DEFENCE and SECURITY of INDIA INTERNAL SECURITY CAN WE STOP ANOTHER ATTACK? Post-26/11, the fundamental problems that afflict Indian intelligence agencies still remain I SRINATH RAGHAVAN INDIA, US AND CHINA TRIANGULAR DIPLOMACY Signs of a new dynamic between India, the United States of America and China are visible I C. RAJA MOHAN NOVEMBER 2009 DSI VOLUME 2 ISSUE 2 Rs 250 India’s strategic leadership is unable to cope with growing Maoist insurgency I AJAI SAHNI
Transcript
DEFENCE and SECURITYof INDIA
INTERNAL SECURITY
CAN WE STOP ANOTHER ATTACK? Post-26/11, the fundamental problems that afflict Indianintelligence agencies still remain I SRINATH RAGHAVAN
INDIA, US AND CHINA
TRIANGULAR DIPLOMACYSigns of a new dynamic between India, the UnitedStates of America and China are visible I C. RAJA MOHANNOVEMBER 2009
DSIVOLUME 2 ISSUE 2 Rs 250
India’s strategic leadership is unable to cope with growing Maoist insurgency I AJAI SAHNI
Prime MinisterManmohanSingh hascandidlyadmitted thatthe Maoistmovement hasbecome thesingle biggestinternalsecuritychallengebeing faced by India.
Mannika Chopra
ne year after the coordinated attacks paralysed Mumbai lastNovember, and changed India forever, it seems appropriate toexamine whether the country’s intelligence and security system hasbeen adequately overhauled so that a similar assault can bepreempted. Sadly, despite the official pledges, the innumerablecandlelight vigils, and the growing public anger, little correctiveaction seems to have taken place. The country’s intelligence
apparatus, covering some 12 agencies, remains a picture of ineptitude; lacking in coordinationand marked by an outmoded intelligence gathering system.
Not so far from Mumbai are concerns of another nature. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hascandidly admitted that the Maoists movement has become the single biggest internal securitychallenge being faced by our country. The movement which, according to official estimates, hasspread across 223 districts is a story about ideological commitment, Government neglect,mismanagement, corruption and overblown rhetoric. In our perceptive and forceful cover story,DSIlooks at the scale and strengths of the problem. Fuelled by small weapons and light arms beingfunneled across international borders, so far, this year, the expanding conflict has already causedthe death of more than 800 people underscoring the inadequate attempts being made by thestrategic and administrative establishment to stem the violence.
Has India lost to China in the Obama Administration’s Asia policy? Many analysts see adiminished role for India in the Obama calculation when a paragraph in the recent US-Sino JointStatement spoke of Beijing’s ability to promote peace and stability and development in SouthAsia. Washington and Beijing promptly tried to assuage New Delhi’s concerns about China’spotential role in the Indo-Pak equation. But the apprehension was apparent in Dr. ManmohanSingh’s comments as he made a State visit to Washington––an official tour which significantlycoincided with the first anniversary of the 26/11 attacks.
As the Afghan President,Hamid Karzai, enters his second five-year term,high on his priority listis to bring peace to Afghanistan through negotiations with the moderate faction of the Taliban.Worn down by this protracted engagement, the American administration too is also looking at aquick and clean exit strategy. We look at the advantages of negotiating with the ideologicallyneutral members of the Taliban.
As usual, we welcome your feedback and suggestions which you can send [email protected]. Should you want to subscribe to the magazine please contact our marketingteam at [email protected] and it will do the rest.
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EDITORDefence & Security of India
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WEAPONS 22
SMALLARMSARSENAL The growing presenceof small arms and lightweapons is fuellingmany insurgencymovements acrossSouth Asia.
2
INTELLIGENCEAGENCIES 6
CAN WE STOPANOTHERATTACK?It will take a muchdeeper committmentfrom India’s politicalleadership to reformthe fundamentalflaws that still afflictout intelligenceagencies.
NEIGHBOURS 34
TALKING TO THE TALIBANSuccess in Afghanistan cannot beachieved without winning a highpercentage of ideologically neutralfighters who are currently with theTaliban for opportunistic reasons.
DIPLOMACY 28
TRIANGULARDIPLOMACYA joint statement issued in Bejing byPresidents Hu Jintao and BarackObama accorded a monitoring roleto China in South Asia and set off astorm of protests in Delhi.
DEFENCE PROCUREMENT 40
GROUNDEDPOLICY A detailed Defence ProcurementProcedure was introduced in 2002 toexpedite procurements in a transparentand competitive environment. Sevenyears later that initial euphoria has given way to despondency.
COVER STORY 14
DISRUPTIVEDOMINANCEIndia's strategic, planning and security communities have not been ableto grasp the scale and strengths of the Maoist movement which has nowspread into over 200 districts.
SMALLARMSARSENAL The growing presenceof small arms and lightweapons is fuellingmany insurgencymovements acrossSouth Asia.
2
INTELLIGENCEAGENCIES 6
CAN WE STOPANOTHERATTACK?It will take a muchdeeper committmentfrom India’s politicalleadership to reformthe fundamentalflaws that still afflictout intelligenceagencies.
NEIGHBOURS 34
TALKING TO THE TALIBANSuccess in Afghanistan cannot beachieved without winning a highpercentage of ideologically neutralfighters who are currently with theTaliban for opportunistic reasons.
DIPLOMACY 28
TRIANGULARDIPLOMACYA joint statement issued in Bejing byPresidents Hu Jintao and BarackObama accorded a monitoring roleto China in South Asia and set off astorm of protests in Delhi.
DEFENCE PROCUREMENT 40
GROUNDEDPOLICY A detailed Defence ProcurementProcedure was introduced in 2002 toexpedite procurements in a transparentand competitive environment. Sevenyears later that initial euphoria has given way to despondency.
COVER STORY 14
DISRUPTIVEDOMINANCEIndia's strategic, planning and security communities have not been ableto grasp the scale and strengths of the Maoist movement which has nowspread into over 200 districts.
SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATIONDefence and Security of Indiais published once in two monthsand can be obtained by subscription. Subscription rate for 6issues is Indian Rs 800 and for 12 issues is Rs 1500.International subscription rate is $ 40. For subscriptionenquiries, please contact: [email protected]
Srinath Raghavan is a SeniorFellow at the Centre for
Policy Research and is also alecturer in Defence Studies
at King’s College London. Hisbook War and Peace in
Modern India: A StrategicHistory of the Nehru Years will
be published later this year.An Associate Fellow at the
National Institute ofAdvanced Studies,
Bangalore, he has beenassociated with King’s
College’s e-learningprogramme, War in the
Modern World. He was also a visiting lecturer at theRoyal Air Force College,
Cranwell and spent six yearsas an infantry officer in the
SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATIONDefence and Security of Indiais published once in two monthsand can be obtained by subscription. Subscription rate for 6issues is Indian Rs 800 and for 12 issues is Rs 1500.International subscription rate is $ 40. For subscriptionenquiries, please contact: [email protected]
Srinath Raghavan is a SeniorFellow at the Centre for
Policy Research and is also alecturer in Defence Studies
at King’s College London. Hisbook War and Peace in
Modern India: A StrategicHistory of the Nehru Years will
be published later this year.An Associate Fellow at the
National Institute ofAdvanced Studies,
Bangalore, he has beenassociated with King’s
College’s e-learningprogramme, War in the
Modern World. He was also a visiting lecturer at theRoyal Air Force College,
Cranwell and spent six yearsas an infantry officer in the
CAN WE STOPANOTHERATTACK?One year after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks fundamental problems still afflict Indian intelligence agencies
SRINATH RAGHAVAN
KEY POINTSn Intelligence failures can broadly beplaced under three categories: thoserelating to the collection of information,to its analysis, and to the response tothe intelligence product.n The technological advances thatunderpin the phenomenon ofglobalisation have greatly altered thenature and scale of security threatsnow confronting States.
The terrorist attacks of November 26,2008 exposed several chinks in ournational security apparatus. In
particular, the intelligence agencies drewsharp criticism from the media and somepoliticians. ‘Intelligence failure’ became arecurrent mantra in these post-mortems.The intelligence agencies tried to counterthese accusations by leaking bits and piecesof information to the media. However,these only served to further muddy thewaters. Indeed, the state of the intelligenceagencies has been the subject of a publicdebate that yields more heat than light.
The Government, for its part, hastended to focus excessively, if notexclusively, on procedural reforms. Thus,in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks,the Union Home Minister P. Chidambaramnoted that there had been problems ofintelligence coor dination, and that the Government had ‘closed these gaps’.Such a diagnosis overlooks more funda -mental problems that afflict Indianintelligence agencies.
Three Categories of FailuresIntelligence failures can broadly be placedunder three categories: those relating to thecollection of information, to its analysis,andto the response to the intelligence product.Shortcomings in collection can be attributedto the agencies; though there are moredeep-seated problems here as well. Flaws inanalysis and response, on the other hand,are as much failures of the political-strategicleadership as of any agency.
In recent instances of seriousintelligence failures, collection has been theleast of the problems. Consider the case ofthe Pakistani incursions in Kargil in thespring of 1999. In the preceding months,
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CAN WE STOPANOTHERATTACK?One year after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks fundamental problems still afflict Indian intelligence agencies
SRINATH RAGHAVAN
KEY POINTSn Intelligence failures can broadly beplaced under three categories: thoserelating to the collection of information,to its analysis, and to the response tothe intelligence product.n The technological advances thatunderpin the phenomenon ofglobalisation have greatly altered thenature and scale of security threatsnow confronting States.
The terrorist attacks of November 26,2008 exposed several chinks in ournational security apparatus. In
particular, the intelligence agencies drewsharp criticism from the media and somepoliticians. ‘Intelligence failure’ became arecurrent mantra in these post-mortems.The intelligence agencies tried to counterthese accusations by leaking bits and piecesof information to the media. However,these only served to further muddy thewaters. Indeed, the state of the intelligenceagencies has been the subject of a publicdebate that yields more heat than light.
The Government, for its part, hastended to focus excessively, if notexclusively, on procedural reforms. Thus,in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks,the Union Home Minister P. Chidambaramnoted that there had been problems ofintelligence coor dination, and that the Government had ‘closed these gaps’.Such a diagnosis overlooks more funda -mental problems that afflict Indianintelligence agencies.
Three Categories of FailuresIntelligence failures can broadly be placedunder three categories: those relating to thecollection of information, to its analysis,andto the response to the intelligence product.Shortcomings in collection can be attributedto the agencies; though there are moredeep-seated problems here as well. Flaws inanalysis and response, on the other hand,are as much failures of the political-strategicleadership as of any agency.
In recent instances of seriousintelligence failures, collection has been theleast of the problems. Consider the case ofthe Pakistani incursions in Kargil in thespring of 1999. In the preceding months,
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the intelligence agencies circulated severalreports indicating the possibility ofincreased artillery shelling and infiltrationin the Kargil sector. As early as June 1998,the Intelligence Bureau (IB) reported,“increased activities at the border andcontinuing endeavour to infiltrate a largegroup of foreign mercenaries”. It alsoreported “increased movement” of thePakistan Army in posts opposite the Kargilsector. In November 1998, the IB reportedthat Pakistan was providing militarytraining to Taliban, who were likely to beinfiltrated into Kargil area in April 1999.Clearly, there was no absence ofintelligence inputs.
A similar pattern can be seen inconnection with the attacks of 26/11. In lateSeptember 2008, the IB issued warningsthat the Taj Mahal hotel was on the list of asmall set of high-profile targets selected bythe Lashkar-e-Taiyyaba (LeT). TheResearch & Analysis Wing (RAW) toolearnt from communications intelligencethat the Lashkar had carried outreconnaissance of several targets includingthe Leela Kempinski. On November 18,RAW intercepted a satellite phoneconversation, tracing it to a location about60 km off the coast of Karachi.Subsequently, the LeT operatives hijackedan Indian fishing trawler. The CoastGuard, which had been alerted earlier,checked this vessel but let it pass. Again,significant intelligence inputs wereavailable to the security agencies. Be thatas it may, the collection capabilities of ouragencies need considerable upgradation.
The technological advances thatunderpin the phenomenon of globalisation
have also altered the nature and scale ofsecurity threats now confronting States. Theintricate and rapidly flowing circuits of thecontemporary financial world also nurtureand assist shadowy groups. The recentinvestigation undertaken by the Italianpolice in relation to the Mumbai attackshighlights these developments and theirimpact. The attackers and their Pakistan-based handlers used a US-based Voice OverInternet Protocol (VOIP) for real timecommunication. The VOIP number wasowned by a Belgian firm,which in turn hadleased it to an American telecommu -nications company. The VOIP account wasactivated by money transfers via an Italianfranchise of Western Union under a falsename and identification. These moves werecarried by two Pakistanis based in thenorthern Italian city of Brescia.
Differing Capabilities and SkillsAnticipating such threats will require anentirely different array of capabilities andskills. Given India’s immense pool of talentin information technology and relatedareas, devel oping the requisite techno -logical capabilities should not be toodifficult. Simi larly, there is no dearth of personnel with the neces sary skill-sets.But the existing structures of our agenciesare not really geared to tap into theseresources. For one thing, the Centralagencies tend to rely considerably on the Indian Police Service to providepersonnel on deputation. The calibre ofthese officers tends to be high, but they are unlikely to possess the qualificationsthat intelligence operatives and analystsrequire today. The ‘revolving door’
Indian artillery men lift the turrets of their155mm Bofors guns as they prepare to fire atenemy positions from a gun emplacement duringthe 1999 Kargil War. (Right)Home Minister P.Chidambaram with NSG Director-General N.P.SAulakh during a function to celebrate the 25thNSG Raising Day in New Delhi
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the intelligence agencies circulated severalreports indicating the possibility ofincreased artillery shelling and infiltrationin the Kargil sector. As early as June 1998,the Intelligence Bureau (IB) reported,“increased activities at the border andcontinuing endeavour to infiltrate a largegroup of foreign mercenaries”. It alsoreported “increased movement” of thePakistan Army in posts opposite the Kargilsector. In November 1998, the IB reportedthat Pakistan was providing militarytraining to Taliban, who were likely to beinfiltrated into Kargil area in April 1999.Clearly, there was no absence ofintelligence inputs.
A similar pattern can be seen inconnection with the attacks of 26/11. In lateSeptember 2008, the IB issued warningsthat the Taj Mahal hotel was on the list of asmall set of high-profile targets selected bythe Lashkar-e-Taiyyaba (LeT). TheResearch & Analysis Wing (RAW) toolearnt from communications intelligencethat the Lashkar had carried outreconnaissance of several targets includingthe Leela Kempinski. On November 18,RAW intercepted a satellite phoneconversation, tracing it to a location about60 km off the coast of Karachi.Subsequently, the LeT operatives hijackedan Indian fishing trawler. The CoastGuard, which had been alerted earlier,checked this vessel but let it pass. Again,significant intelligence inputs wereavailable to the security agencies. Be thatas it may, the collection capabilities of ouragencies need considerable upgradation.
The technological advances thatunderpin the phenomenon of globalisation
have also altered the nature and scale ofsecurity threats now confronting States. Theintricate and rapidly flowing circuits of thecontemporary financial world also nurtureand assist shadowy groups. The recentinvestigation undertaken by the Italianpolice in relation to the Mumbai attackshighlights these developments and theirimpact. The attackers and their Pakistan-based handlers used a US-based Voice OverInternet Protocol (VOIP) for real timecommunication. The VOIP number wasowned by a Belgian firm,which in turn hadleased it to an American telecommu -nications company. The VOIP account wasactivated by money transfers via an Italianfranchise of Western Union under a falsename and identification. These moves werecarried by two Pakistanis based in thenorthern Italian city of Brescia.
Differing Capabilities and SkillsAnticipating such threats will require anentirely different array of capabilities andskills. Given India’s immense pool of talentin information technology and relatedareas, devel oping the requisite techno -logical capabilities should not be toodifficult. Simi larly, there is no dearth of personnel with the neces sary skill-sets.But the existing structures of our agenciesare not really geared to tap into theseresources. For one thing, the Centralagencies tend to rely considerably on the Indian Police Service to providepersonnel on deputation. The calibre ofthese officers tends to be high, but they are unlikely to possess the qualificationsthat intelligence operatives and analystsrequire today. The ‘revolving door’
Indian artillery men lift the turrets of their155mm Bofors guns as they prepare to fire atenemy positions from a gun emplacement duringthe 1999 Kargil War. (Right)Home Minister P.Chidambaram with NSG Director-General N.P.SAulakh during a function to celebrate the 25thNSG Raising Day in New Delhi
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personnel policy alsoundercuts the acquisition of such qualifications. The existing procedures for recruitment need to be reconsidered.
Many Western intelli -gence agencies look forpersonnel in the openmarket. They openly com pete with otheremployers in attracting the most suitabletalent from colleges and uni versities. Foranother, the agencies could considerleveraging the capabilities of the privatesector for some tasks. Here too, theexperience of Western agencies is instructive.
Furthermore, the agencies need toacquire better area specialists: people whohave a strong background in the languageand culture, history and politics ofdifferent regions. Unfortunately, areastudies is a third-rate discipline in much ofIndian academia. The problem can becircumvented by a more imaginativerecruitment policy—one that invests in thetraining of young, talented indivi duals inthe best schools abroad. Besides, officersshould be actively encou raged toundertake serious higher academic work.
Finally, the intelligence communityneeds to expand the range of its activities.
The level of informationthat is now available in‘open sources’ is far greaterthan what any agency canrealistically cope with. To besure, these sources may notbe very useful forimmediate secu rityconcerns. But they are
useful to benchmark the quality ofinformation from covert sources. Besides,they are parti cularly valuable for under -standing the broader, longer-term strategicpicture. To cope with the explosion ofinformation in the open domain, manyintelligence agencies regularly organiseopen work shops and conferences bringingtogether the best researchers in thediscipline. The Canadian Security andIntelligence Services, for instance, have adedicated ‘academic outreach’programmewith its own budget and website.
In contrast to the problems of collection,those pertaining to intelligence analysisand response are more difficult to fix.Redrawing organisational charts areunlikely to be useful beyond a point, forthe real problems lie elsewhere.
Consider again the failures in Kargil andMumbai. In the run up to the incursions,intelligence assessments of the future
INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES
10
behaviour of Pakistan rested on extra -polations from patterns of past behaviour.This form of inductive reasoning is the mostprevalent mode of making predictionsabout the way the world works. The troubleis that it encourages a bias towards assumingcontinuity rather than deviance. But there isno sound methodology for divining suchabrupt shifts in behaviour, especially whenthe adversary is extraordinarily careful toconceal them.
It could be argued that the best responsewould be to proceed on the worst-caseassumption. Such a response, however, isbound to pose high costs — costs that mightcome to be seen as unnecessary. Forinstance, if the Indian Army had tried toplug the gaps along the Line of Control inthe winter of 1998-99, it would certainlyhave resulted in casualties owing to theweather. Further, it is probable that thePakistanis might have put off the operationowing to the Indian moves. This, in turn,might have led the Indians to rethink thewisdom of incurring such costs when theanticipated development did not occur. Thisis the paradox of a “self-negating prophecy”.Even if agreed in principle, the worst-caseapproach cannot be sustained in practice.
This point is borne out in a differentway by the failure in Mumbai. The fact isthat apart from the more pointed warningsmentioned above, the Navy and otheragencies also received a stream of moregeneric warnings through the year. Thisappears to have resulted in a ‘crying wolf’syndrome. It is easy to accuse the CoastGuard, the Navy and the Maharashtrapolice of not taking the warning seriously.But the last especially had a serious
problem of capacity. Adopting the worst-case scenario approach for each warningwould have required far more resourcesand cause far more inconvenience. In fact,after the R&AW warning about the Leela,hotels like Oberoi did introducerestrictions but eased them just a weekbefore the attacks.
