Kashmir human shield row: Army, government should refrain from engaging with the anti/pro-nationalistic tide

It was the first air skirmish of the Bangladesh War in 1971. Soldiers of 4 Sikh regiment advancing into Bangladesh were being strafed by Pakistani sabres suffering considerable casualties until IAF Gnats came to the rescue. The Indian jets shot down three Pakistani Sabres at Boyra that day. Two Pakistani pilots who ejected were about to be thrashed soundly by enraged Indian troops, when a young Indian officer rushed to shield them and escorted the pilots to safety, and hot cups of tea. One of the pilots rescued was Flight Lieutenant Parwaiz Mehdi Qureshi, who went on to become the Air Force Chief, though he remained a Prisoner of War for nearly a year and a half. The young Indian officer, HS Panag went on to become Chief of the Indian Army General. Years later, as PVN Jagan and Samir Chopra, authors of Eagles Over Bangladesh noted, the Indian pilot who shot down Qureshi, wrote to congratulate him on his promotion. The air chief replied courteously, praising the skill of the IAF. Pakistani bravery was no less. The Pakistan Air Force had only one squadron of Sabre Mk.6 in Dhaka at that point, but gave it all they got. Both sides fought fiercely, but under a tight command and largely operating under the same rules. That is war.

More than four decades later, Indian security forces were being mutilated by Pakistani border action teams, while Pakistani funded groups caught and tortured a young Kashmiri officer who had come to attend a wedding. That’s terrorism. To liken one to the other is like comparing the finesse of a duel with swords to a street brawl. Stories of heroism and honour during war are the stuff of song and verse. There is no honour in terrorism. Indeed, it is its very antithesis.

As the noise level on the action by Major Nitin Leetul Gogoi in tying a Kashmiri man to his jeep rises by the day, perhaps hysteria must be replaced with an awareness of the harsh realities of a terror fuelled conflict, and how they are changing the ethos of conventional forces everywhere.

Terrorist conflicts are not called “dirty wars” for nothing. While soldiers in army fatigues patrolling the streets dominate the television screen, the real war is being fought outside the pale of public scrutiny. Intelligence agencies use every tool available, including corruption, threat and deceit, to dominate a constantly shifting and evolving “battle space”. Opposing them are an even more deceitful irregular force who operate on the basis that there are no rules whatsoever. Regular forces who have been trained for decades to do just the reverse, have a choice when operating in such dirty wars. Either they learn on the job and mirror image the “enemy” in violence and tactics, or they can simply decide to take the brunt of violence and remain on the defensive. Most conventional forces do both. In the main “war zones” like Afghanistan and Syria, the counter terrorist forces are often indistinguishable from their nemesis.

A successful special operations force is one that looks, operates and thinks exactly like the enemy. They kidnap, kill and torture when necessary, and employ persons who are near terrorists themselves. Meanwhile the regular troops – like the Australian, British and troops of other nationalities in Afghanistan — have had to change their operating methods to deal with an enemy who may well be within the gates. Desperation to dominate the war has led to horrific excesses by all sides. The population — in the lack of any other gainful activity — sees the war as a profitable venture, and sometimes connives at its continuance. This is the worst of terrorist wars. They corrupt the fighters, defenders and inevitably, the population itself. Those calling for “honour” in countering terrorism are unaware – or choose to be unaware – of the realities on the ground. Soldiers are forced to improvise, tie knots and carry on with a most unrewarding exercise. When Major Gogoi tied a Kashmiri to his jeep to get polling officials, paramilitary forces, and some police personnel out of a dangerous situation, he was doing just that.

Whether he was right or wrong in doing so, should have been left to the relevant army inquiry committee to decide. A committee will possibly consider the alternatives that the Major had open to him, which was to fire at a mob of more than a thousand. Whether or not the unit was equipped with tear gas or non-lethal weapons is unclear. What is clear is the tragedy that would have followed, and the surety that the media, opposition parties and sundry other television news stars would have cried foul, and that the issue would have been turned into a major incident. Which highlights the third reality. Dirty wars are always fought in the glare of full media attention. Useless to say that the media had no business second guessing the whole operation. Or that a former Chief Minister who well knew the difficulties faced by the Army no little moral ground to protest. And most of all, that Army Chief Bipin Rawat should not have intervened with the announcement of a commendation. The army may well have been reacting to the pulls and pushes of a media war, but this is simply not the way the army works.

In Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian Army has not always emerged squeaky clean. But it has done far better than most in maintaining a tight control particularly in its ability to hold fire and punish those who have crossed the line. Unlike the US in Afghanistan, it is fighting its own people, and its restraint has been commendable enough to merit gallantry awards by the dozens. It is this reputation for fairness and justice that has helped its operations in Kashmir. There are villages aplenty who will protest when army units are slated to move out of a particular location. These units provide not only a source of livelihood and protection, but more importantly are often relied upon to perform the very tasks that the state government should have been undertaking. It is this ethos that the army has to jealously guard, not because it is morally right even in today’s wars, but because it makes operational sense. It has not just to be reasonably fair in its operations, it has to be seen to be so.

As Pratap Bhanu Mehta perceptively writes that the army has to recognize that civil-military relations in such dirty wars will inevitably be filtered through the medium of the public. The Pakistani Army has understood this well. It has successfully instituted a blanket ban on its operations in the tribal areas. No journalists have been able to report on the bombing and the strafing that passes as counter terrorism tools. Human rights activists and journalists can expect a knock in the night, if they persist in reporting outright war crimes. India cannot and must never even consider such a path. Despite the din of dirty wars, the public debate lends credence to the vibrancy of our democracy. However, both the Indian Army and the government need to resist contributing to the anti/pro nationalistic tide in such situations. In a highly covert war it can choose to do just the opposite where the media is concerned, that is, to be the first to provide accurate information. In a competition for headlines, the side that provides the first ‘breaking news’ may find itself the winner in more ways than one. As Hans Morgenthau observed years ago, international politics is “in a specific sense a struggle for the minds of men”. It’s even more relevant in domestic struggles.

The author was a director of the National Security Council. Views expressed are personal.