and that they are governed even today as the frontier tribals of British India were before independence by the Frontier Crime Regulations promulgated by the British colonial masters, under which no native of the NA can move from one village or city to another without the permission of the police and has to register himself or herself with the police during such movements.
The world does not know that the PoK Assembly does not have any financial powers, that the budgets are prepared in Islamabad”¦
After 1988, a number of new organisations came up in the PoK and the NA demanding greater democracy, autonomy and even independence, but the ISI has ruthlessly suppressed them keeping their leaders under detention without trial. Those, who escaped arrest, are living in exile abroad.
India claims that the entire J&K as it existed before August 15, 1947, is an integral part of India and, yet, our political leadership, bureaucracy and public opinion have taken no interest in the plight of the peoples there and in bringing to the attention of the world what has been happening behind the iron curtain erected by Islamabad.
One has the impression that New Delhi is as ignorant about the state of affairs on the other side of the Line of Control (LoC) as the rest of the world. It has taken little notice of the emerging new leadership in the POK and the NA and has avoided interactions with the political exiles from these areas living abroad. No attempt has been made to better organise them in their struggle against Islamabad. We have every moral right to do so if we consider the PoK and the NA as rightfully belonging to us.This tragic neglect has to be put an end to as part of the overt component of the proposed counter proxy war policy. What should be the contours of the covert component cannot be discussed in a study like this, but certain points can be flagged. It has to be based on a recognition of certain ground realities such as the following:
India claims that the entire J&K as an integral part of India and, yet, our political leadership, bureaucracy have taken no interest in the plight of the peoples there and in bringing to the attention of the world what has been happening behind the iron curtain erected by Islamabad.
- Ideas such as the right of hot pursuit, raids on training camps across the LoC, etc, will not work. Hot pursuit can work against terrorists/insurgents indulging in hit and run raids from rear bases across the border. There cannot be any hot pursuit of terrorists operating from shelters inside our territory and against suicide bombers. The question of raids on training camps across the LoC does not arise because the camps are located on either side of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and not in the PoK or the NA.
- Covert actions against the Pakistani interests in the PoK and the NA would be difficult because of the strong presence of a Punjabi-Pakhtoon component (mostly ex-servicemen) in the local population. Even before 1947, the present PoK had a strong Punjabi presence and this has increased since then due to the systematic resettling of Punjabi and Pakhtoon ex-servicemen. The NA had very little Punjabi-Pakhtoon component before 1947 except in the areas in the proximity of the NWFP. Today, Punjabis and Pakhtoons are economically dominant, though not yet numerically.
- Pakistan has the advantages of terrain and local support in this region and, therefore, will be able to frustrate any covert actions without serious difficulties.
Hence, the epicentre of the covert component of any counter proxy war policy has to be largely outside the PoK and the NA, in areas where we will have the advantages of ground conditions and local support. We have to carefully choose the terrain, which will hurt Pakistan and hurt it badly.
The careful drafting of the strategy has to be entrusted to a special task force on a time-bound basis.
Before drafting and implementing an effective counter proxy war policy, we have to pose to ourselves certain questions, which have rarely been posed till now, or if posed, rarely answered keeping in view the imperatives of national security. The more important of these questions are:
- Is it in India’s interest to ensure that the law and order situation in Pakistan continues to be as bad as ever thereby deterring foreign investment?
- Is it in India’s interest to do anything, such as the normalisation of the bilateral trade, which might help Pakistan come out of its economic difficulties?
- Is it in India’s interest that the unbridgeable sectarian divide in Pakistan strengthens demands for an independent Shia State?
- Is it in India’s interest that the movements of the non-Punjabi nationalities of Pakistan for a genuine confederation, if not independence, succeeds?
- Is it in India’s interest that the movement for the restoration of democracy with the Army returning to the barracks with no political role gathers momentum and succeeds?
- Is it in India’s interest that Pakistan remains inextricably trapped in the black hole of Afghanistan?
- Is it in India’s interest that the swarming Mullahs and their organisations continue to drag Pakistan back into the past, thereby making it an unwelcome proposition either as an ally or as a friend or as an investment destination?
You find the right answers to these questions and you will have the right mix of the covert component of our counter proxy war strategy. The careful drafting of the strategy has to be entrusted to a special task force on a time-bound basis. Once the strategy is adopted, its implementation has to be the responsibility of a counter proxy war centre in the external intelligence establishment.
Pakistan has the advantages of terrain and local support in this region and, therefore, will be able to frustrate any covert actions without serious difficulties.
The strategy should be executed in such a manner that it does not come in the way of the US-led “war” in Afghanistan which, if successful, would have spin-off benefits for India such as the disruption of the heroin economy of Pakistan and Afghanistan, of the training infrastructure in Afghan territory and of open channels of money transfer.
We have till now treated our intelligence agencies essentially as intelligence collection, analysis and assessment agencies and not given them an adequate covert action/ counter proxy war capability. This capability is an urgent need.
Even on the basis of the assessment of its own experts in the State Department, the Pakistani military junta is as responsible as the Taliban for harbouring and assisting international terrorist organisations, which caused the horrendous acts of catastrophic terrorism in the US on September 11, 2001.
Instead of acting firmly against the junta and insisting on its dismantling the terrorist infrastructure on its territory, the USA has chosen to reward it by removing even the existing sanctions and projecting the junta as the USA’s strategic ally in the “war” against terrorism.
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Instead of controlling terrorism, this unwise policy would only further aggravate the threats from Pakistan and Afghanistan-based terrorists to the rest of the world.
Despite his pretense of cooperation with the international community in its fight against terrorism, Musharraf follows his double-faced policy of covertly supporting terrorism to achieve Pakistan’s strategic objective. This is evident from the horrendous act of terrorism by the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed outside the building of the Legislative Assembly in Sri nagar on October 1, 2001, which resulted in the deaths of 40 innocent civilians. His modus operandi has been exactly the same as before: first, to describe the terrorists as freedom-fighters; then, when he finds the rest of the world condemning it as an act of terrorism, to allege that the Indian Security Forces committed the act in order to discredit the “freedom-fig hters”.
So long as he and his junta feel confident that the international community would not act against them, they would continue to use terrorism to achieve their objectives and New York – September 11 would not be the end, but only the beginning of the depredations which the terrorists from this epicentre would repeatedly cause in the heart of the US.
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