It is also worth emphasising that thesewarnings were issued by the agencies andwere not accompanied by a threat analysisbased on all available inputs. Part of theproblem, is that intelligence reports areusually inconclusive. By the time theybecome conclusive the event is alreadyupon us. Reforming this system might bedesirable; but it will also introduce delays.Moreover, increasing the frequency andnumber of intelligence assessments mightbe counterproductive; for the decision-makers seldom have the time to read all theintelligence material.
Batting AverageThese problems with intelligence are by nomeans specific to India: they can beobserved in cases of intelligence failureacross countries. Nevertheless, we couldinstitute some precautionary measures.
For a start, it might be useful to viewintelligence performances not as success orfailure but as a “batting average” over time.This will require our agencies to study theirown historical records and estimate the ratioof success to failure in making predictions.This will not be a flawless number;but it willgive us a reasonable idea of their compa -rative performance. These could be comple -mented by commissioning research byindependent experts who would be givenfull access to records after a thoroughprocess of vetting. The British intelligenceagencies have been the pioneers in thisregard. An authorised history of MI5 writtenby the Cambridge historian, Chris topherAndrews, has recently been published.Similar histories of the MI6 and the JointIntelligence Committee are due to bereleased next year. Apart from history, it isimportant to sensitise intelligence profes -sionals and consumers to social sciencesmethodology and to the cognitive pitfallsthat usually accompany intelligence failures.
All of these will require not justresources but a much deeper commitmentto reform from the political leadership. Forthere will be considerable institutionalresistance. Let us hope that it won’t takeanother “surprise attack” like Mumbai forthe government to start focusing on theseinherent problems of intelligence.
The problems withintelligence are by no
means specific to India: they can be observed
in cases of intelligencefailure across countries.Nevertheless, we could
institute someprecautionary measures.
”An Indian National SecurityGuard commando abseilsfrom a helicopter onto therooftop of Nariman House inColaba; (Right) An IndianArmy sniper climbs up thescaffolding on the Gatewayof India opposite the TajMahal Hotel last November
AFP
AFP
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personnel policy alsoundercuts the acquisition of such qualifications. The existing procedures for recruitment need to be reconsidered.
Many Western intelli -gence agencies look forpersonnel in the openmarket. They openly com pete with otheremployers in attracting the most suitabletalent from colleges and uni versities. Foranother, the agencies could considerleveraging the capabilities of the privatesector for some tasks. Here too, theexperience of Western agencies is instructive.
Furthermore, the agencies need toacquire better area specialists: people whohave a strong background in the languageand culture, history and politics ofdifferent regions. Unfortunately, areastudies is a third-rate discipline in much ofIndian academia. The problem can becircumvented by a more imaginativerecruitment policy—one that invests in thetraining of young, talented indivi duals inthe best schools abroad. Besides, officersshould be actively encou raged toundertake serious higher academic work.
Finally, the intelligence communityneeds to expand the range of its activities.
The level of informationthat is now available in‘open sources’ is far greaterthan what any agency canrealistically cope with. To besure, these sources may notbe very useful forimmediate secu rityconcerns. But they are
useful to benchmark the quality ofinformation from covert sources. Besides,they are parti cularly valuable for under -standing the broader, longer-term strategicpicture. To cope with the explosion ofinformation in the open domain, manyintelligence agencies regularly organiseopen work shops and conferences bringingtogether the best researchers in thediscipline. The Canadian Security andIntelligence Services, for instance, have adedicated ‘academic outreach’programmewith its own budget and website.
In contrast to the problems of collection,those pertaining to intelligence analysisand response are more difficult to fix.Redrawing organisational charts areunlikely to be useful beyond a point, forthe real problems lie elsewhere.
Consider again the failures in Kargil andMumbai. In the run up to the incursions,intelligence assessments of the future
INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES
10
behaviour of Pakistan rested on extra -polations from patterns of past behaviour.This form of inductive reasoning is the mostprevalent mode of making predictionsabout the way the world works. The troubleis that it encourages a bias towards assumingcontinuity rather than deviance. But there isno sound methodology for divining suchabrupt shifts in behaviour, especially whenthe adversary is extraordinarily careful toconceal them.
It could be argued that the best responsewould be to proceed on the worst-caseassumption. Such a response, however, isbound to pose high costs — costs that mightcome to be seen as unnecessary. Forinstance, if the Indian Army had tried toplug the gaps along the Line of Control inthe winter of 1998-99, it would certainlyhave resulted in casualties owing to theweather. Further, it is probable that thePakistanis might have put off the operationowing to the Indian moves. This, in turn,might have led the Indians to rethink thewisdom of incurring such costs when theanticipated development did not occur. Thisis the paradox of a “self-negating prophecy”.Even if agreed in principle, the worst-caseapproach cannot be sustained in practice.
This point is borne out in a differentway by the failure in Mumbai. The fact isthat apart from the more pointed warningsmentioned above, the Navy and otheragencies also received a stream of moregeneric warnings through the year. Thisappears to have resulted in a ‘crying wolf’syndrome. It is easy to accuse the CoastGuard, the Navy and the Maharashtrapolice of not taking the warning seriously.But the last especially had a serious
problem of capacity. Adopting the worst-case scenario approach for each warningwould have required far more resourcesand cause far more inconvenience. In fact,after the R&AW warning about the Leela,hotels like Oberoi did introducerestrictions but eased them just a weekbefore the attacks.
It is also worth emphasising that thesewarnings were issued by the agencies andwere not accompanied by a threat analysisbased on all available inputs. Part of theproblem, is that intelligence reports areusually inconclusive. By the time theybecome conclusive the event is alreadyupon us. Reforming this system might bedesirable; but it will also introduce delays.Moreover, increasing the frequency andnumber of intelligence assessments mightbe counterproductive; for the decision-makers seldom have the time to read all theintelligence material.
Batting AverageThese problems with intelligence are by nomeans specific to India: they can beobserved in cases of intelligence failureacross countries. Nevertheless, we couldinstitute some precautionary measures.
For a start, it might be useful to viewintelligence performances not as success orfailure but as a “batting average” over time.This will require our agencies to study theirown historical records and estimate the ratioof success to failure in making predictions.This will not be a flawless number;but it willgive us a reasonable idea of their compa -rative performance. These could be comple -mented by commissioning research byindependent experts who would be givenfull access to records after a thoroughprocess of vetting. The British intelligenceagencies have been the pioneers in thisregard. An authorised history of MI5 writtenby the Cambridge historian, Chris topherAndrews, has recently been published.Similar histories of the MI6 and the JointIntelligence Committee are due to bereleased next year. Apart from history, it isimportant to sensitise intelligence profes -sionals and consumers to social sciencesmethodology and to the cognitive pitfallsthat usually accompany intelligence failures.
All of these will require not justresources but a much deeper commitmentto reform from the political leadership. Forthere will be considerable institutionalresistance. Let us hope that it won’t takeanother “surprise attack” like Mumbai forthe government to start focusing on theseinherent problems of intelligence.
The problems withintelligence are by no
means specific to India: they can be observed
in cases of intelligencefailure across countries.Nevertheless, we could
institute someprecautionary measures.
”An Indian National SecurityGuard commando abseilsfrom a helicopter onto therooftop of Nariman House inColaba; (Right) An IndianArmy sniper climbs up thescaffolding on the Gatewayof India opposite the TajMahal Hotel last November
AFP
AFP
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Sergey Viktorovich, everybody knows yourbiography perfectly well. But, to build secretly overthe Urals in the times of crisis one of the most up-to-date enterprises in the world, and jointly withthe Americans at that, – that is what I call the veryprowess! How did you manage?
In Russia we have a very accurate sayingin this respect, “A spoon is dear whenlunch time is near”.
That is true that we, I mean VSMPO-AVISMA and Boeing, didn’t publicize, toput it mildly, the construction. Weplanned to time the opening of this, us-ing your precise wording, one of the mostup-to-date enterprises in the world, or ac-cording to some opinions the most up-to-date enterprise in the world, to coincidewith the US presidential visit to Russia.
I believe the motives behind our ac-tions are obvious and clear to everybody.
As to the idea of creating our UralBoeing Manufacturing joint venture, thatis its exact name, we agreed with Boeingto establish the JV as far back as in2006, and in 2007 we signed an agree-ment to that effect. The construction ofthe new plant, its staffing, personneltraining and equipping with five-axis ma-chines took two years.
We are very pleased that we were intime to open it during the new US Presi-dent’s first visit to Russia.
Our JV is indeed a union of businessleaders from Russia and the USA – Russ-ian Technologies State Corporation, rep-resented by the world’s largest titaniumproducer VSMPO-AVISMA, and Boeing,the world leader in aircraft industry.
As an industrialist, I believe that eco-nomic ties are no less instrumental in de-veloping relations between the two greatpowers than political contacts. And incertain cases such ties even predeter-
mine them. We are proud to be con-tributing to the development of mutuallybeneficial economic ties between the twocountries.
And what is the interest of VSMPO-AVISMA, theworld’s largest titanium producer, in a join venturewith American Boeing?
The fact is that the most cutting-edge air-craft, Boeing 787 Dreamliner, will nevertake off without Russian titanium, which isthe lightest and strongest metal. Russiantitanium flies with all other Boeing aircraft aswell: 737, 747, 767 and 777. And, ofcourse, it is used in advanced models ofRussian aircraft.
We have agreed with Boeing a portfolio oforders and secured it with long-term con-tracts until 2015. Contracts worth billions of
US dollars have already been implemented.We never let Boeing down and Boeing hasbeen doing likewise. I hope this situation willhold in the future! Boeing, VSMPO-AVISMAand Russian Technologies pooled efforts toset up a potent mutually-beneficial alliance.It is capable of tackling the most challengingindustrial tasks of the 21st century up tothe world quality standards using state-of-the-art technologies.
Trading in titanium bars is quite easy,but what is more – unprofitable. That is whyfrom the very beginning of its cooperationwith Boeing the VSMPO-AVISMA Corpora-tion has been gradually moving towards achangeover to production and sale of value-added products of a more profound pro-cessing. The creation of the machiningcomplex is a logical follow-up to that policy.
The point is that so far we lack experience inmachining that we need and another rea-son is that without a joint venture we wouldfind it difficult to get such machines andother equipment.
Yesterday we launched the world’s mostadvanced machining complex. It has cut-ting-edge unique equipment. Among otherthings, the technologies employed at UBMwill provide the Corporation with valuableexpertise in machining of titanium and inthe nearest future will enable it to start pro-duction of finished stampings. Anyway, it isour immediate objective.
Sergey Viktorovich, what is that uniqueequipment like?
They are the most advanced five-axis ma-chines of MAG Cincinnati for tough applica-tions, for instance titanium processing. In aword – high-tech. I don’t want to bore youwith technical terms. I’ll just say that themachines can cut a sphere out of a titaniumslab with an accuracy of one-third of a hu-man hair’s breadth. I think that is quiteenough to appreciate their potential.
But what is also important is that theprevious US administration, referring to thethen applicable prohibitive measures, manytimes refused to export modern equipmentto Russia.
President Obama has abolished this dis-crimination by his decision. We are gratefulto him for this move.
Sergey Viktorovich, I am sure that you have heard anumerous opinion that by covering over 40% of itstitanium demand with Russian supplies, AmericanBoeing supposedly gets hooked on Russiantitanium. What do you make of it?That is not so. It should be rememberedthat Russia is not only a supplier of tita-nium, but also a source of knowledge,know-how and ideas required for manu-facturing of up-to-date American aviationequipment. For example, American andMoscow offices of Boeing are staffed by alot of high-skilled employees who take di-rect part in the development and manu-facturing of the above Dreamliner.
This is not surprising. Today, a com-petitive high-tech product created withoutan international cooperation is hard toimagine.
The very Russian aircraft Sukhoi Superjet100, which was internationally presentedmost recently at Le Bourget air show, wasdeveloped in cooperation with Italian AleniaAeronautica and Boeing. The suppliers ofthe Superjet main systems include FrenchSnecma and Thales, German Liebherr,American Honeywell and other leadingWestern companies and firms.
What tasks is the JV faced with and how is itgoing to integrate into the VSMPO productionchain?
UBM will perform primary machining of tita-nium stampings produced by VSMPO-AVISMA and what is particularly important inthe immediate vicinity of the JV. Final ma-chining is planned to be carried out at theBoeing plant in Portland, USA, and otherprocessing enterprises of subcontractors.Moreover, titanium chip scrap from ma-chining will be immediately shipped back toVSMPO-AVISMA for recycling. It will make itpossible to create a unique closed-cyclechain to support the manufacture of tita-nium semi-finished products, stampingsand other kinds of products.
So, I would like to wish the new venturewell-coordinated work and new contracts. Iwish us, I mean both the Russian and Amer-ican parties, new models of aircraft andspace equipment, naturally with Russian ti-tanium, and also American and Russiancutting-edge technologies.
For reference
The Russian Technologies State Corpora-tion was established in November 2007 toassist Russian organizations, working invarious industries, in developing, producingand selling high-technology products on thedomestic and foreign markets, in conductingapplied research into promising areas ofscientific and technological developmentand in manufacturing application of state-of-the-art technologies with a view to bring-ing Russian designs to a higher level, speed-ing up and making more cost-effective the
creation thereof. The Russian TechnologiesState Corporation comprises Rosoboronex-port, United Industrial Corporation Oboron-prom, CJSC RusSpetsStal, CorporationVSMPO-Avisma, JSC AVTOVAZ and otherorganizations.
The VSMPO-AVISMA Corporation is theworld’s largest producer of titanium barsand other semi-finished products from tita-nium alloy. It is Boeing’s major partner fromRussia supplying over 40% of all the tita-nium products. VSMPO-AVISMA is inte-grated into the Russian Technologies StateCorporation.
Boeing is the world’s leading aerospacecorporation and number one producer ofpassenger aircraft. Moreover, Boeing de-velops and produces military helicopters,electronic and defense systems, missiles,satellites, modern information and telecom-munication systems. Boeing holds a lead-ing position in ballistic missile defense,manned spaceflights and space launchingservices. The Company also provides apackage of services in maintenance of andafter-sale services for aviation equipment.
The Company has customers in morethan 90 countries worldwide. Boeing is aUS major exporter in terms of the volumesof sales.
Chicago-based Boeing employs over160,000 people in 70 countries world-wide. Since 1992 Boeing has been inclose cooperation with Russian aero-space enterprises, IT and air companies.There are 1,200 engineers from Russ-ian leading enterprises contracted toBoeing’s design centre.
Sergey Viktorovich, everybody knows yourbiography perfectly well. But, to build secretly overthe Urals in the times of crisis one of the most up-to-date enterprises in the world, and jointly withthe Americans at that, – that is what I call the veryprowess! How did you manage?
In Russia we have a very accurate sayingin this respect, “A spoon is dear whenlunch time is near”.
That is true that we, I mean VSMPO-AVISMA and Boeing, didn’t publicize, toput it mildly, the construction. Weplanned to time the opening of this, us-ing your precise wording, one of the mostup-to-date enterprises in the world, or ac-cording to some opinions the most up-to-date enterprise in the world, to coincidewith the US presidential visit to Russia.
I believe the motives behind our ac-tions are obvious and clear to everybody.
As to the idea of creating our UralBoeing Manufacturing joint venture, thatis its exact name, we agreed with Boeingto establish the JV as far back as in2006, and in 2007 we signed an agree-ment to that effect. The construction ofthe new plant, its staffing, personneltraining and equipping with five-axis ma-chines took two years.
We are very pleased that we were intime to open it during the new US Presi-dent’s first visit to Russia.
Our JV is indeed a union of businessleaders from Russia and the USA – Russ-ian Technologies State Corporation, rep-resented by the world’s largest titaniumproducer VSMPO-AVISMA, and Boeing,the world leader in aircraft industry.
As an industrialist, I believe that eco-nomic ties are no less instrumental in de-veloping relations between the two greatpowers than political contacts. And incertain cases such ties even predeter-
mine them. We are proud to be con-tributing to the development of mutuallybeneficial economic ties between the twocountries.
And what is the interest of VSMPO-AVISMA, theworld’s largest titanium producer, in a join venturewith American Boeing?
The fact is that the most cutting-edge air-craft, Boeing 787 Dreamliner, will nevertake off without Russian titanium, which isthe lightest and strongest metal. Russiantitanium flies with all other Boeing aircraft aswell: 737, 747, 767 and 777. And, ofcourse, it is used in advanced models ofRussian aircraft.
We have agreed with Boeing a portfolio oforders and secured it with long-term con-tracts until 2015. Contracts worth billions of
US dollars have already been implemented.We never let Boeing down and Boeing hasbeen doing likewise. I hope this situation willhold in the future! Boeing, VSMPO-AVISMAand Russian Technologies pooled efforts toset up a potent mutually-beneficial alliance.It is capable of tackling the most challengingindustrial tasks of the 21st century up tothe world quality standards using state-of-the-art technologies.
Trading in titanium bars is quite easy,but what is more – unprofitable. That is whyfrom the very beginning of its cooperationwith Boeing the VSMPO-AVISMA Corpora-tion has been gradually moving towards achangeover to production and sale of value-added products of a more profound pro-cessing. The creation of the machiningcomplex is a logical follow-up to that policy.
The point is that so far we lack experience inmachining that we need and another rea-son is that without a joint venture we wouldfind it difficult to get such machines andother equipment.
Yesterday we launched the world’s mostadvanced machining complex. It has cut-ting-edge unique equipment. Among otherthings, the technologies employed at UBMwill provide the Corporation with valuableexpertise in machining of titanium and inthe nearest future will enable it to start pro-duction of finished stampings. Anyway, it isour immediate objective.
Sergey Viktorovich, what is that uniqueequipment like?
They are the most advanced five-axis ma-chines of MAG Cincinnati for tough applica-tions, for instance titanium processing. In aword – high-tech. I don’t want to bore youwith technical terms. I’ll just say that themachines can cut a sphere out of a titaniumslab with an accuracy of one-third of a hu-man hair’s breadth. I think that is quiteenough to appreciate their potential.
But what is also important is that theprevious US administration, referring to thethen applicable prohibitive measures, manytimes refused to export modern equipmentto Russia.
President Obama has abolished this dis-crimination by his decision. We are gratefulto him for this move.
Sergey Viktorovich, I am sure that you have heard anumerous opinion that by covering over 40% of itstitanium demand with Russian supplies, AmericanBoeing supposedly gets hooked on Russiantitanium. What do you make of it?That is not so. It should be rememberedthat Russia is not only a supplier of tita-nium, but also a source of knowledge,know-how and ideas required for manu-facturing of up-to-date American aviationequipment. For example, American andMoscow offices of Boeing are staffed by alot of high-skilled employees who take di-rect part in the development and manu-facturing of the above Dreamliner.
This is not surprising. Today, a com-petitive high-tech product created withoutan international cooperation is hard toimagine.
The very Russian aircraft Sukhoi Superjet100, which was internationally presentedmost recently at Le Bourget air show, wasdeveloped in cooperation with Italian AleniaAeronautica and Boeing. The suppliers ofthe Superjet main systems include FrenchSnecma and Thales, German Liebherr,American Honeywell and other leadingWestern companies and firms.
What tasks is the JV faced with and how is itgoing to integrate into the VSMPO productionchain?
UBM will perform primary machining of tita-nium stampings produced by VSMPO-AVISMA and what is particularly important inthe immediate vicinity of the JV. Final ma-chining is planned to be carried out at theBoeing plant in Portland, USA, and otherprocessing enterprises of subcontractors.Moreover, titanium chip scrap from ma-chining will be immediately shipped back toVSMPO-AVISMA for recycling. It will make itpossible to create a unique closed-cyclechain to support the manufacture of tita-nium semi-finished products, stampingsand other kinds of products.
So, I would like to wish the new venturewell-coordinated work and new contracts. Iwish us, I mean both the Russian and Amer-ican parties, new models of aircraft andspace equipment, naturally with Russian ti-tanium, and also American and Russiancutting-edge technologies.
For reference
The Russian Technologies State Corpora-tion was established in November 2007 toassist Russian organizations, working invarious industries, in developing, producingand selling high-technology products on thedomestic and foreign markets, in conductingapplied research into promising areas ofscientific and technological developmentand in manufacturing application of state-of-the-art technologies with a view to bring-ing Russian designs to a higher level, speed-ing up and making more cost-effective the
creation thereof. The Russian TechnologiesState Corporation comprises Rosoboronex-port, United Industrial Corporation Oboron-prom, CJSC RusSpetsStal, CorporationVSMPO-Avisma, JSC AVTOVAZ and otherorganizations.
The VSMPO-AVISMA Corporation is theworld’s largest producer of titanium barsand other semi-finished products from tita-nium alloy. It is Boeing’s major partner fromRussia supplying over 40% of all the tita-nium products. VSMPO-AVISMA is inte-grated into the Russian Technologies StateCorporation.
Boeing is the world’s leading aerospacecorporation and number one producer ofpassenger aircraft. Moreover, Boeing de-velops and produces military helicopters,electronic and defense systems, missiles,satellites, modern information and telecom-munication systems. Boeing holds a lead-ing position in ballistic missile defense,manned spaceflights and space launchingservices. The Company also provides apackage of services in maintenance of andafter-sale services for aviation equipment.
The Company has customers in morethan 90 countries worldwide. Boeing is aUS major exporter in terms of the volumesof sales.
Chicago-based Boeing employs over160,000 people in 70 countries world-wide. Since 1992 Boeing has been inclose cooperation with Russian aero-space enterprises, IT and air companies.There are 1,200 engineers from Russ-ian leading enterprises contracted toBoeing’s design centre.
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.—Benjamin Franklin
An apocryphal story attributed to aconversation between twoGerman generals during the First
World War (versions of the narrative aresometimes dated to the Crimean War,morethan half a century earlier) has one of themcommenting, “The English soldiers fightlike lions.” To this, the other responds,“True. But like lions led by donkeys.”
As thousands of State Police and CentralParamilitary Force (CPMF) personnel areflung, without a visible plan or purposeinto an escalating war (notwithstandingany euphemisms politicians may prefer)
against the Maoists, it has becomeincreasingly vital to determine thethinking within India’s strategic leader -ship. The wilder imaginations within thisgroup have thrown their weight behindvisions of high-resolution imagery andaerial operations by the Indian Air Force,backed by the Army on the ground.Happily, however, air and military ope -rations, at least,have been unambiguouslystruck down both by Prime MinisterManmohan Singh and Union HomeMinister P. Chidambaram.
However, the idea of surgical strikes inthe densely forested Maoist heartland,executed by combined teams of SpecialForces (SF), are yet to be divested of theirseduction. The Centre and various Statescontinue to conjure up grandiose cam -paigns targeting the Maoists in a coordi -nated and massive offensive across theworst affected areas in the country.Perhaps taking a page out of the American‘success’ in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s‘success’ in the SWAT Valley, there hasbeen much ill-advised kite-flying about anattack on the Maoist ‘central guerrilla area’in the Abujhmadh Forest in Chhattisgarh,backed by sci-fi visions of high resolutionaerial, satellite and thermal imagery withair support for ground troops.
Increasing Techno-WarfareAdvocates of such techno-warfare largelymiss the fact that Pakistan and USA, withthe massive collateral damage theyroutinely inflict on civilian populations,
have little, if anything, to teach India on counter-insurgency. Incidentally, theIAF has repeatedly sought permission to shoot at Maoists in self-defence, as itshelicopters fly transport and surveillancesorties over the affected areas. (Publicstatements by Defence Minister A.K.Antony and Chidambaram suggest that is the policy though formal permission isyet to be granted.) This is a slippery slopeand while offensive air operations againstthe Maoists have explicitly been ruled out, the IAF is reportedly preparing for a
still-undefined expanded role in fights in the Naxal strongholds.
In the meantime, there has been toomuch of tom-tomming of the massiveoperations to be launched shortly by theCentre, in coordination with the States.Selective leaks to the media haveemanated steadily from a multiplicity ofagencies and it is very clear that anyoperations launched now will not surprisethe Maoists. Indeed, while some signs ofdisarray, especially between State andCentral Forces, are visible, there is evidence
that the Maoists have beensystematically preparing forthe imminent onslaught formonths and have alreadyinitiated their operations tothwart and circumvent theState’s strategy. Worse, the State’s strategyhas been progressively diluted, as itbecomes obvious that the quantum offorces required for the operations across sixStates are simply not available. Abruptly,sources suggest that the operations havebeen reinvented as a focussed campaign in
just six districts, principallyaround Abujhmadh in theBastar division of Chhattisgarhand overflowing intoneighbouring Gadchirolidistrict of Maharashtra. The
impact this will have on the Maoists,who, by the Home Minister’s ownadmission, are now active in as many as223 districts across 20 States, should bemore than obvious.
Crucially, if an overwhelming force isin fact concentrated in these narrow areas,
AJAI SAHNI
DISRUPTIVEDOMINANCEIndia’s strategic leadership is unable to focus on acogent policy to deal with the Maoists who are activein 223 districts spread across 20 States
KEY POINTSn Given existing capacities, currentstrategies have little possibility ofinflicting decisive reversals on theMaoists. n India’s strategic leadership is unableto focus on the urgent tasks of capacitybuilding at a pace and a scale that thisconflict demands.
Indian policemen guarda Salwa Judum(People’s Army) reliefcamp at Bhairamgarh,Jharkhand
AFP
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DSINOVEMBER 2009
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15
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.—Benjamin Franklin
An apocryphal story attributed to aconversation between twoGerman generals during the First
World War (versions of the narrative aresometimes dated to the Crimean War,morethan half a century earlier) has one of themcommenting, “The English soldiers fightlike lions.” To this, the other responds,“True. But like lions led by donkeys.”
As thousands of State Police and CentralParamilitary Force (CPMF) personnel areflung, without a visible plan or purposeinto an escalating war (notwithstandingany euphemisms politicians may prefer)
against the Maoists, it has becomeincreasingly vital to determine thethinking within India’s strategic leader -ship. The wilder imaginations within thisgroup have thrown their weight behindvisions of high-resolution imagery andaerial operations by the Indian Air Force,backed by the Army on the ground.Happily, however, air and military ope -rations, at least,have been unambiguouslystruck down both by Prime MinisterManmohan Singh and Union HomeMinister P. Chidambaram.
However, the idea of surgical strikes inthe densely forested Maoist heartland,executed by combined teams of SpecialForces (SF), are yet to be divested of theirseduction. The Centre and various Statescontinue to conjure up grandiose cam -paigns targeting the Maoists in a coordi -nated and massive offensive across theworst affected areas in the country.Perhaps taking a page out of the American‘success’ in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s‘success’ in the SWAT Valley, there hasbeen much ill-advised kite-flying about anattack on the Maoist ‘central guerrilla area’in the Abujhmadh Forest in Chhattisgarh,backed by sci-fi visions of high resolutionaerial, satellite and thermal imagery withair support for ground troops.
Increasing Techno-WarfareAdvocates of such techno-warfare largelymiss the fact that Pakistan and USA, withthe massive collateral damage theyroutinely inflict on civilian populations,
have little, if anything, to teach India on counter-insurgency. Incidentally, theIAF has repeatedly sought permission to shoot at Maoists in self-defence, as itshelicopters fly transport and surveillancesorties over the affected areas. (Publicstatements by Defence Minister A.K.Antony and Chidambaram suggest that is the policy though formal permission isyet to be granted.) This is a slippery slopeand while offensive air operations againstthe Maoists have explicitly been ruled out, the IAF is reportedly preparing for a
still-undefined expanded role in fights in the Naxal strongholds.
In the meantime, there has been toomuch of tom-tomming of the massiveoperations to be launched shortly by theCentre, in coordination with the States.Selective leaks to the media haveemanated steadily from a multiplicity ofagencies and it is very clear that anyoperations launched now will not surprisethe Maoists. Indeed, while some signs ofdisarray, especially between State andCentral Forces, are visible, there is evidence
that the Maoists have beensystematically preparing forthe imminent onslaught formonths and have alreadyinitiated their operations tothwart and circumvent theState’s strategy. Worse, the State’s strategyhas been progressively diluted, as itbecomes obvious that the quantum offorces required for the operations across sixStates are simply not available. Abruptly,sources suggest that the operations havebeen reinvented as a focussed campaign in
just six districts, principallyaround Abujhmadh in theBastar division of Chhattisgarhand overflowing intoneighbouring Gadchirolidistrict of Maharashtra. The
impact this will have on the Maoists,who, by the Home Minister’s ownadmission, are now active in as many as223 districts across 20 States, should bemore than obvious.
Crucially, if an overwhelming force isin fact concentrated in these narrow areas,
AJAI SAHNI
DISRUPTIVEDOMINANCEIndia’s strategic leadership is unable to focus on acogent policy to deal with the Maoists who are activein 223 districts spread across 20 States
KEY POINTSn Given existing capacities, currentstrategies have little possibility ofinflicting decisive reversals on theMaoists. n India’s strategic leadership is unableto focus on the urgent tasks of capacitybuilding at a pace and a scale that thisconflict demands.
Indian policemen guarda Salwa Judum(People’s Army) reliefcamp at Bhairamgarh,Jharkhand
AFP
Naxal.qxd:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/09 10:36 AM Page 1
DSINOVEMBER 2009
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INTERNAL SECURITY
about concerted operation against theMaoist rebels' jungle bases, as a “pureinvention of the media” (Ironically, theMinister omitted to mention the significantand continuous leaks from the HomeMinistry that had fed distorted publicperceptions). He expanded on what was tobe expected. “In the months ahead there(will be) merely a more coordinated effortby the State Police to reassert control overterritory or tracts of land where regrettablythe civil administration has lost control.And for that purpose the Centre will assistthem in every manner possible,particularly by providing paramilitaryforces and sharing of intelligence.”
None of the Government’s posturingwas, however, lost on the Maoists whoappear to be preparing themselves for a fullscale civil war, not only with the SpecialForces, but also with the Army and withclear expectations that,when push comesto shove, they may have to deal with theAir Force as well. The now-notorious
circular released by the Maoist Politburo onJune 12 , explicitly notes that the State’srepression,will be far more brutal, deadlyand savage in the political circumstancescreated by the General Elections of May2009, than under any other regime hithertowitnessed (see box).
These contrasting perspectives arise outof the subjective experience of the IndianState in a vastly contradictory context. Tosenior officials based in Delhi, insulatedbehind layers of security, jugglingbattalions of forces, allocating hundreds ofcrores of rupees randomly with a squiggleof a pen and pronouncing on the future ofentire regions on a moment’sconsideration, the experience of the Stateremains that of a great power.
The Maoist, on the other hand,intentionally encounters the State at pointsof its greatest infirmity. Maoist strategiesand tactics are, moreover, uniquelytailored to exploit and augment theseinfirmities, stepping into a widening
vacuum of governance and systematicallyexpanding its boundaries through a slowprocess of attrition to establish a disruptivedominance that prevents the State’sagencies from delivering even therudiments of governance, developmentand welfare.
In this, the Maoist approach is complexand while it certainly uses extreme violenceto great effect, it is not exhausted by it. Asthe programme and constitution of theerstwhile People’s War Group’s (PWG’s)People’s Guerrilla Army (PGA) declares:“The PGA firmly opposes the pure militaryoutlook which is divorced from the massesand adventurism. It will function adheringto the mass line.”
The mass line explicitly rejects the Leftadventurism often attributed to the earlierNaxalite movement of the 1967-73 phaseand insists that the military aspect of therevolution are contingent on massmobilisation, “We see not only weapons butalso people. Weapons are an important
then after an initial and bloody campaignthat will cost the lives of many SecurityForce personnel and significant collateralcasualties in areas where civilian popu -lations intersect seamlessly with Maoistformations, the Maoists can be expected to simply and quickly walk away from the fight. While holding territory hasdefinitive advantages, it is of noextraordinary significance in the overallMaoist strategy.
Even for those unfamiliar with Maoiststrategy and tactics, this should have beenevident after Lalgarh. While the mediaspoke of liberated areas and an imminentshowdown between the entrenchedMaoists and the State forces that wereeventually deployed, former DirectorGeneral of Police, Punjab, and anti-terrorism expert, K.P. S. Gill writing inKolkata’s Telegraph said:
“…the slow build up over months ofState denial, appeasement and progressiveerror; paralysis in the face of rising Maoistviolence; and the final, almost effortlessresolution, as the rebels simply meltedaway in the face of the first evidence ofdetermined use of force.”
Maoist MobilisationThis outcome, however, could provide no more than scant and fleeting comfort to the State. While the saturation of forces has been maintained over the past months, this has in itself become an issue for further Maoist mobilisation. Ifthe CPMF presence is diluted, the area will once again be vulnerable to the Maoists’ disruptive dominance. Even if Lalgarh is effectively secured
in perpetuity, the rest of West Bengal—and areas of progressive Maoistconsolidation across thecountry—will providelimitless recurrent oppor -tunities for future theatrics.
And so it will be in Abujhmadh, in casethe projected operations are actuallyinitiated. The strategic reality is quitesimple. Unless a certain critical mass of thesecurity forces can be deployed acrossareas of current and potential Maoistviolence, all available dispositions ofexisting forces will prove irrational. If thereis a concentration of State forces onparticular nodes, the Maoists will disperseand intensify operations in other areas; ifthere is a dispersal of State forces, these willbe subjected to persistent and corrosiveattacks at their points of vulnerability evenas there is a steady expansion of areas ofMaoist disruptive dominance.
Astonishingly, much of this remains
apparently incompre -hensible to elements withinIndia’s strategic, planningand security communities.Home Secretary G.K. Pillai,certainly one of the better
officers in the Indian AdministrativeService, declared with Panglossianoptimism: “We hope that within 30 days ofthe security forces moving in anddominating the area,we should be able torestore civil administration there.” It would,indeed, be quite miraculous if the State isable to restore civil administration to vastexpanses of rural India where the Maoistshave no presence, but where the entireapparatus of governance has vanished;some of these areas are little more than astone’s throw away from Delhi.
There has, of course, been somesubsequent dilution of this war rhetoric,particularly after the Home Minister, onNovember 12, correctly dismissedOperation Green Hunt, the much talked
It is crucial for theGovernment, in confrontingthis strategy, not to fall into
the trap of focussinginordinately on ‘kills’. For
years now, the Maoists havehad a far greater capacity
for violence than they haveactually demonstrated.
”Villagers walk past thedeadbody of a CPI (M)supporter, allegedly killed byMaoists, in Dherua, located130 km from Kolkata
AFP
Though the enemy is itching to suppress our Party and movementby deploying a huge force in all our areas, he has severe difficulties
in implementing this at present. He has plans to increase the numberof Central Forces in the next few years, to set up and train specialforces like the Cobras, but in the immediate context it is quite difficultfor the Centre to send the forces required by each State to control ourmovement. Keeping this in mind, we have to further aggravate thesituation and create more difficulties to the enemy forces byexpanding our guerrilla war to new areas on the one hand andintensifying the mass resistance in the existing areas so as to dispersethe enemy forces over a sufficiently wider area; hence the foremosttask in every State is to intensify the war in their respective Stateswhile in areas of intense enemy repression there is need to expandthe area of struggle by proper planning by the concerned committees.Tactical counter-offensives should be stepped up and also taken up innew areas so as to divert a section of the enemy forces from attackingour guerrilla bases and organs of political power.
—Extracted from the circular released by the Politburo on June, 12, 2009
However, strong the enemy’s military power may be and howeverweak the people’s military power, by basing ourselves on the vast
backward countryside – the weakest position of the enemy – andrelying on the vast masses of the peasantry… and creatively followingthe flexible strategy and tactics of guerrilla struggle and theprotracted People’s War–as a full meal is eaten up mouthful bymouthful, exactly in the same way–by applying the best part of ourArmy… against different single parts of the enemy forces andfollowing the policy and tactics of sudden attack and annihilation, it isabsolutely possible to defeat the enemy forces and achieve victory forthe people in single battles. It is thus possible to increase thepeople’s armed forces, attain supremacy over the enemy’s forces anddefeat the enemy decisively.
—Extracted from the CPI-Maoist document on Strategy & Tactics
THE MAOIST MANIFESTO
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about concerted operation against theMaoist rebels' jungle bases, as a “pureinvention of the media” (Ironically, theMinister omitted to mention the significantand continuous leaks from the HomeMinistry that had fed distorted publicperceptions). He expanded on what was tobe expected. “In the months ahead there(will be) merely a more coordinated effortby the State Police to reassert control overterritory or tracts of land where regrettablythe civil administration has lost control.And for that purpose the Centre will assistthem in every manner possible,particularly by providing paramilitaryforces and sharing of intelligence.”
None of the Government’s posturingwas, however, lost on the Maoists whoappear to be preparing themselves for a fullscale civil war, not only with the SpecialForces, but also with the Army and withclear expectations that,when push comesto shove, they may have to deal with theAir Force as well. The now-notorious
circular released by the Maoist Politburo onJune 12 , explicitly notes that the State’srepression,will be far more brutal, deadlyand savage in the political circumstancescreated by the General Elections of May2009, than under any other regime hithertowitnessed (see box).
These contrasting perspectives arise outof the subjective experience of the IndianState in a vastly contradictory context. Tosenior officials based in Delhi, insulatedbehind layers of security, jugglingbattalions of forces, allocating hundreds ofcrores of rupees randomly with a squiggleof a pen and pronouncing on the future ofentire regions on a moment’sconsideration, the experience of the Stateremains that of a great power.
The Maoist, on the other hand,intentionally encounters the State at pointsof its greatest infirmity. Maoist strategiesand tactics are, moreover, uniquelytailored to exploit and augment theseinfirmities, stepping into a widening
vacuum of governance and systematicallyexpanding its boundaries through a slowprocess of attrition to establish a disruptivedominance that prevents the State’sagencies from delivering even therudiments of governance, developmentand welfare.
In this, the Maoist approach is complexand while it certainly uses extreme violenceto great effect, it is not exhausted by it. Asthe programme and constitution of theerstwhile People’s War Group’s (PWG’s)People’s Guerrilla Army (PGA) declares:“The PGA firmly opposes the pure militaryoutlook which is divorced from the massesand adventurism. It will function adheringto the mass line.”
The mass line explicitly rejects the Leftadventurism often attributed to the earlierNaxalite movement of the 1967-73 phaseand insists that the military aspect of therevolution are contingent on massmobilisation, “We see not only weapons butalso people. Weapons are an important
then after an initial and bloody campaignthat will cost the lives of many SecurityForce personnel and significant collateralcasualties in areas where civilian popu -lations intersect seamlessly with Maoistformations, the Maoists can be expected to simply and quickly walk away from the fight. While holding territory hasdefinitive advantages, it is of noextraordinary significance in the overallMaoist strategy.
Even for those unfamiliar with Maoiststrategy and tactics, this should have beenevident after Lalgarh. While the mediaspoke of liberated areas and an imminentshowdown between the entrenchedMaoists and the State forces that wereeventually deployed, former DirectorGeneral of Police, Punjab, and anti-terrorism expert, K.P. S. Gill writing inKolkata’s Telegraph said:
“…the slow build up over months ofState denial, appeasement and progressiveerror; paralysis in the face of rising Maoistviolence; and the final, almost effortlessresolution, as the rebels simply meltedaway in the face of the first evidence ofdetermined use of force.”
Maoist MobilisationThis outcome, however, could provide no more than scant and fleeting comfort to the State. While the saturation of forces has been maintained over the past months, this has in itself become an issue for further Maoist mobilisation. Ifthe CPMF presence is diluted, the area will once again be vulnerable to the Maoists’ disruptive dominance. Even if Lalgarh is effectively secured
in perpetuity, the rest of West Bengal—and areas of progressive Maoistconsolidation across thecountry—will providelimitless recurrent oppor -tunities for future theatrics.
And so it will be in Abujhmadh, in casethe projected operations are actuallyinitiated. The strategic reality is quitesimple. Unless a certain critical mass of thesecurity forces can be deployed acrossareas of current and potential Maoistviolence, all available dispositions ofexisting forces will prove irrational. If thereis a concentration of State forces onparticular nodes, the Maoists will disperseand intensify operations in other areas; ifthere is a dispersal of State forces, these willbe subjected to persistent and corrosiveattacks at their points of vulnerability evenas there is a steady expansion of areas ofMaoist disruptive dominance.
Astonishingly, much of this remains
apparently incompre -hensible to elements withinIndia’s strategic, planningand security communities.Home Secretary G.K. Pillai,certainly one of the better
officers in the Indian AdministrativeService, declared with Panglossianoptimism: “We hope that within 30 days ofthe security forces moving in anddominating the area,we should be able torestore civil administration there.” It would,indeed, be quite miraculous if the State isable to restore civil administration to vastexpanses of rural India where the Maoistshave no presence, but where the entireapparatus of governance has vanished;some of these areas are little more than astone’s throw away from Delhi.
There has, of course, been somesubsequent dilution of this war rhetoric,particularly after the Home Minister, onNovember 12, correctly dismissedOperation Green Hunt, the much talked
It is crucial for theGovernment, in confrontingthis strategy, not to fall into
the trap of focussinginordinately on ‘kills’. For
years now, the Maoists havehad a far greater capacity
for violence than they haveactually demonstrated.
”Villagers walk past thedeadbody of a CPI (M)supporter, allegedly killed byMaoists, in Dherua, located130 km from Kolkata
AFP
Though the enemy is itching to suppress our Party and movementby deploying a huge force in all our areas, he has severe difficulties
in implementing this at present. He has plans to increase the numberof Central Forces in the next few years, to set up and train specialforces like the Cobras, but in the immediate context it is quite difficultfor the Centre to send the forces required by each State to control ourmovement. Keeping this in mind, we have to further aggravate thesituation and create more difficulties to the enemy forces byexpanding our guerrilla war to new areas on the one hand andintensifying the mass resistance in the existing areas so as to dispersethe enemy forces over a sufficiently wider area; hence the foremosttask in every State is to intensify the war in their respective Stateswhile in areas of intense enemy repression there is need to expandthe area of struggle by proper planning by the concerned committees.Tactical counter-offensives should be stepped up and also taken up innew areas so as to divert a section of the enemy forces from attackingour guerrilla bases and organs of political power.
—Extracted from the circular released by the Politburo on June, 12, 2009
However, strong the enemy’s military power may be and howeverweak the people’s military power, by basing ourselves on the vast
backward countryside – the weakest position of the enemy – andrelying on the vast masses of the peasantry… and creatively followingthe flexible strategy and tactics of guerrilla struggle and theprotracted People’s War–as a full meal is eaten up mouthful bymouthful, exactly in the same way–by applying the best part of ourArmy… against different single parts of the enemy forces andfollowing the policy and tactics of sudden attack and annihilation, it isabsolutely possible to defeat the enemy forces and achieve victory forthe people in single battles. It is thus possible to increase thepeople’s armed forces, attain supremacy over the enemy’s forces anddefeat the enemy decisively.
—Extracted from the CPI-Maoist document on Strategy & Tactics
THE MAOIST MANIFESTO
Naxal.qxd:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/09 6:04 PM Page 3
DSINOVEMBER 2009
19
factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it ispeople, not things, that are decisive.”Importantly, as it builds up its mass basethrough secret organisations as well asover-ground united front activities, thestrategy of protracted conflict, as one groupof commentators notes, “Postpones thedecisive battle and calibrates its challengesto a calculus of risks–until the balance ofpower has shifted overwhelmingly to theside of the revolutionary forces.”
Balance of PowerThe balance of power—that is the key and variable that the Maoist seeks togradually and painstakingly transform.Today, the Maoist is under no illusion thathe is an equal to the State and to its armedmight (see box,pg 17).
It is crucial, in confronting this strategy,not to fall into the trap of focussinginordinately on ‘kills’. For years now, theMaoists have had a far greater capacity forviolence than they have actuallydemonstrated. In vast areas of theiractivity, they deliberately choose tocalibrate violence at low levels or to avoidarmed violence altogether, in order tobuild their mass base.
On the other hand, the State has oftenlooked upon the problem overwhelminglyin terms of fatality rates—and this lies atthe core of current and increasinglypanicked assessments. With fatalities inMaoist-related violence expected to risebeyond a thousand by the end of 2009 (atleast 749 had already been killed as of
October 6, 2009, according toSouth Asia Terrorism Portaldata), Chidambaram hasrightly observed that the CPI-Maoist had “improved uponits military wares andoperational tactics”.
Further he said, “The recent decisionstaken by its Politburo (referring to the June12 document) indicate that the CPI-Maoistis determined to expand its activities intonewer areas, on the one hand, andintensify its mass resistance in the existingareas, on the other. Violence, the mostvisible aspect of Naxal menace, has beenconsistently witnessed in about 400 police
station areas of around 90districts in 13 States… Withincreasing sophistication infabrication and deploymentof Improvised ExplosiveDevices (IED), it has inflicted
more casualties on the security forces...”With more and more SF personnel
and civilians being killed, there is inevi -table and increasing pressure to rack uphigher numbers of Maoist kills throughcomprehensive operations as currentlyenvisaged. Given current State capacitiesand levels of preparedness, as well as the Maoist strategy, any excessiveemphasis on simply neutralising Maoists
INTERNAL SECURITY
18
can only result in enormous inefficiencies inthe use of force—in other words, largenumbers of civilians and SF personnelkilled—without establishing any enduringgains. The existing balance of powercannot support operational dominance ofMaoists, even as they acquire increasingcapacities to inflict their disruptivedominance over widening areas.
The envisaged massive operations,reflecting little by way of plan or purposeare at best a faith in demonstrativeviolence, based on the hope that this willcow down the enemy. This is not a calculusof war; it is sheer fantasy. Even as colossaldeficits in leadership, manpower, training,
technology and counter-insurgencyorientation persist in the SFs—bothCentral and State—operations are beingintensified. The consequence can only bethat more SF personnel will lose their livesand the gains will remain dubious.
Abysmal Police-Population Ratio It is crucial to review the relevant Statecapacities in this context. First, the police-population ratios for the whole country inearly 2008 stood at a bare 125:100,000 inearly 2008. According to the PrimeMinister’s statement at the Conference ofDirectors General of Police on September15, 2009, this has now risen to about
145:100,000—still abysmally low, com -pared to the required ratios for peacetimepolicing at well over 200, and ranging insome western countries to over 500 per100,000. Moreover, this is a primitive, ill-trained and ill-equipped force and, in mostStates, it has little capacity or orientation todeal with full-blown insurgency. Worse,these numbers reflect sanctioned strengthsand not the actual strength available on theground. Thus, there was more than a 14percent deficit against a total sanctionedstrength in 2008.
The situation in the States worstaffected by Naxalism is infinitely worse.Bihar has a police:population ratio of just60 and a deficit of over 33 percent againstthe sanctioned strength. Orissa has asanctioned ratio of 97 with a deficit ofnearly 19 percent. In Jharkhand, the ratiois 136:100,000 and the deficit is 21 percent;Chhattisgarh has 128:100,000 with a deficitof 26 percent; Andhra Pradesh has96:100,000 with a deficit of 11 percent andWest Bengal has 92:100,000 showing adeficit of 25 percent.
The crisis of leadership is worse. At thecutting edge ranks of Deputy Superin -tendent of Police to Senior Superintendentof Police, deficits in Andhra stands at 19percent; in Bihar at 35 percent; inChhattisgarh at 28 percent; in Jharkhandat 51 percent; in Orissa at 34 percent and inWest Bengal at 25 percent. In the ‘fightingleadership’ ranks of Assistant Sub-Inspector to Inspector, deficits in Andhraare at 15 percent; Bihar has 39 percent;Chhattisgarh 41 percent; Jharkhand 18 percent; Orissa 34 percent and WestBengal 30 percent. Crucially, sanctionedstrengths in most leadership ranks areseverely inadequate and will becomeprogressively so as recruitment to thelower ranks accelerates.
The overall system does not appear tobe geared to respond to these pre -dicaments. In the worst case, for instance,Orissa has a current sanctioned strength ofas many as 207 officers in the IPS ranks, buthas just 84 officers currently available. TheState had requested the Centre to allocate atrifling eight IPS officers from thegraduating batch of 2009; the Centreallocated just four—a number that will besignificantly exceeded by those retiring thisyear and against the current deficit of asmany as 123 officers.
The State Government is, of course,doing its own substantial bit to add to thechaos. The State Services Examination forentry into the police at the rank of Deputy
The envisaged massive operations,
reflecting little by way of plan or purpose are
at best a faith indemonstrative violence,
based on the hope that this will cow
down the enemy. This is not a calculus of war;
it is sheer fantasy.
”
AFP
Indian security personnelsearch the scene of abomb blast in Bundu,avillage near Ranchi,Jharkhand, which killedfour civilians
Naxal.qxd:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/09 6:05 PM Page 5
DSINOVEMBER 2009
19
factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it ispeople, not things, that are decisive.”Importantly, as it builds up its mass basethrough secret organisations as well asover-ground united front activities, thestrategy of protracted conflict, as one groupof commentators notes, “Postpones thedecisive battle and calibrates its challengesto a calculus of risks–until the balance ofpower has shifted overwhelmingly to theside of the revolutionary forces.”
Balance of PowerThe balance of power—that is the key and variable that the Maoist seeks togradually and painstakingly transform.Today, the Maoist is under no illusion thathe is an equal to the State and to its armedmight (see box,pg 17).
It is crucial, in confronting this strategy,not to fall into the trap of focussinginordinately on ‘kills’. For years now, theMaoists have had a far greater capacity forviolence than they have actuallydemonstrated. In vast areas of theiractivity, they deliberately choose tocalibrate violence at low levels or to avoidarmed violence altogether, in order tobuild their mass base.
On the other hand, the State has oftenlooked upon the problem overwhelminglyin terms of fatality rates—and this lies atthe core of current and increasinglypanicked assessments. With fatalities inMaoist-related violence expected to risebeyond a thousand by the end of 2009 (atleast 749 had already been killed as of
October 6, 2009, according toSouth Asia Terrorism Portaldata), Chidambaram hasrightly observed that the CPI-Maoist had “improved uponits military wares andoperational tactics”.
Further he said, “The recent decisionstaken by its Politburo (referring to the June12 document) indicate that the CPI-Maoistis determined to expand its activities intonewer areas, on the one hand, andintensify its mass resistance in the existingareas, on the other. Violence, the mostvisible aspect of Naxal menace, has beenconsistently witnessed in about 400 police
station areas of around 90districts in 13 States… Withincreasing sophistication infabrication and deploymentof Improvised ExplosiveDevices (IED), it has inflicted
more casualties on the security forces...”With more and more SF personnel
and civilians being killed, there is inevi -table and increasing pressure to rack uphigher numbers of Maoist kills throughcomprehensive operations as currentlyenvisaged. Given current State capacitiesand levels of preparedness, as well as the Maoist strategy, any excessiveemphasis on simply neutralising Maoists
INTERNAL SECURITY
18
can only result in enormous inefficiencies inthe use of force—in other words, largenumbers of civilians and SF personnelkilled—without establishing any enduringgains. The existing balance of powercannot support operational dominance ofMaoists, even as they acquire increasingcapacities to inflict their disruptivedominance over widening areas.
The envisaged massive operations,reflecting little by way of plan or purposeare at best a faith in demonstrativeviolence, based on the hope that this willcow down the enemy. This is not a calculusof war; it is sheer fantasy. Even as colossaldeficits in leadership, manpower, training,
technology and counter-insurgencyorientation persist in the SFs—bothCentral and State—operations are beingintensified. The consequence can only bethat more SF personnel will lose their livesand the gains will remain dubious.
Abysmal Police-Population Ratio It is crucial to review the relevant Statecapacities in this context. First, the police-population ratios for the whole country inearly 2008 stood at a bare 125:100,000 inearly 2008. According to the PrimeMinister’s statement at the Conference ofDirectors General of Police on September15, 2009, this has now risen to about
145:100,000—still abysmally low, com -pared to the required ratios for peacetimepolicing at well over 200, and ranging insome western countries to over 500 per100,000. Moreover, this is a primitive, ill-trained and ill-equipped force and, in mostStates, it has little capacity or orientation todeal with full-blown insurgency. Worse,these numbers reflect sanctioned strengthsand not the actual strength available on theground. Thus, there was more than a 14percent deficit against a total sanctionedstrength in 2008.
The situation in the States worstaffected by Naxalism is infinitely worse.Bihar has a police:population ratio of just60 and a deficit of over 33 percent againstthe sanctioned strength. Orissa has asanctioned ratio of 97 with a deficit ofnearly 19 percent. In Jharkhand, the ratiois 136:100,000 and the deficit is 21 percent;Chhattisgarh has 128:100,000 with a deficitof 26 percent; Andhra Pradesh has96:100,000 with a deficit of 11 percent andWest Bengal has 92:100,000 showing adeficit of 25 percent.
The crisis of leadership is worse. At thecutting edge ranks of Deputy Superin -tendent of Police to Senior Superintendentof Police, deficits in Andhra stands at 19percent; in Bihar at 35 percent; inChhattisgarh at 28 percent; in Jharkhandat 51 percent; in Orissa at 34 percent and inWest Bengal at 25 percent. In the ‘fightingleadership’ ranks of Assistant Sub-Inspector to Inspector, deficits in Andhraare at 15 percent; Bihar has 39 percent;Chhattisgarh 41 percent; Jharkhand 18 percent; Orissa 34 percent and WestBengal 30 percent. Crucially, sanctionedstrengths in most leadership ranks areseverely inadequate and will becomeprogressively so as recruitment to thelower ranks accelerates.
The overall system does not appear tobe geared to respond to these pre -dicaments. In the worst case, for instance,Orissa has a current sanctioned strength ofas many as 207 officers in the IPS ranks, buthas just 84 officers currently available. TheState had requested the Centre to allocate atrifling eight IPS officers from thegraduating batch of 2009; the Centreallocated just four—a number that will besignificantly exceeded by those retiring thisyear and against the current deficit of asmany as 123 officers.
The State Government is, of course,doing its own substantial bit to add to thechaos. The State Services Examination forentry into the police at the rank of Deputy
The envisaged massive operations,
reflecting little by way of plan or purpose are
at best a faith indemonstrative violence,
based on the hope that this will cow
down the enemy. This is not a calculus of war;
it is sheer fantasy.
”A
FP
Indian security personnelsearch the scene of abomb blast in Bundu,avillage near Ranchi,Jharkhand, which killedfour civilians
Naxal.qxd:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/09 6:05 PM Page 5
Crucially, the other bogus strategy—bringing development and civiladministration to areas currently underMaoist disruptive dominance—also has nopossible future for comparable reasons.There has been a long-standing myth thatIndia suffers from too much governanceand that its bloated bureaucracy needs to berationalised and drastically reduced. This isanother bit of the most extraordinarilycontra-factual nonsense that has taken firmroot in the Indian imagination.
The reality is, that India’s administrativecapacities are collapsing, not justqualitatively—because of the rising incom -petence and corruption of the system—buteven in terms of minimal quantitativevariable. Thus the United States, with itsbelief that the best Government governsleast, has as many as 889 FederalGovernment employees per 100,000people. India’s Central Governmentemploys just 295 per 100,000 and a largeproportion of these are flogged in a numberof public sector enterprises and unitsentirely unconnected with core gover -nance. The railways, for instance, is thelargest single Central Governmentemployer, accounting for over 42 percentof the total pool. If railway employees wereto be excluded from the strength of CentralGovernment employees, this would leaveus with a ratio of just 171 CentralGovernment employees per 100,000.
Moving on to the State and local
Government employees, we find that, inthe US, these account for another 6,314 per100,000. In sharp contrast,Uttar Pradesh has352, Bihar 472,Orissa 1,007, Chhattisgarh1,067,Maharashtra 1,223;Punjab 1,383 andGujarat, 1,694. Worse, in India, theoverwhelming proportion of Governmentemployees is in the lower cadres, Class IIIand IV, as against the ‘thinking’ element ofthe State in its higher echelons. Even in thelatter category, qualitative profilesincluding modern and administrative skills,training and technological competence areseverely limited. The fact is there is no planor programme, given current resourceconfigurations that can address thecumulative developmental deficits in Indiain any timeframe that is relevant to counter-insurgency goals.
Given current State capacities, it mustbe clear,no proposed strategy can offer thepossibility of a decisive victory or evenenduring gains against the Maoists andcurrent pronouncements are intended, atbest, to project a political posture and, atworst, to massage the political vanity ofparticular leaders.
Clarity of purpose, the objective—andnot merely the visible impact of the use offorce—is integral to the success and eventhe potential of any strategy or plan. Whilethere is evidence of some crystallisation ofwill and an emerging consensus within thenational leadership, this is still periodicallyundermined by ill-conceived qualification.
Take, for instance, the nonsense spoutedfrom the highest offices in the land about theMaoists being ‘our people’. Is the law of theland only to be applied to foreigners? Arethieves and bandits, rapists and murdererslanguishing in India’s jails not our people?Should they, on this ground, be exemptedfrom responsibility for their transgressions?What provision of Constitution, law ormorality confers impunity on the Maoistssimply because they are our people?
But even as we regurgitate the vapidrhetoric of ‘developmental solutions’, ‘ourpeople’, ‘our children’, ‘our brothers and sisters’, there is an unconstrained andexcessive rhetoric of the use of force. SpecialForces are, for instance, being fashioned in the image of all manner of the predatorybeast—cobras, jaguars, grey hounds (the grey hounds are perhaps the mostbenign of these images, the species being notable more for speed than foraggression). But is this the image of the Statewe want to project––to our people, to ourenemies and to the world?
Two things are abundantly clear here.The first is that, given existing capacities,current strategies have little possibility ofinflicting decisive reversals on the Maoists.
Secondly, the Maoists have to be foughtand defeated. India’s strategic leadershiphas not displayed the wisdom to reconcilethese realities and to focus on the urgenttasks of capacity building at a pace and ascale that this conflict demands.
21
Super intendent of Policehas not been held since1976. Forty eight posts in the IPS ranks arereserved for promoteesfrom the State cadre—nota single officer is currentlyavailable for thesereserved posts. Man -power deficits are, of course, infinitelycompounded by extreme shortfalls intechnical, tech nological and trainingvariables, by irrational deployment offorces and by persistently imprudentpolitical inter ventions. The outcome is that current capacities of police forces inthe afflicted States are simply insufficientto design an effective response to theMaoist challenge.
Battalion ApproachThe Centre pretends to come to the rescue with its battalion approach and there is much talk of a massive deploy -ment of CPMFs. The reality is sobering.Prior to the much advertised currentmobilisation, the total allocation of CPMFs
in the Maoist-affectedareas was a mere 37battalions, yielding a totalof just 14,800 men on the ground. There is nowtalk of 70 battalions beingsent to these areas—though it is not clearwhether this will be an
additional 70 or an augmentation ofcurrent force to this number. We would, inother words, have either 70 or 107battalions allocated under the Centre’sprojected operational plans, that is, 28,000or 42,800 CPMF personnel for the six worstaffected States with a total area of 1.86million sq km and a total population ofover 446 million. This is like trying toirrigate the desert with dewdrops.
Of course, the Centre’s operationalstrategy will seek to concentrate this forcein areas of specific Maoist dominance,to recover these areas and then bring them under civil administration. But theMaoist will simply refuse to confront theState in its areas of strength and the Statecannot, given its existing capacities,
maintain a permanent saturation in therecovered areas. Where the State’sdeployments are heavy, the Maoists will simply walk away, as they did in Lalgarh. Where the State forces aredispersed or their pre sence is eventuallydiluted, they will be selectively targeted ina campaign of attrition.
From any realistic perspective, thecurrent intensive operations are conse -quently doomed. But how can you judgean operation that has no manifest strategicobjective? Recall the purposeless massingof troops under Operation Parakram,launched on December 16, 2001, after the Pakistan-backed terrorist attack onIndia’s Parliament. More than 680 soldierswere killed, without a single shot beingfired, by the time Operation Parakram wascalled off on October 16, 2002, with theunsupp orted claim that its undefinedobjectives had been achieved.
So, indeed, will be the case with thecurrent anti-Naxalite mobilisation. As theCheshire Cat said to Alice, “If you don’tknow where you are going, any road willtake you there.”
DSINOVEMBER 2009INTERNAL SECURITYGiven current
State capacities, no proposed strategy
can offer the possibility of a decisive victory
or even enduring gainsagainst the Maoists
Clarity of purpose and the objective is integral
to the success and even the potential of any strategy or plan.
”
20
(Above) Rescue workers inspectthe train carriages of the Tata-Bilaspur Passenger Expressderailed after Maoist rebels blewup the railway tracks in theSinghbhum area of Jharkhand(Right) Folk singer and Naxalleader Gaddar performs during aprotest in New Delhi
AFP
AFP
Naxal.qxd:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/09 6:06 PM Page 7
Crucially, the other bogus strategy—bringing development and civiladministration to areas currently underMaoist disruptive dominance—also has nopossible future for comparable reasons.There has been a long-standing myth thatIndia suffers from too much governanceand that its bloated bureaucracy needs to berationalised and drastically reduced. This isanother bit of the most extraordinarilycontra-factual nonsense that has taken firmroot in the Indian imagination.
The reality is, that India’s administrativecapacities are collapsing, not justqualitatively—because of the rising incom -petence and corruption of the system—buteven in terms of minimal quantitativevariable. Thus the United States, with itsbelief that the best Government governsleast, has as many as 889 FederalGovernment employees per 100,000people. India’s Central Governmentemploys just 295 per 100,000 and a largeproportion of these are flogged in a numberof public sector enterprises and unitsentirely unconnected with core gover -nance. The railways, for instance, is thelargest single Central Governmentemployer, accounting for over 42 percentof the total pool. If railway employees wereto be excluded from the strength of CentralGovernment employees, this would leaveus with a ratio of just 171 CentralGovernment employees per 100,000.
Moving on to the State and local
Government employees, we find that, inthe US, these account for another 6,314 per100,000. In sharp contrast,Uttar Pradesh has352, Bihar 472,Orissa 1,007, Chhattisgarh1,067,Maharashtra 1,223;Punjab 1,383 andGujarat, 1,694. Worse, in India, theoverwhelming proportion of Governmentemployees is in the lower cadres, Class IIIand IV, as against the ‘thinking’ element ofthe State in its higher echelons. Even in thelatter category, qualitative profilesincluding modern and administrative skills,training and technological competence areseverely limited. The fact is there is no planor programme, given current resourceconfigurations that can address thecumulative developmental deficits in Indiain any timeframe that is relevant to counter-insurgency goals.
Given current State capacities, it mustbe clear,no proposed strategy can offer thepossibility of a decisive victory or evenenduring gains against the Maoists andcurrent pronouncements are intended, atbest, to project a political posture and, atworst, to massage the political vanity ofparticular leaders.
Clarity of purpose, the objective—andnot merely the visible impact of the use offorce—is integral to the success and eventhe potential of any strategy or plan. Whilethere is evidence of some crystallisation ofwill and an emerging consensus within thenational leadership, this is still periodicallyundermined by ill-conceived qualification.
Take, for instance, the nonsense spoutedfrom the highest offices in the land about theMaoists being ‘our people’. Is the law of theland only to be applied to foreigners? Arethieves and bandits, rapists and murdererslanguishing in India’s jails not our people?Should they, on this ground, be exemptedfrom responsibility for their transgressions?What provision of Constitution, law ormorality confers impunity on the Maoistssimply because they are our people?
But even as we regurgitate the vapidrhetoric of ‘developmental solutions’, ‘ourpeople’, ‘our children’, ‘our brothers and sisters’, there is an unconstrained andexcessive rhetoric of the use of force. SpecialForces are, for instance, being fashioned in the image of all manner of the predatorybeast—cobras, jaguars, grey hounds (the grey hounds are perhaps the mostbenign of these images, the species being notable more for speed than foraggression). But is this the image of the Statewe want to project––to our people, to ourenemies and to the world?
Two things are abundantly clear here.The first is that, given existing capacities,current strategies have little possibility ofinflicting decisive reversals on the Maoists.
Secondly, the Maoists have to be foughtand defeated. India’s strategic leadershiphas not displayed the wisdom to reconcilethese realities and to focus on the urgenttasks of capacity building at a pace and ascale that this conflict demands.
21
Super intendent of Policehas not been held since1976. Forty eight posts in the IPS ranks arereserved for promoteesfrom the State cadre—nota single officer is currentlyavailable for thesereserved posts. Man -power deficits are, of course, infinitelycompounded by extreme shortfalls intechnical, tech nological and trainingvariables, by irrational deployment offorces and by persistently imprudentpolitical inter ventions. The outcome is that current capacities of police forces inthe afflicted States are simply insufficientto design an effective response to theMaoist challenge.
Battalion ApproachThe Centre pretends to come to the rescue with its battalion approach and there is much talk of a massive deploy -ment of CPMFs. The reality is sobering.Prior to the much advertised currentmobilisation, the total allocation of CPMFs
in the Maoist-affectedareas was a mere 37battalions, yielding a totalof just 14,800 men on the ground. There is nowtalk of 70 battalions beingsent to these areas—though it is not clearwhether this will be an
additional 70 or an augmentation ofcurrent force to this number. We would, inother words, have either 70 or 107battalions allocated under the Centre’sprojected operational plans, that is, 28,000or 42,800 CPMF personnel for the six worstaffected States with a total area of 1.86million sq km and a total population ofover 446 million. This is like trying toirrigate the desert with dewdrops.
Of course, the Centre’s operationalstrategy will seek to concentrate this forcein areas of specific Maoist dominance,to recover these areas and then bring them under civil administration. But theMaoist will simply refuse to confront theState in its areas of strength and the Statecannot, given its existing capacities,
maintain a permanent saturation in therecovered areas. Where the State’sdeployments are heavy, the Maoists will simply walk away, as they did in Lalgarh. Where the State forces aredispersed or their pre sence is eventuallydiluted, they will be selectively targeted ina campaign of attrition.
From any realistic perspective, thecurrent intensive operations are conse -quently doomed. But how can you judgean operation that has no manifest strategicobjective? Recall the purposeless massingof troops under Operation Parakram,launched on December 16, 2001, after the Pakistan-backed terrorist attack onIndia’s Parliament. More than 680 soldierswere killed, without a single shot beingfired, by the time Operation Parakram wascalled off on October 16, 2002, with theunsupp orted claim that its undefinedobjectives had been achieved.
So, indeed, will be the case with thecurrent anti-Naxalite mobilisation. As theCheshire Cat said to Alice, “If you don’tknow where you are going, any road willtake you there.”
DSINOVEMBER 2009INTERNAL SECURITYGiven current
State capacities, no proposed strategy
can offer the possibility of a decisive victory
or even enduring gainsagainst the Maoists
Clarity of purpose and the objective is integral
to the success and even the potential of any strategy or plan.
”
20
(Above) Rescue workers inspectthe train carriages of the Tata-Bilaspur Passenger Expressderailed after Maoist rebels blewup the railway tracks in theSinghbhum area of Jharkhand(Right) Folk singer and Naxalleader Gaddar performs during aprotest in New Delhi
AFP
AFP
Naxal.qxd:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/09 6:06 PM Page 7
22 23
THE SMALL ARMS ARSENAL
Cadres of the UnitedLiberation Front of Assam
(ULFA) stand guard at ahideout camp in Tinsukia
district in Assam
GURMEET KANWAL
MONIKA CHANSORIA
The increased presence of small arms has fuelledmilitant and insurgency movements across South Asia
DSINOVEMBER 2009WEAPONS
South Asia, arguably the second mostdangerous global hotspot after WestAsia,with the intractable and sprea -
ding radical extremism in the Af-Pak area, israpidly nudging towards number oneposition. One of the major reasons for thisdubious distinction has been the large-scaleproliferation and easy availability of smallarms and light weapons (SALW). In SouthAsian alone, the burgeoning trade in SALW,mostly illicit, has spawned more than 250militant and insurgency move ments inwhich small arms constitute the core wea -pons in the arsenal of extremist elements.
According to available UN estimates,there are approximately 640 million smallarms across the world,of which,only about226 million are in the possession of armedforces and law enforcing agencies. India,with a small arms arsenal estimated at 6.3million, stands sixth in the global ranking.About one percent of the global holdings,that is,6.4 million weapons—nearly the sizeof India’s arsenal—are believed to be in thehands of militants, insurgents, terroristgroups and networks and other non-Stateactors. The extent of SALW can be gaugedfrom the fact that at least 22 UNpeacekeeping and rescue missions havebeen launched in scenarios where the
foremost weapons of war used by theopposing forces are essentially SALW.
Indeed, the presence of SALW hasescalated ever since the end of the Cold War,when the era of major inter-State wars,normally classified as conventional conflict,has been gradually drawing to a close. Itsplace was taken by intra-State sub-conventional conflict in which the intensityof conflict and the levels of violence are lowbut violence is sustained over a much longertime period. Indeed, it has been the impact ofpersonal and man-portable weapons whichbecame the primary reason for theexpansion of the definition of “small arms”by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation(NATO) nearly three decades ago. NATO re-classified small arms and light weapons as“all crew-portable direct fire weapons of acalibre less than 50 mm… (including thosewith) a secondary capability to defeat lightarmour and helicopters.”
South Asian EpicentreAs the epicentre of diverse armed conflicts,ranging from asymmetric warfare, ethnicconflicts to separatist movements, SouthAsia has witnessed an exponentialproliferation of SALW in recent decades.The Indian Subcontinent’s susceptibility tothis increase can be attributed to the fact thatSALW are the most readily available optionfor non-State actors to engage in intra-Stateasymmetric warfare and State-sponsoredproxy wars. Additionally, technologicalsophistication has made SALW increasinglymore compact and lighter also addingominously to their firepower.
When the rapid-fire Soviet Kalashnikovand the US M-16 variety of automaticassault rifles and hand grenades,which hadconstituted the standard inventory of
KEY POINTSn There are approximately 640 millionsmall arms across the world, of which,only about 226 million are in thepossession of the armed forces and lawenforcing agencies.n Chinese weapons gained immensepopularity among insurgent groups asthey are competitively priced.
AFP
Small Arms 5 pages.qxd:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/09 10:52 AM Page 1
22 23
THE SMALL ARMS ARSENAL
Cadres of the UnitedLiberation Front of Assam
(ULFA) stand guard at ahideout camp in Tinsukia
district in Assam
GURMEET KANWAL
MONIKA CHANSORIA
The increased presence of small arms has fuelledmilitant and insurgency movements across South Asia
DSINOVEMBER 2009WEAPONS
South Asia, arguably the second mostdangerous global hotspot after WestAsia,with the intractable and sprea -
ding radical extremism in the Af-Pak area, israpidly nudging towards number oneposition. One of the major reasons for thisdubious distinction has been the large-scaleproliferation and easy availability of smallarms and light weapons (SALW). In SouthAsian alone, the burgeoning trade in SALW,mostly illicit, has spawned more than 250militant and insurgency move ments inwhich small arms constitute the core wea -pons in the arsenal of extremist elements.
According to available UN estimates,there are approximately 640 million smallarms across the world,of which,only about226 million are in the possession of armedforces and law enforcing agencies. India,with a small arms arsenal estimated at 6.3million, stands sixth in the global ranking.About one percent of the global holdings,that is,6.4 million weapons—nearly the sizeof India’s arsenal—are believed to be in thehands of militants, insurgents, terroristgroups and networks and other non-Stateactors. The extent of SALW can be gaugedfrom the fact that at least 22 UNpeacekeeping and rescue missions havebeen launched in scenarios where the
foremost weapons of war used by theopposing forces are essentially SALW.
Indeed, the presence of SALW hasescalated ever since the end of the Cold War,when the era of major inter-State wars,normally classified as conventional conflict,has been gradually drawing to a close. Itsplace was taken by intra-State sub-conventional conflict in which the intensityof conflict and the levels of violence are lowbut violence is sustained over a much longertime period. Indeed, it has been the impact ofpersonal and man-portable weapons whichbecame the primary reason for theexpansion of the definition of “small arms”by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation(NATO) nearly three decades ago. NATO re-classified small arms and light weapons as“all crew-portable direct fire weapons of acalibre less than 50 mm… (including thosewith) a secondary capability to defeat lightarmour and helicopters.”
South Asian EpicentreAs the epicentre of diverse armed conflicts,ranging from asymmetric warfare, ethnicconflicts to separatist movements, SouthAsia has witnessed an exponentialproliferation of SALW in recent decades.The Indian Subcontinent’s susceptibility tothis increase can be attributed to the fact thatSALW are the most readily available optionfor non-State actors to engage in intra-Stateasymmetric warfare and State-sponsoredproxy wars. Additionally, technologicalsophistication has made SALW increasinglymore compact and lighter also addingominously to their firepower.
When the rapid-fire Soviet Kalashnikovand the US M-16 variety of automaticassault rifles and hand grenades,which hadconstituted the standard inventory of
KEY POINTSn There are approximately 640 millionsmall arms across the world, of which,only about 226 million are in thepossession of the armed forces and lawenforcing agencies.n Chinese weapons gained immensepopularity among insurgent groups asthey are competitively priced.
AFP
Small Arms 5 pages.qxd:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/09 10:52 AM Page 1
DSINOVEMBER 2009
25
soldiers for several decades, came into thehands of non-State actors, their ability toreduce the asymmetry with that of thesecurity forces increased manifold. In fact,it gave the extremists an advantage inconducting hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.
Though India itself is far being from anisland of calm, it is, more worryingly,hemmed in by an arc of instability. Festeringinsurgencies in surrounding countries haveadded to India’s woes. Ethnic insurgentgroups from India’s Northeastern Stateshave been seeking sanctuaries both inMyanmar and Bangladesh. In fact,Myanmar plays an unwilling host to asmany as 33 armed ethnic insurgent groups.Its Army has been fighting these groups formany decades and has cooperated with theIndian Army in launching joint operations todestroy sanctuaries and militant basesacross India’s border.
Unaccounted FirearmsThese countries potentially form a valuablesource of SALW. After the forma tion ofBangladesh, many firearms used duringthat war were never fully accounted for andcontinued to remain in circulation. Accordingto Major General SyedMuha mmad Ibrahim(retd.) from the Bang -la desh Army, as manyas 128 crime syndicatesin his country wereusing 400,000 illegalSALW. In fact, gun-related viol ence facilitated the spread oforganised crime, undermined the region’sfragile democratic politics and fuelledsectarian violence.
The insurgency in the Chittagong HillTracts over the past few decades furtheradded to the demand for small arms. Theeasy opportunity for money-launderingresulted in the emergence of Bangladesh asthe main transit point for at least five majormilitant groups that are active in North eastIndia,especially the United Liberation Frontof Assam (ULFA). It is also a convenienttransit route for the flow of illegal weaponsfrom Southeast Asia.
Nepal,which was earlier another conduitfor small arms proliferation in South Asia,has now become an end user itself as theMaoists’People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is abig buyer of SALW. The Maoist insurgencylaunched in 1996 spurred the spread of smallarms in Nepal. The PLA guerrillassupplemented their modest arsenal withhundreds of weapons seized in raids onpolice outposts. The number of weapons in
24
WEAPONSthe Terai region along the border with Indiaalso gradually increased and some of thesequite naturally found their way across theopen and porous border into UP and Bihar.The employed impro vised explosive devices(IEDs) planted by the Maoists were based onexplosives stolen from road constructionprojects.
In the case of Sri Lanka, the civil warbetween the Liberation Tigers of TamilEelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan armedforces drove the small arms predicament ofthe island nation. Widespread proliferationof small arms began in 1987. Soon the LTTEmanaged to weave an international net -work to procure SALW through its sympa -thisers in the diaspora. The LTTE also addedto its arsenal by seizing stockpiles from theSri Lankan Army. It has been estimated thatas much as 80 percent of LTTE’s arsenalcame from the Sri Lankan Force’s stocks.
In the mid-1980s, the LTTE diversified itsarms acquisition so as to exploit all possiblesources and routes. Its agents begannetworking with the arms dealers inSoutheast Asia. They used many small ports and jetties in Myanmar for receivingand for the trans-shipment of weapons.Chinese AK-56, US M-16s, LMGs,MMGs,Singapore-made assault rifles and 2.5-inchmortars dominated the LTTE munitionsstores. The LTTE soon established linkageswith groups inimical to Indian security andbecame a leading contributor to small armsproliferation in India. Also,LTTE operationsin Myanmar received increased attentiononce the going got tough for them in TamilNadu. The LTTE is reported to haveestablished a naval base in Twante. Phuket inThailand became a crucial exit point and anarms bazaar for Chinese small arms.
Following the Russian invasion ofAfghanistan and the consequent cross-border flow of weapons, an estimated 30 percent of the SALW provided by the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI to the Afghanresistance were diverted for other purposes.During 1980-84, old Chinese made riflesbegan to replace Kalashnikovs in Afgha -nistan. With more than 50-70 trucks movingevery day,around 65,000 tonnes of weaponspassed through the northern areas. Mean -while, the circulation of Kalashnikov riflesincreased manifold in Pakistan as itsponsored, armed, equipped and trainedthe Taliban to take over in Kabul.
The gun culture had long existed in the North-West Frontier Provience (NWFP)and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas(FATA) and the adjacent tribal areas with most weapons coming in from Darra
Adamkhel—an area that boasts of having2,600 arms shops and five gun factories.Approximately, seven million small armsstoked the embers of the Afghan conflict.
China as a Key SupplierThe Chinese angle to the SALWproliferation in South Asia cannot beignored. Chinese weapons have gainedimmense popularity among the insurgentgroups in the region as they werecompetitively priced and low-level officialsoffered counter-trade agreements. TheChinese weapons pipeline continued tofeed the Afghan conflict and permeatedinto Myanmar’s underground marketsalong the Thai border. Beginning with theType 56 rifle, China produced and offeredfor sale five different varieties of rifles (Type56, 68, 79, 81 and 5.56 Type CQ), allied lightmachine guns and sub-machine guns.China also became the prime officialsupplier to Sri Lanka, Myanmar andPakistan (including anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons). Significantly, large numbersof weapons of Chinese origin have beenseized in Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh.
The Chinese have also supplied smallarms to Indian insurgent groups inManipur,Mizoram,Nagaland and Tripurafor many years up to the late-1970s.Thereafter,while Chinese SALW continuedto be recovered by the Indian SecurityForces in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and inthe Northeastern States, their origin couldnot be pinpointed directly to officialChinese sources as these came in mostlythrough the Thailand-Southeast Asianroute. Whether this is a deliberate attemptby the Chinese Government or the PLA todestabilise India or it can be attributed tocorruption at lower levels,has not been easyto be ascertain.
In a statement with far reachingconsequences, India’s Home Secretary,G K Pillai, said in a seminar on November 8,2009, that the Maoists in India werereceiving small arms from China. “Chineseare big suppliers of small arms,” Pillaiasserted. Earlier, Union Home Minister PChidambaram had also said in an interviewin October that the Maoists were acquiringweapons through Bangladesh, Myanmarand possibly Nepal since the Indo-Nepal
Source: South Asia's Fractured Frontier: Armed Conflict, Narcotics and Small Arms Proliferation in India's Northeast/ Binalakshmi Nepram
MA
P: A
RC
HA
NA
ARMS ROUTEl With 50-70 trucks crossing theNorthern areas (Af-Pak), around 65,000tonnes of weapons pass through thisarea dailyl Nepal has now become an end user itself as the Maoists’ People’sLiberation Army is a big buyer of SmallArms and Light Weapons (SALW).l Phuket in Thailand has became acrucial exit point and an arms bazaarfor Chinese small arms.
AFP
Recovered arms,belong ing to rebels
from JammuKashmir Freedom
Force, beingdisplayed at an
Indian Army camp
Small Arms 5 pages.qxd:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/09 10:52 AM Page 3
DSINOVEMBER 2009
25
soldiers for several decades, came into thehands of non-State actors, their ability toreduce the asymmetry with that of thesecurity forces increased manifold. In fact,it gave the extremists an advantage inconducting hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.
Though India itself is far being from anisland of calm, it is, more worryingly,hemmed in by an arc of instability. Festeringinsurgencies in surrounding countries haveadded to India’s woes. Ethnic insurgentgroups from India’s Northeastern Stateshave been seeking sanctuaries both inMyanmar and Bangladesh. In fact,Myanmar plays an unwilling host to asmany as 33 armed ethnic insurgent groups.Its Army has been fighting these groups formany decades and has cooperated with theIndian Army in launching joint operations todestroy sanctuaries and militant basesacross India’s border.
Unaccounted FirearmsThese countries potentially form a valuablesource of SALW. After the forma tion ofBangladesh, many firearms used duringthat war were never fully accounted for andcontinued to remain in circulation. Accordingto Major General SyedMuha mmad Ibrahim(retd.) from the Bang -la desh Army, as manyas 128 crime syndicatesin his country wereusing 400,000 illegalSALW. In fact, gun-related viol ence facilitated the spread oforganised crime, undermined the region’sfragile democratic politics and fuelledsectarian violence.
The insurgency in the Chittagong HillTracts over the past few decades furtheradded to the demand for small arms. Theeasy opportunity for money-launderingresulted in the emergence of Bangladesh asthe main transit point for at least five majormilitant groups that are active in North eastIndia,especially the United Liberation Frontof Assam (ULFA). It is also a convenienttransit route for the flow of illegal weaponsfrom Southeast Asia.
Nepal,which was earlier another conduitfor small arms proliferation in South Asia,has now become an end user itself as theMaoists’People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is abig buyer of SALW. The Maoist insurgencylaunched in 1996 spurred the spread of smallarms in Nepal. The PLA guerrillassupplemented their modest arsenal withhundreds of weapons seized in raids onpolice outposts. The number of weapons in
24
WEAPONSthe Terai region along the border with Indiaalso gradually increased and some of thesequite naturally found their way across theopen and porous border into UP and Bihar.The employed impro vised explosive devices(IEDs) planted by the Maoists were based onexplosives stolen from road constructionprojects.
In the case of Sri Lanka, the civil warbetween the Liberation Tigers of TamilEelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan armedforces drove the small arms predicament ofthe island nation. Widespread proliferationof small arms began in 1987. Soon the LTTEmanaged to weave an international net -work to procure SALW through its sympa -thisers in the diaspora. The LTTE also addedto its arsenal by seizing stockpiles from theSri Lankan Army. It has been estimated thatas much as 80 percent of LTTE’s arsenalcame from the Sri Lankan Force’s stocks.
In the mid-1980s, the LTTE diversified itsarms acquisition so as to exploit all possiblesources and routes. Its agents begannetworking with the arms dealers inSoutheast Asia. They used many small ports and jetties in Myanmar for receivingand for the trans-shipment of weapons.Chinese AK-56, US M-16s, LMGs,MMGs,Singapore-made assault rifles and 2.5-inchmortars dominated the LTTE munitionsstores. The LTTE soon established linkageswith groups inimical to Indian security andbecame a leading contributor to small armsproliferation in India. Also,LTTE operationsin Myanmar received increased attentiononce the going got tough for them in TamilNadu. The LTTE is reported to haveestablished a naval base in Twante. Phuket inThailand became a crucial exit point and anarms bazaar for Chinese small arms.
Following the Russian invasion ofAfghanistan and the consequent cross-border flow of weapons, an estimated 30 percent of the SALW provided by the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI to the Afghanresistance were diverted for other purposes.During 1980-84, old Chinese made riflesbegan to replace Kalashnikovs in Afgha -nistan. With more than 50-70 trucks movingevery day,around 65,000 tonnes of weaponspassed through the northern areas. Mean -while, the circulation of Kalashnikov riflesincreased manifold in Pakistan as itsponsored, armed, equipped and trainedthe Taliban to take over in Kabul.
The gun culture had long existed in the North-West Frontier Provience (NWFP)and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas(FATA) and the adjacent tribal areas with most weapons coming in from Darra
Adamkhel—an area that boasts of having2,600 arms shops and five gun factories.Approximately, seven million small armsstoked the embers of the Afghan conflict.
China as a Key SupplierThe Chinese angle to the SALWproliferation in South Asia cannot beignored. Chinese weapons have gainedimmense popularity among the insurgentgroups in the region as they werecompetitively priced and low-level officialsoffered counter-trade agreements. TheChinese weapons pipeline continued tofeed the Afghan conflict and permeatedinto Myanmar’s underground marketsalong the Thai border. Beginning with theType 56 rifle, China produced and offeredfor sale five different varieties of rifles (Type56, 68, 79, 81 and 5.56 Type CQ), allied lightmachine guns and sub-machine guns.China also became the prime officialsupplier to Sri Lanka, Myanmar andPakistan (including anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons). Significantly, large numbersof weapons of Chinese origin have beenseized in Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh.
The Chinese have also supplied smallarms to Indian insurgent groups inManipur,Mizoram,Nagaland and Tripurafor many years up to the late-1970s.Thereafter,while Chinese SALW continuedto be recovered by the Indian SecurityForces in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and inthe Northeastern States, their origin couldnot be pinpointed directly to officialChinese sources as these came in mostlythrough the Thailand-Southeast Asianroute. Whether this is a deliberate attemptby the Chinese Government or the PLA todestabilise India or it can be attributed tocorruption at lower levels,has not been easyto be ascertain.
In a statement with far reachingconsequences, India’s Home Secretary,G K Pillai, said in a seminar on November 8,2009, that the Maoists in India werereceiving small arms from China. “Chineseare big suppliers of small arms,” Pillaiasserted. Earlier, Union Home Minister PChidambaram had also said in an interviewin October that the Maoists were acquiringweapons through Bangladesh, Myanmarand possibly Nepal since the Indo-Nepal
Source: South Asia's Fractured Frontier: Armed Conflict, Narcotics and Small Arms Proliferation in India's Northeast/ Binalakshmi Nepram
MA
P: A
RC
HA
NA
ARMS ROUTEl With 50-70 trucks crossing theNorthern areas (Af-Pak), around 65,000tonnes of weapons pass through thisarea dailyl Nepal has now become an end user itself as the Maoists’ People’sLiberation Army is a big buyer of SmallArms and Light Weapons (SALW).l Phuket in Thailand has became acrucial exit point and an arms bazaarfor Chinese small arms.
AFP
Recovered arms,belong ing to rebels
from JammuKashmir Freedom
Force, beingdisplayed at an
Indian Army camp
Small Arms 5 pages.qxd:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/09 10:52 AM Page 3
26
border is porous. Theeasy availability ofSALW further fuelstheir dem and as Indiacontinues to counterlong drawn-out insurgencies and a ‘proxywar’ waged through State-sponsoredterrorism by a perfidious neighbour.
The Numbers Add up in IndiaIndia has witnessed around 152 militantmovements since Independence. Of these,65 are believed to be active in one form orthe other. It is widely recognised thatPakistan is still the primary source of smallarms that are India bound, using SALW aspolitical and military tools against NewDelhi. Islamabad facilitates smuggling ofSALW both through sea and land routes toISI-supported terrorist organisations andsleeper cells across India. The funding for SALW is organised throughhawala channels from private sources—fromother countries including Saudi Arabia, viaBangladesh and Nepal—through crime and extortion and from religious institutionsfor social purposes. The transfer of smallarms takes place through formal andclandestine routes and through legal andblack/grey markets.
Since 1989-90, Indian Security Forceshave seized huge stocks of arms andammunition along the LoC in J&K alone.Between 1990 and 2005, as many as 28,000assault rifles of the AK-47 series; 1,300machine guns; 2,000 rocket launchers;365 sniper rifles; 10,000 assorted pistols;
63,000 hand grenades; 7million rounds of ammu -nition; 6,200 land minesand IEDs and 37,000 kg ofexplosives have been
recovered from various hideouts in J&Kduring counter-proxy war operations. Thisdespite the fact that there are no ordnancefactories in J&K.
India’s Northeastern States, too, havewitnessed insurgency since the past fourdecades owing to a well organised networkfor smuggling weapons. The NationalSocialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN, IMand K groups), introduced the UnitedLiberation Front of Assam (ULFA) to theKachins, a resilient tribe from Myanmar. Infact, it was widely reported in 1986 thatParesh Baruah, a top commander of theULFA, had travelled through north-westMyanmar and paid the Kachins asubstantial sum of money to begin trainingand to arrange for the supply of weaponsfrom the arms bazaars in Thailand andsmuggling networks operating on theMyanmar-China route.
As camps in the Chittagong area inBangladesh became operational by 1989,they facilitated entry into Assam throughthe Cachar and Barrack Valley corridors. Bythe mid-1990s, the Bangladesh connectionrevealed its real potential. Using Bangladeshas an exit point, the ULFA managed toestablish contact with arms dealers inThailand and as far as Romania. This waspossibly the beginning of contacts with armsdealers in Cambodia from whom ULFA
started accessing huge numbers ofweapons. It paid for these in hard currencyprimarily banked in Nepal. At Cox’s Bazaar,another prominent transit route forweapons, ULFA cadres coordinated theirarms acquisition and operational strategieswith the NSCN and other insurgent groupsthat had bases in the area.
With left wing extremism on theascendant across central India and no endin sight to long-standing insurgencies in J&Kand the Northeastern States, theproliferation of small arms has become amajor security challenge for India.
In this dial-an-AK-47 age, those who havethe money can acquire SALW quite easilyfrom unscrupulous wheeler-dealers acrossthe globe. When indigenously producedcountry-made pistols and revolvers areadded to the clandestinely acquired smallarms’ numbers, India emerges as a leadinglight weapons.
The Government of India’s intelligenceagencies must pool in their resources andwork in tandem with the State Govern -ments and their agencies to identify thesources, the funding channels and routes ofsmall arms proliferation so as tosystematically bring this growing menace toan end through political, diplomatic and,where necessary,military means. Also, Indiamust work towards nudging the SAARCcountries and those in its extendedneighbourhood towards endorsing theArms Trade Treaty at the UN so as to be ableto more comprehensively confront thismounting challenge.
DSINOVEMBER 2009WEAPONS
n Kalashnikov’s design has spawned manycopies, such as the Chinese type 56n There are 50-70 million AK-47sworldwiden At least 82 Governments include them intheir military armouriesn The AK-47 is produced in at least 14countries, including Albania, Bulgaria,China, Germany, Egypt, Hungary, India,Iraq, North Korea, Poland, Romania,Russia, Serbia and Venezuelan The average price of the weapon isabout $400, though in some Africancountries they are sold for as low as $12
THE AK-47 LEGEND
Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor ofthe AK-47, shakes hand with RussianPresident Dmitry Medvedev on his90th birthday recently
KILLER STATS
AFP
“I would prefer to have invented amachine that people could use and thatwould help farmers with their work -forexample a lawnmower.”
–Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47 (2002)
Small Arms 5 pages.qxd:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/09 6:12 PM Page 5
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Kargil redux
A Pakistani airman’s postmortem of the war that was
As the U.S. President Barack Obamareturned from his exhaustive Asiantour and prepared to meet Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh in November, aprestigious Washington think tank pre -dicted that India will in a few decades be theworld’s third largest economy laggingbehind only China and the United States.
Pointing to a rapidly changing globalredistribution of power, the CarnegieEndowment for International Peace said
that the combined Gross Domestic Productof China, the United States and India will“be 70 percent more than that of the other G 20 countries combined” by the middle ofthis century. The report added that “inChina and India alone, the GDP ispredicted to increase by nearly $ 60trillion—the current world GDP” over thenext four decades.
Explaining the resulting implications forthe hierarchy of international powers, theCarnegie report said, “After nearly acentury as the world’s pre-eminenteconomic power, the United States isprojected to relinquish this title to China in2032”. The report concludes that while theUnited States might remain the pre-eminent power on the world stage; but it will have to share power with a risingChina and make some space for anemerging India.
It appears that we don’t have to wait fordecades to see the power play betweenWashington,Beijing and Delhi. The signs ofa new triangular dynamic between theUnited States and the two Asian giants havecome into view over the last few months.
When he travelled to Asia in mid-November, Obama, representing aweakened America owing a mountain ofdebt to Beijing, could not but defer to a
Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh is accompaniedby U.S President Barack Obamaas he walks the red carpet duringhis recent State visit to America
Signs of a new triangular diplomacy between the U.S.and India and China have become visible
KEY POINTSn President Obama representing aneconomically shattered America defersto China at India’s cost.n By giving a monitoring role to China inSouth Asia Obama has set of a stormof protest in India.n On his recent Washington visit PrimeMinister Manmohan Singh lays out hisown preception of Asia.
As the U.S. President Barack Obamareturned from his exhaustive Asiantour and prepared to meet Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh in November, aprestigious Washington think tank pre -dicted that India will in a few decades be theworld’s third largest economy laggingbehind only China and the United States.
Pointing to a rapidly changing globalredistribution of power, the CarnegieEndowment for International Peace said
that the combined Gross Domestic Productof China, the United States and India will“be 70 percent more than that of the other G 20 countries combined” by the middle ofthis century. The report added that “inChina and India alone, the GDP ispredicted to increase by nearly $ 60trillion—the current world GDP” over thenext four decades.
Explaining the resulting implications forthe hierarchy of international powers, theCarnegie report said, “After nearly acentury as the world’s pre-eminenteconomic power, the United States isprojected to relinquish this title to China in2032”. The report concludes that while theUnited States might remain the pre-eminent power on the world stage; but it will have to share power with a risingChina and make some space for anemerging India.
It appears that we don’t have to wait fordecades to see the power play betweenWashington,Beijing and Delhi. The signs ofa new triangular dynamic between theUnited States and the two Asian giants havecome into view over the last few months.
When he travelled to Asia in mid-November, Obama, representing aweakened America owing a mountain ofdebt to Beijing, could not but defer to a
Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh is accompaniedby U.S President Barack Obamaas he walks the red carpet duringhis recent State visit to America
Signs of a new triangular diplomacy between the U.S.and India and China have become visible
KEY POINTSn President Obama representing aneconomically shattered America defersto China at India’s cost.n By giving a monitoring role to China inSouth Asia Obama has set of a stormof protest in India.n On his recent Washington visit PrimeMinister Manmohan Singh lays out hisown preception of Asia.
rising China. The talk of a Group of Two—a global condominium between China andthe United States—has gained ground inrecent months although Beijing has neverreally endorsed the notion.
Storm of ProtestFor India, the talk of a condominiumseemed to become a reality when it sawObama’s formulations about China’s rolein South Asia at the end of his summit withPresident Hu Jintao. The expansive jointstatement issued in Beijing by PresidentsObama and Hu Jintao declared that“China and the United States are ready tostrengthen communication, dialogue andcooperation on issues related to South Asiaand work together to promote peace,stability and development in that region.”
This set off a storm of protest in India,which sees its relations with its SouthAsian neighbours in a seemingly separatecategory. Rejecting the notion of a Sino-U.S. condominium over theSubcontinent, the Indian foreign ministryinsisted that, “A third-country role cannotbe envisaged nor is it necessary” in theresolution of its disputes with Pakistan.The Chinese foreign office moved inquickly to suggest that it had no intentionof mediating between India and Pakistan
and that the Kashmir dispute was abilateral one between the two South Asiannations. As the U.S. media amplified the Indian concerns, it was quite clear thatthe issue would figure prominentlyduring Prime Minister’s Singh’s visit to Washington in late November. ForDelhi, Obama’s statements in Beijingreinforced the concern that Washingtonwas now moving towards a “China-first”strategy in Asia.
This was in total contrast to George W.Bush’s strategy in Asia. Bush’s premise
was that helping India’s rise will not onlyhelp limit Beijing’s expanding influence inAsia but also shift the global balance ofpower in favour of ‘freedom’. Changingthis premise would naturally leave littleroom for building a strategic partnershipbetween Washington and Delhi.
A day before his meeting with Obama,Dr. Singh laid out his own perceptions ofAsia. Addressing the Council on ForeignRelations in Washington, Singh declaredthat Delhi and Washington must “worktogether with other countries in the region
to create an open and inclusive regionalarchitecture in the Asia-Pacific”.
Dr. Singh emphasised that the rise ofChina is a reality and that the world mustcome to terms with it. He argued that theanswer lies in engagement and coope -ration with Beijing. “We have tried toengage China and they are one of ourmajor trading partners. We have borderdisputes we are trying to solve that andboth have agreed that while that ispending we should keep the peace,” thePrime Minister said.
DIPLOMACY
At the same time, Singh introduced anuance into the thinking about China. Onthe one hand,he insisted that the world has astake in ensuring that the rise of China mustbe peaceful. On the other, he publiclywondered about his inability to under standChina’s new assertiveness on the borderwith India.
Although China figured prominently inhis talks with Obama,Dr. Singh under linedthat India has no desire to either seek U.S.support against China or contest the termsof Sino-American cooperation. He was ever
so subtle in suggesting that he might playthe U.S. card if Beijing keeps pushing Delhi.
Indispensable PartnershipOn his part, Obama was quite keen toassuage the Indian sensitivities, suggestingthat the decision to receive Singh as thefirst State guest at the White House was adeliberate one aimed at demonstrating theimportance of the U.S.-India relationship.
At the end of his talks with Singh,Obama argued that the partnership withIndia was ‘indispensable’ to the
construction of a stable world order andthat the United States ‘welcomes andencourages’ ‘India’s leadership role’ inpromoting peace and stability in Asia.
Obama also sought to dispel theimpression in Delhi that his Administrationmay not be committed to implementing the nuclear deal that Singh had negotiatedwith his predecessor.
Declaring full support for the civilnuclear initiative,Obama said, “As nuclearpowers, we can be full partners in pre -venting the spread of the world’s most
Indian Prime MinisterManmohan Singh withChinese President HuJintao during the BRIC andSCO Summits in Russiaearly this year
The Sino-US joint statement issued at theconclusion of American President Barack Obama’s
visit to China, where China and the United Statesagreed to work to strengthen dialogue andcooperation in South Asia has caused much disquietin India.
It is very unfortunate that in his attempts toplease his hosts President Obama has given them more than heneeded to. If you read the communiqué carefully, I do believe that thefirst few lines pertaining to South Asia are acceptable. It is the secondpart where it mentions that China and United States will work togetherfor ushering a stable era of peace and security in South Asia that hasraised hackles in India. For two powers to decide how a third power willhave a relationship with another country in its region is completelyunacceptable to India.
The problem with President Obama is that he is conscious of thegreat vulnerability of the United States with regard to what he hascalled the worst recession of generations. He sees China as the majorand critical factor coming to America’s rescue in its grave moment. TheChinese have $ 800 billion plus in US Government Securities and theyare behaving like a creditor nation. Therefore their posture, theirpersona, their body language and their strategic power is obvious foranyone to see.
China’s rising power is palpable and the Chinese are conscious ofthat power. It is in this context that we should see what Prime MinisterManmohan Singh said in his address to the Council for ForeignRelations. He said that he had noted the Chinese assertiveness, whichhad surprised him and more importantly, he said that India would haveto take this assertiveness into account. This means that our foreign,security, defence, economic and other policies will now have to be, I willnot say re-cast but will have to be altered in terms of substance andnuance to reflect this change across the Himalayas in China.
It was rather surprising that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh choseto say that a country’s GDP growth alone is not enough and that Indiahas very strong achievements by way of democracy, freedoms andliberal system. In doing so he has commented on the Chinese politicalsystem and that is very uncharacteristic of Dr. Manmohan Singh.Perhaps it is the result of an accumulated kind of anger and frustrationat the manner in which the United States has tried to placate China atthe cost of India.
India considers and must consider China as a strategic challenge inthe years ahead. Yet China is India’s largest trading partner at $ 52billion in 2008-09. At the same time, the Indian and Chinese positions
on Climate Change, on the Doha Round of talks and the approach to theCopenhagen conference are very similar. So there are similarities atone end and challenges at the other.
The Chinese have realised that the Indian threshold of tolerancehas been breached. Their Foreign Office has just made a statementthat it does not mean to interfere in India and Pakistan’s resolution ofthe Kashmir issue. That has been the Chinese position for a long time.But the proximity of India to the US with the signing of the Indo-USNuclear Cooperation Agreement has rattled the Chinese. The Chinesebelieve that their rise is sought to be balanced or countered through astrategic encirclement of China by the combined efforts of United Statesand India.
The joint statement was picked up by separatist leader MirwaizOmer Farooq to say that China is a stakeholder in the Kashmir issue.Infact, it is only the Mirwaiz who has picked up that statement; none ofthe other separatist leaders have endorsed it. Some of them have evenquestioned that if there is an intrusion into Kashmir by Afghanistan, itwill also become a stakeholder. The fact is that 38,000 sq kms is underillegal occupation of China since 1962 and that 5,180 sq kms of theShaksgam Valley of the composite State of Jammu and Kashmir werehanded over by Pakistan to China in 1963. China had agreed in the1963 agreement that after the settlement of the Kashmir disputebetween Pakistan and India, it will reopen negotiations on its (Kashmir)boundary issue.
China is committed to the problem of Kashmir being a bilateralissue between India and Pakistan. The Chinese position on Jammu andKashmir has been exacerbated by its introducing this factor of issuingvisas (for Kashmiris) on a piece of paper stapled on a passport. It istotally unacceptable to the Indian Government that China is issuingsuch visas to citizens of India on the basis of domicile, ethnicity andreligion in the last few months.
India will have to play it, as the Prime Minister said, by taking intoaccount whatever is happening externally and ensure that India’ssecurity is not compromised in any way. At the same time, India has toensure that all avenues are kept open for enhancing the nature anddepth of the relationship, both with China and the United States. India’srelationship with either China or the US is not at the cost of the other.The Indian leadership has made it absolutely clear that it will have amulti-vector foreign policy and security policy.
—Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak (retd), is a defence and security affairs analystwith a special interest in Kashmir. He has served as Deputy Director of the
Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and is currently AdditionalDirector, Centre for Air Power Studies, New Delhi. He spoke to Shubha Singh
SINO-US JOINT STATEMENT
THE KASHMIR ANGLE AND THE STRATEGIC CHALLENGE
3130
For India, the talk of acondominium seemed tobecome a reality when it
rising China. The talk of a Group of Two—a global condominium between China andthe United States—has gained ground inrecent months although Beijing has neverreally endorsed the notion.
Storm of ProtestFor India, the talk of a condominiumseemed to become a reality when it sawObama’s formulations about China’s rolein South Asia at the end of his summit withPresident Hu Jintao. The expansive jointstatement issued in Beijing by PresidentsObama and Hu Jintao declared that“China and the United States are ready tostrengthen communication, dialogue andcooperation on issues related to South Asiaand work together to promote peace,stability and development in that region.”
This set off a storm of protest in India,which sees its relations with its SouthAsian neighbours in a seemingly separatecategory. Rejecting the notion of a Sino-U.S. condominium over theSubcontinent, the Indian foreign ministryinsisted that, “A third-country role cannotbe envisaged nor is it necessary” in theresolution of its disputes with Pakistan.The Chinese foreign office moved inquickly to suggest that it had no intentionof mediating between India and Pakistan
and that the Kashmir dispute was abilateral one between the two South Asiannations. As the U.S. media amplified the Indian concerns, it was quite clear thatthe issue would figure prominentlyduring Prime Minister’s Singh’s visit to Washington in late November. ForDelhi, Obama’s statements in Beijingreinforced the concern that Washingtonwas now moving towards a “China-first”strategy in Asia.
This was in total contrast to George W.Bush’s strategy in Asia. Bush’s premise
was that helping India’s rise will not onlyhelp limit Beijing’s expanding influence inAsia but also shift the global balance ofpower in favour of ‘freedom’. Changingthis premise would naturally leave littleroom for building a strategic partnershipbetween Washington and Delhi.
A day before his meeting with Obama,Dr. Singh laid out his own perceptions ofAsia. Addressing the Council on ForeignRelations in Washington, Singh declaredthat Delhi and Washington must “worktogether with other countries in the region
to create an open and inclusive regionalarchitecture in the Asia-Pacific”.
Dr. Singh emphasised that the rise ofChina is a reality and that the world mustcome to terms with it. He argued that theanswer lies in engagement and coope -ration with Beijing. “We have tried toengage China and they are one of ourmajor trading partners. We have borderdisputes we are trying to solve that andboth have agreed that while that ispending we should keep the peace,” thePrime Minister said.
DIPLOMACY
At the same time, Singh introduced anuance into the thinking about China. Onthe one hand,he insisted that the world has astake in ensuring that the rise of China mustbe peaceful. On the other, he publiclywondered about his inability to under standChina’s new assertiveness on the borderwith India.
Although China figured prominently inhis talks with Obama,Dr. Singh under linedthat India has no desire to either seek U.S.support against China or contest the termsof Sino-American cooperation. He was ever
so subtle in suggesting that he might playthe U.S. card if Beijing keeps pushing Delhi.
Indispensable PartnershipOn his part, Obama was quite keen toassuage the Indian sensitivities, suggestingthat the decision to receive Singh as thefirst State guest at the White House was adeliberate one aimed at demonstrating theimportance of the U.S.-India relationship.
At the end of his talks with Singh,Obama argued that the partnership withIndia was ‘indispensable’ to the
construction of a stable world order andthat the United States ‘welcomes andencourages’ ‘India’s leadership role’ inpromoting peace and stability in Asia.
Obama also sought to dispel theimpression in Delhi that his Administrationmay not be committed to implementing the nuclear deal that Singh had negotiatedwith his predecessor.
Declaring full support for the civilnuclear initiative,Obama said, “As nuclearpowers, we can be full partners in pre -venting the spread of the world’s most
Indian Prime MinisterManmohan Singh withChinese President HuJintao during the BRIC andSCO Summits in Russiaearly this year
The Sino-US joint statement issued at theconclusion of American President Barack Obama’s
visit to China, where China and the United Statesagreed to work to strengthen dialogue andcooperation in South Asia has caused much disquietin India.
It is very unfortunate that in his attempts toplease his hosts President Obama has given them more than heneeded to. If you read the communiqué carefully, I do believe that thefirst few lines pertaining to South Asia are acceptable. It is the secondpart where it mentions that China and United States will work togetherfor ushering a stable era of peace and security in South Asia that hasraised hackles in India. For two powers to decide how a third power willhave a relationship with another country in its region is completelyunacceptable to India.
The problem with President Obama is that he is conscious of thegreat vulnerability of the United States with regard to what he hascalled the worst recession of generations. He sees China as the majorand critical factor coming to America’s rescue in its grave moment. TheChinese have $ 800 billion plus in US Government Securities and theyare behaving like a creditor nation. Therefore their posture, theirpersona, their body language and their strategic power is obvious foranyone to see.
China’s rising power is palpable and the Chinese are conscious ofthat power. It is in this context that we should see what Prime MinisterManmohan Singh said in his address to the Council for ForeignRelations. He said that he had noted the Chinese assertiveness, whichhad surprised him and more importantly, he said that India would haveto take this assertiveness into account. This means that our foreign,security, defence, economic and other policies will now have to be, I willnot say re-cast but will have to be altered in terms of substance andnuance to reflect this change across the Himalayas in China.
It was rather surprising that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh choseto say that a country’s GDP growth alone is not enough and that Indiahas very strong achievements by way of democracy, freedoms andliberal system. In doing so he has commented on the Chinese politicalsystem and that is very uncharacteristic of Dr. Manmohan Singh.Perhaps it is the result of an accumulated kind of anger and frustrationat the manner in which the United States has tried to placate China atthe cost of India.
India considers and must consider China as a strategic challenge inthe years ahead. Yet China is India’s largest trading partner at $ 52billion in 2008-09. At the same time, the Indian and Chinese positions
on Climate Change, on the Doha Round of talks and the approach to theCopenhagen conference are very similar. So there are similarities atone end and challenges at the other.
The Chinese have realised that the Indian threshold of tolerancehas been breached. Their Foreign Office has just made a statementthat it does not mean to interfere in India and Pakistan’s resolution ofthe Kashmir issue. That has been the Chinese position for a long time.But the proximity of India to the US with the signing of the Indo-USNuclear Cooperation Agreement has rattled the Chinese. The Chinesebelieve that their rise is sought to be balanced or countered through astrategic encirclement of China by the combined efforts of United Statesand India.
The joint statement was picked up by separatist leader MirwaizOmer Farooq to say that China is a stakeholder in the Kashmir issue.Infact, it is only the Mirwaiz who has picked up that statement; none ofthe other separatist leaders have endorsed it. Some of them have evenquestioned that if there is an intrusion into Kashmir by Afghanistan, itwill also become a stakeholder. The fact is that 38,000 sq kms is underillegal occupation of China since 1962 and that 5,180 sq kms of theShaksgam Valley of the composite State of Jammu and Kashmir werehanded over by Pakistan to China in 1963. China had agreed in the1963 agreement that after the settlement of the Kashmir disputebetween Pakistan and India, it will reopen negotiations on its (Kashmir)boundary issue.
China is committed to the problem of Kashmir being a bilateralissue between India and Pakistan. The Chinese position on Jammu andKashmir has been exacerbated by its introducing this factor of issuingvisas (for Kashmiris) on a piece of paper stapled on a passport. It istotally unacceptable to the Indian Government that China is issuingsuch visas to citizens of India on the basis of domicile, ethnicity andreligion in the last few months.
India will have to play it, as the Prime Minister said, by taking intoaccount whatever is happening externally and ensure that India’ssecurity is not compromised in any way. At the same time, India has toensure that all avenues are kept open for enhancing the nature anddepth of the relationship, both with China and the United States. India’srelationship with either China or the US is not at the cost of the other.The Indian leadership has made it absolutely clear that it will have amulti-vector foreign policy and security policy.
—Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak (retd), is a defence and security affairs analystwith a special interest in Kashmir. He has served as Deputy Director of the
Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and is currently AdditionalDirector, Centre for Air Power Studies, New Delhi. He spoke to Shubha Singh
SINO-US JOINT STATEMENT
THE KASHMIR ANGLE AND THE STRATEGIC CHALLENGE
3130
For India, the talk of acondominium seemed tobecome a reality when it
deadly weapons....and pursuing our sharedvision of a world without nuclear weapons.”
Security PrioritiesEven more important from the Indianperspective was the joint statement’sformulations on Afghanistan and Pakistan,which are the principal security priorities forIndia and currently for the United States.The joint statement said, “The two leadersreiterated their shared interest in thestability,development and independence ofAfghanistan and in the defeat of terroristsafe havens in Pakistan and Afghanistan”.One of the major outcomes from Singh’svisit to Washington has been the signing of anew security initiative, “to expand collabo -ration on counter-terrorism, intelli gencesharing and capacity building”.
Obama’s convergence of interests withSingh comes at a time when India wasworried about the conversations betweenWashington and Beijing on Af-Pak issuesand Beijing’s rising profile in the South Asia.
Whatever might have been India’smotives to seek strategic reassurances fromObama and the manner in which hisAdministration offered them, they are notadequate to deal with the extraordinarytriangular dynamic between Washington,Beijing and Delhi.
As China and India rise,America has nooption but to steadily accommodate theirinterests. It is also equally important to notethat exclusive spheres of influence are nolonger sustainable amidst the relativedecline of the United States and the strategicgains of China and India.
It is inevitable that a rising China will playa larger role in the Subcontinent; similarlyan emerging India will have a growing voicein East Asian affairs. What Asia needs, then, ismore substantive and sustained bilateraland multilateral talks among Washington,Beijing and Delhi on building compre-hensive regional security.
32
DSINOVEMBER 2009DIPLOMACYIt is inevitable that a rising
China will play a larger rolein the subcontinent;
similarly an emerging Indiawill have a growing voice in
East Asian affairs.
”
Chinese President Hu Jintao escorts U.S. PresidentBarack Obama past aguard of honourduring a welcomeceremony in Beijing
deadly weapons....and pursuing our sharedvision of a world without nuclear weapons.”
Security PrioritiesEven more important from the Indianperspective was the joint statement’sformulations on Afghanistan and Pakistan,which are the principal security priorities forIndia and currently for the United States.The joint statement said, “The two leadersreiterated their shared interest in thestability,development and independence ofAfghanistan and in the defeat of terroristsafe havens in Pakistan and Afghanistan”.One of the major outcomes from Singh’svisit to Washington has been the signing of anew security initiative, “to expand collabo -ration on counter-terrorism, intelli gencesharing and capacity building”.
Obama’s convergence of interests withSingh comes at a time when India wasworried about the conversations betweenWashington and Beijing on Af-Pak issuesand Beijing’s rising profile in the South Asia.
Whatever might have been India’smotives to seek strategic reassurances fromObama and the manner in which hisAdministration offered them, they are notadequate to deal with the extraordinarytriangular dynamic between Washington,Beijing and Delhi.
As China and India rise,America has nooption but to steadily accommodate theirinterests. It is also equally important to notethat exclusive spheres of influence are nolonger sustainable amidst the relativedecline of the United States and the strategicgains of China and India.
It is inevitable that a rising China will playa larger role in the Subcontinent; similarlyan emerging India will have a growing voicein East Asian affairs. What Asia needs, then, ismore substantive and sustained bilateraland multilateral talks among Washington,Beijing and Delhi on building compre-hensive regional security.
32
DSINOVEMBER 2009DIPLOMACYIt is inevitable that a rising
China will play a larger rolein the subcontinent;
similarly an emerging Indiawill have a growing voice in
East Asian affairs.
”
Chinese President Hu Jintao escorts U.S. PresidentBarack Obama past aguard of honourduring a welcomeceremony in Beijing
Moving beyond troop level tactics, it will take a more coordinated, calibrated, politico-militarystrategy to contain the Taliban
TALKING TO THE TALIBAN
The many controversies surroun -ding the recent elections inAfghanistan have illustrated the
pitfalls in giving too free a rein to PresidentHamid Karzai. At the Bonn Conference in2001, Karzai was appointed President ofAfghanistan because he alone fulfilled thetwo major conditions that were consideredessential at the time: being a Pashtun andbeing reliably anti-Taliban. But Karzai’sfailure to unite Afghanistan’s manyfactions has squandered the gains of 2001,rejuvenated a routed Taliban and addedurgency to what is now the centralquestion of the Afghanistan debate: howto handle a dialogue with the Taliban?
The various contenders in theAfghanistan power play approach thisquestion in different ways. Islamabad, forobvious reasons, has consistentlyadvocated a dialogue with the Taliban’sQuetta-based Rahbari Shura to bring it intoa power-sharing agreement in Kabul. Nowothers are echoing similar ideas. In August,US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton,declared, “We and our Afghan allies standready to welcome anyone supporting theTaliban who renounces the Al Qaeda, laysdown their arms and is willing toparticipate in the free and open society thatis enshrined in the Afghan Constitution.”
The Secretary of State’s offer at leastcarries the provision that the Taliban mustfirst lay down their arms. The BritishForeign Secretary, David Miliband, wasunconditional in declaring that hesupported negotiations with the Talibaninsurgents who wanted to join thepeaceful political process. So, too, wasGerman Foreign Minister, BernardKouchner, in urging talks with the Taliban.
Afghan President,Hamid Karzai,himselfis planning to hold a Loya Jirga (GrandCouncil) to reconcile with the Taliban. This
AJAI SHUKLA
A Taliban fighter sits next to a heap of weapons
after surrendering his arms
KEY POINTSn Success in Afghanistan cannot beachieved without winning over the highpercentage of ideologically neutralfighters who are currently with the Taliban.n The Taliban brand is expandinggeographically in non-traditionalTaliban strongholds like northern andwestern Afghanistan.
Moving beyond troop level tactics, it will take a more coordinated, calibrated, politico-militarystrategy to contain the Taliban
TALKING TO THE TALIBAN
The many controversies surroun -ding the recent elections inAfghanistan have illustrated the
pitfalls in giving too free a rein to PresidentHamid Karzai. At the Bonn Conference in2001, Karzai was appointed President ofAfghanistan because he alone fulfilled thetwo major conditions that were consideredessential at the time: being a Pashtun andbeing reliably anti-Taliban. But Karzai’sfailure to unite Afghanistan’s manyfactions has squandered the gains of 2001,rejuvenated a routed Taliban and addedurgency to what is now the centralquestion of the Afghanistan debate: howto handle a dialogue with the Taliban?
The various contenders in theAfghanistan power play approach thisquestion in different ways. Islamabad, forobvious reasons, has consistentlyadvocated a dialogue with the Taliban’sQuetta-based Rahbari Shura to bring it intoa power-sharing agreement in Kabul. Nowothers are echoing similar ideas. In August,US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton,declared, “We and our Afghan allies standready to welcome anyone supporting theTaliban who renounces the Al Qaeda, laysdown their arms and is willing toparticipate in the free and open society thatis enshrined in the Afghan Constitution.”
The Secretary of State’s offer at leastcarries the provision that the Taliban mustfirst lay down their arms. The BritishForeign Secretary, David Miliband, wasunconditional in declaring that hesupported negotiations with the Talibaninsurgents who wanted to join thepeaceful political process. So, too, wasGerman Foreign Minister, BernardKouchner, in urging talks with the Taliban.
Afghan President,Hamid Karzai,himselfis planning to hold a Loya Jirga (GrandCouncil) to reconcile with the Taliban. This
AJAI SHUKLA
A Taliban fighter sits next to a heap of weapons
after surrendering his arms
KEY POINTSn Success in Afghanistan cannot beachieved without winning over the highpercentage of ideologically neutralfighters who are currently with the Taliban.n The Taliban brand is expandinggeographically in non-traditionalTaliban strongholds like northern andwestern Afghanistan.
is after months of urging Saudi Arabia’s KingAbdullah to bring the Taliban to the tablewith Karzai’s elder brother,Wali.
Who exactly is the Taliban? And in New Delhi,on the October 8, India’sForeign Secretary Nirupama Rao,declaredthat India would support Afghanistan in“reintegrating individuals with the nationalmainstream…the existing process under(Afghanistan’s) National Committee forPeace for reintegrating individuals with thenational mainstream must be both enlargedand accelerated. We support the AfghanGovernment’s determination to integratethose willing to abjure violence and live andwork within the parameters of the AfghanConstitution…”
By unhappy coincidence, the very nextmorning, the Taliban successfully bombedthe Indian Embassy in Kabul. The Ministryof External Affairs quickly began damagecontrol, clarifying to media persons thatIndia’s position had “not really changed”.New Delhi would not support a dialoguewith the Taliban, but only with Afghanfactions that were willing to respect theAfghan Constitution. “So how exactly do you define who are
the Taliban?” I asked a senior Indianforeign ministry official. “The Talibanconsists of fighters who are trained,financed and supported by Pakistan,” theofficial replied. Going by that yardstick, atleast 70 to 80 percent of the militantscurrently fighting for the Taliban are notreally the Taliban.
However, reading between the lines,New Delhi has it broadly correct. Whiletalking to the Taliban hard core would be asurrender of Indian interests, success inAfghanistan cannot be achieved without
winning over the high percentage ofideologically neutral fighters who arecurrently with the Taliban, largely foropportunistic reasons. Unless thosefighters are weaned away and theideologically committed Talibanweakened, the Pakistan-supported hardcore seems headed for power in Kabul.New Delhi has clearly reached thatconclusion but for reasons of politicalacceptability, it has sugar coated itsacceptance of this crucial dialogue as talkswith “those willing to abjure violence”.
Switching SidesWashington, on the other hand, is beingprodded by Islamabad to open a directdialogue with the Taliban’s ideological
fringe, epitomised by Mullah Omar’sRahbari Shura. In August, Pakistan’smilitary spokesman, Maj. General AtharAbbas, told CNN that Pakistan was incontact with Mullah Omar and could bringhim to the negotiating table with theUnited States, an offer that is still underserious consideration in Washington. Thiscould give Mullah Omar and,by extension,Islamabad, a share of power in Kabul.
With a Washington-Mullah Omardialogue likely, perhaps already begun,time is running out for tempting the “non-ideological”Taliban to break ranks with theISI-backed hard liners. But a coordinated,calibrated,politico-military strategy couldstill be stitched together giving theopportunists the incentives for aband -
36
NEIGHBOURS
oning the Taliban. Why would they do that? They would have to be lured withthe time-tested Afghan carrot: remainingon the winning side.
The fundamental logic that governsalignments, alliances and power inAfghanistan revolves around survival.After decades of almost continuouswarfare and turbulence, Afghans see noglory in dying in battle for even the mostdesperate of causes. Fighters expect theirleaders to trim their sails with the changingpolitical winds, to switch allegiance intime, to avoid unnecessary casualties and toalways remain on the winning side.Winners in Afghanistan traditionally rideto power on a wave of defections.
Examine the records of most Afghan
commanders today. Exceptfor a tiny hardcore, mostfighters who sport Talibanturbans today have foughtover the years for a range ofother factions. Many ofthem have operated asKhalqi or Parchamicommunists in the 1970sand then fought the Sovietsthrough the 1980s as US-funded Mujahideen. In the 1990s, whenthe communists faded away and thePakistan-aided Taliban was on the march,scores of commanders switched sides andgrew their beards. After the Taliban wererouted in 2001, the beards went off again.Then commanders across southern
Afghanistan waited to seewhat Karzai would offer.
I remember meetingone such commander in asmall village near Ghazniin November 2001. Moha -mmad Jan was a Pashtun,the leader of 15 fightersfrom his village and theneigh bouring one. Just aweek before our meeting,
he had been a Talib, but as the Talibanleaders evacuated Kabul and fled towardsKandahar, Mohammad Jan and hisfighters stayed on in their villages. Theyknew the Taliban’s time was up. And so, intime-honoured Afghan fashion, theywaited for the Northern Alliance to come
The fundamental logic that governs alignments,
alliances and power in Afghanistan revolves
around survival. Winners in Afghanistan
traditionally ride to poweron a wave of defections.
”
(Above) Afghan policemeninspect the site of anexplosion near the IndianEmbassy in Kabul; (Left) Morethan 40 Taliban insurgentshanded in their weapons to theGovernment after the Taliban commander, Ghulam YahyaAkbari, was killed in October, 2009
is after months of urging Saudi Arabia’s KingAbdullah to bring the Taliban to the tablewith Karzai’s elder brother,Wali.
Who exactly is the Taliban? And in New Delhi,on the October 8, India’sForeign Secretary Nirupama Rao,declaredthat India would support Afghanistan in“reintegrating individuals with the nationalmainstream…the existing process under(Afghanistan’s) National Committee forPeace for reintegrating individuals with thenational mainstream must be both enlargedand accelerated. We support the AfghanGovernment’s determination to integratethose willing to abjure violence and live andwork within the parameters of the AfghanConstitution…”
By unhappy coincidence, the very nextmorning, the Taliban successfully bombedthe Indian Embassy in Kabul. The Ministryof External Affairs quickly began damagecontrol, clarifying to media persons thatIndia’s position had “not really changed”.New Delhi would not support a dialoguewith the Taliban, but only with Afghanfactions that were willing to respect theAfghan Constitution. “So how exactly do you define who are
the Taliban?” I asked a senior Indianforeign ministry official. “The Talibanconsists of fighters who are trained,financed and supported by Pakistan,” theofficial replied. Going by that yardstick, atleast 70 to 80 percent of the militantscurrently fighting for the Taliban are notreally the Taliban.
However, reading between the lines,New Delhi has it broadly correct. Whiletalking to the Taliban hard core would be asurrender of Indian interests, success inAfghanistan cannot be achieved without
winning over the high percentage ofideologically neutral fighters who arecurrently with the Taliban, largely foropportunistic reasons. Unless thosefighters are weaned away and theideologically committed Talibanweakened, the Pakistan-supported hardcore seems headed for power in Kabul.New Delhi has clearly reached thatconclusion but for reasons of politicalacceptability, it has sugar coated itsacceptance of this crucial dialogue as talkswith “those willing to abjure violence”.
Switching SidesWashington, on the other hand, is beingprodded by Islamabad to open a directdialogue with the Taliban’s ideological
fringe, epitomised by Mullah Omar’sRahbari Shura. In August, Pakistan’smilitary spokesman, Maj. General AtharAbbas, told CNN that Pakistan was incontact with Mullah Omar and could bringhim to the negotiating table with theUnited States, an offer that is still underserious consideration in Washington. Thiscould give Mullah Omar and,by extension,Islamabad, a share of power in Kabul.
With a Washington-Mullah Omardialogue likely, perhaps already begun,time is running out for tempting the “non-ideological”Taliban to break ranks with theISI-backed hard liners. But a coordinated,calibrated,politico-military strategy couldstill be stitched together giving theopportunists the incentives for aband -
36
NEIGHBOURS
oning the Taliban. Why would they do that? They would have to be lured withthe time-tested Afghan carrot: remainingon the winning side.
The fundamental logic that governsalignments, alliances and power inAfghanistan revolves around survival.After decades of almost continuouswarfare and turbulence, Afghans see noglory in dying in battle for even the mostdesperate of causes. Fighters expect theirleaders to trim their sails with the changingpolitical winds, to switch allegiance intime, to avoid unnecessary casualties and toalways remain on the winning side.Winners in Afghanistan traditionally rideto power on a wave of defections.
Examine the records of most Afghan
commanders today. Exceptfor a tiny hardcore, mostfighters who sport Talibanturbans today have foughtover the years for a range ofother factions. Many ofthem have operated asKhalqi or Parchamicommunists in the 1970sand then fought the Sovietsthrough the 1980s as US-funded Mujahideen. In the 1990s, whenthe communists faded away and thePakistan-aided Taliban was on the march,scores of commanders switched sides andgrew their beards. After the Taliban wererouted in 2001, the beards went off again.Then commanders across southern
Afghanistan waited to seewhat Karzai would offer.
I remember meetingone such commander in asmall village near Ghazniin November 2001. Moha -mmad Jan was a Pashtun,the leader of 15 fightersfrom his village and theneigh bouring one. Just aweek before our meeting,
he had been a Talib, but as the Talibanleaders evacuated Kabul and fled towardsKandahar, Mohammad Jan and hisfighters stayed on in their villages. Theyknew the Taliban’s time was up. And so, intime-honoured Afghan fashion, theywaited for the Northern Alliance to come
The fundamental logic that governs alignments,
alliances and power in Afghanistan revolves
around survival. Winners in Afghanistan
traditionally ride to poweron a wave of defections.
”
(Above) Afghan policemeninspect the site of anexplosion near the IndianEmbassy in Kabul; (Left) Morethan 40 Taliban insurgentshanded in their weapons to theGovernment after the Taliban commander, Ghulam YahyaAkbari, was killed in October, 2009
to them with an offer.I sat with Mohammad Jan on a worn
Afghan carpet on the roof of his house,enjoying tea, dried mulberries andapricots, while he recounted a list of thosewho he had fought for since the Sovietjihad. Mohammad Jan had switched sidessix times already, even fighting briefly forGulbuddin Hekmatyar, before joining theTaliban as they swept north towards Kabul.
It is not just Afghanistan’s smallercommanders who switch sides oppor -tunistically, fighting now for this warlord,now for another; the same is true for thebig guys. Uzbek warlord Abdul RashidDostum is the country’s top “aaya Ram,gaya Ram”, having fought for (andagainst) literally every side in Afghanistanin the last 35 years. No Afghan will easilyforget Dostum’s switch to Taliban whenhe was poised outside Mazar-e-Sharif,giving them the city and the freedom toperpetrate an orgy of bloodletting.
At the end of 2002, I went back to Ghaznito meet Mohammad Jan. To my surprise hetold me that Karzai’s people had not yetcontacted him or the other localcommanders around Ghazni. Instead,Karzai had done the unthinkable bysending his own governor to Ghazni, whorode roughshod over the locals. That’s notdone in Afghanistan. Outsiders don’tnormally muscle into your area. They bribe,cajole and entice local commanders withthe promise of a better deal.
I never met Mohammad Jan again but,from the run of play, he would certainlyhave rejoined the Taliban. And, equallycertainly, if he believed the Taliban’s clockwas running out, he would be lookingagain for alternatives. It is the multitudeof small commanders like Mohammad Janthat a new strategy for Afghanistan musttarget, employing an admixture ofincentives like money and the promise oflocal administrative and economic power.
Needed: A Radical Game-Changer Instead, the debate in Washington appearsfocussed mainly on troop levels. The beliefappears to be that, as long as the US staysthe course, as long as President BarackObama steps up troop levels, victory willeventually follow. In fact, American aimscannot possibly be achieved using currentmethods. Over the last four years, troopnumbers have increased each year; so hasthe US expenditure. Each of these years,the coalition casualty count has riseninexorably: already 400 soldiers have diedin 2009, more than double the 2006casualty count and thrice as many as in2005. Taliban tactics have now graduatedto frontal assaults on US outposts.
Clearly, incremental troop and budgetincreases have failed to change the trend.And to change the eventual outcome, aradical game-changer is needed.
The US military believes it has that game-changer. General Stanley McChrystal’s
new, highly acclaimed operational strategywill no longer focus on fighting the Taliban.Instead, his focus will be on the Afghanpeople. A surge of up to 40,000 additional USsoldiers will live in Afghan villages wherethey will join the lives of the commonpeople, they will patrol on foot rather than inmine-protected vehicles and intelligenceofficers will concentrate on identifying andwinning over local notables, rather thanfocussing only on the Taliban.
But implementing this will quickly runup against the fundamental operationalculture of an Army where, since theAmerican Civil War, strategy, tactics,organisational structures and equippingpolicies have centred around one God:firepower. The US military has longbelieved that overwhelming firepowermust be the shield that saves GIs, marinesand sailors in battle. Pressing the trigger firstand keeping it pressed longest is deep in theDNA of the American soldier. Generals
Petraeus and McChrystal will discover thattheir strategy for winning Afghan heartswill be continuously fouled by USoperational practices.
Historical AntipathyA troop surge, therefore, of the kind that President Obama is currentlyconsidering, is hardly likely to win friends,especially given Afghanistan’s historicalantipathy towards occupiers. But it remainsessential for stepping up military pressureon the Taliban, with a view to encourageside switching. Afghan perceptioncurrently sees the Taliban on the ascendant.And, in these circumstances, money can’tbuy commanders.
More worryingly, the Taliban brand isexpanding geographically. The Taliban’soperations during the last few weeks innorthern and western Afghanistan—nottraditional Taliban strongholds—aredirected towards projecting the image of
Taliban power all across Afghanistan. Karzailikes to point out that the Taliban does notcontrol even a single provincial capital. Butthe Soviet Army, too, controlled right up toevery provincial capital when they pulledout of Afghanistan.
It is this perception of an ascendantTaliban that the coalition must reverse, eventemporarily, for opportunistic Talibancommanders to begin reviewing theiroptions. This would ideally be achieved by afull-blown American surge operating intandem with Pakistan’s offensive inWaziristan. But that seems unlikely now.
General McChrystal is believed to have submitted four options: the smallestincrease calls for an increment of just 10,000-15,000 troops, most of them trainers for theAfghan National Army (ANA). The otheroptions call for 20,000, 30,000, and 40,000additional troops respectively. US pressreports indicate that the US Ambassador toAfghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, has recom -mended caution and that the White House is inclined towards the smallestpossible increase.
This increase in trainers must quicklybuild up the capability of ANA and AfghanNational Police (ANP) and their numbersmust be stepped up to above 400,000.
The prospect of reaching accomm -odation even with moderates within theTaliban runs up quickly against a range ofbiases. The most hackneyed of themremains, “a moderate Taliban is a contra -diction in terms”. But a quick look through alist of Kabul’s existing power brokers placesthings in context.
The Northern Alliance, a long-standinganti-Taliban bastion, contains factions likethe Jamaat-e-Islami which has an approachas fundamental as the Taliban. EveryAfghan knows that chieftains likeMohammad Fahim and Karim Khalili weredirectly responsible for the deaths of hun -dreds of civilians in inter-faction fighting.The President’s brother, Wali Karzai, standscredibly accused of drug dealing andwarlording. Abdul Rashid Dostum, theUzbek warlord, remains a truly chillingfigure even in that blood-soaked landscape.
In such circumstances, where the moraldifferentiator is already so heavily blurred,there is hardly a moral argument forrefusing a dialogue with moderate sectionsof the Taliban. There is, however, a strategicargument for such an approach: many ofyesterday’s “good guys” are today’s Taliban;if they can be won back, the growingprospect of Mullah Omar calling the shotsin Kabul will recede for the present.
38
A Hazara man looks on as he walkshome to his cave in Bamiyan,
Afghanistan. The Hazaracommunity has faced intense
to them with an offer.I sat with Mohammad Jan on a worn
Afghan carpet on the roof of his house,enjoying tea, dried mulberries andapricots, while he recounted a list of thosewho he had fought for since the Sovietjihad. Mohammad Jan had switched sidessix times already, even fighting briefly forGulbuddin Hekmatyar, before joining theTaliban as they swept north towards Kabul.
It is not just Afghanistan’s smallercommanders who switch sides oppor -tunistically, fighting now for this warlord,now for another; the same is true for thebig guys. Uzbek warlord Abdul RashidDostum is the country’s top “aaya Ram,gaya Ram”, having fought for (andagainst) literally every side in Afghanistanin the last 35 years. No Afghan will easilyforget Dostum’s switch to Taliban whenhe was poised outside Mazar-e-Sharif,giving them the city and the freedom toperpetrate an orgy of bloodletting.
At the end of 2002, I went back to Ghaznito meet Mohammad Jan. To my surprise hetold me that Karzai’s people had not yetcontacted him or the other localcommanders around Ghazni. Instead,Karzai had done the unthinkable bysending his own governor to Ghazni, whorode roughshod over the locals. That’s notdone in Afghanistan. Outsiders don’tnormally muscle into your area. They bribe,cajole and entice local commanders withthe promise of a better deal.
I never met Mohammad Jan again but,from the run of play, he would certainlyhave rejoined the Taliban. And, equallycertainly, if he believed the Taliban’s clockwas running out, he would be lookingagain for alternatives. It is the multitudeof small commanders like Mohammad Janthat a new strategy for Afghanistan musttarget, employing an admixture ofincentives like money and the promise oflocal administrative and economic power.
Needed: A Radical Game-Changer Instead, the debate in Washington appearsfocussed mainly on troop levels. The beliefappears to be that, as long as the US staysthe course, as long as President BarackObama steps up troop levels, victory willeventually follow. In fact, American aimscannot possibly be achieved using currentmethods. Over the last four years, troopnumbers have increased each year; so hasthe US expenditure. Each of these years,the coalition casualty count has riseninexorably: already 400 soldiers have diedin 2009, more than double the 2006casualty count and thrice as many as in2005. Taliban tactics have now graduatedto frontal assaults on US outposts.
Clearly, incremental troop and budgetincreases have failed to change the trend.And to change the eventual outcome, aradical game-changer is needed.
The US military believes it has that game-changer. General Stanley McChrystal’s
new, highly acclaimed operational strategywill no longer focus on fighting the Taliban.Instead, his focus will be on the Afghanpeople. A surge of up to 40,000 additional USsoldiers will live in Afghan villages wherethey will join the lives of the commonpeople, they will patrol on foot rather than inmine-protected vehicles and intelligenceofficers will concentrate on identifying andwinning over local notables, rather thanfocussing only on the Taliban.
But implementing this will quickly runup against the fundamental operationalculture of an Army where, since theAmerican Civil War, strategy, tactics,organisational structures and equippingpolicies have centred around one God:firepower. The US military has longbelieved that overwhelming firepowermust be the shield that saves GIs, marinesand sailors in battle. Pressing the trigger firstand keeping it pressed longest is deep in theDNA of the American soldier. Generals
Petraeus and McChrystal will discover thattheir strategy for winning Afghan heartswill be continuously fouled by USoperational practices.
Historical AntipathyA troop surge, therefore, of the kind that President Obama is currentlyconsidering, is hardly likely to win friends,especially given Afghanistan’s historicalantipathy towards occupiers. But it remainsessential for stepping up military pressureon the Taliban, with a view to encourageside switching. Afghan perceptioncurrently sees the Taliban on the ascendant.And, in these circumstances, money can’tbuy commanders.
More worryingly, the Taliban brand isexpanding geographically. The Taliban’soperations during the last few weeks innorthern and western Afghanistan—nottraditional Taliban strongholds—aredirected towards projecting the image of
Taliban power all across Afghanistan. Karzailikes to point out that the Taliban does notcontrol even a single provincial capital. Butthe Soviet Army, too, controlled right up toevery provincial capital when they pulledout of Afghanistan.
It is this perception of an ascendantTaliban that the coalition must reverse, eventemporarily, for opportunistic Talibancommanders to begin reviewing theiroptions. This would ideally be achieved by afull-blown American surge operating intandem with Pakistan’s offensive inWaziristan. But that seems unlikely now.
General McChrystal is believed to have submitted four options: the smallestincrease calls for an increment of just 10,000-15,000 troops, most of them trainers for theAfghan National Army (ANA). The otheroptions call for 20,000, 30,000, and 40,000additional troops respectively. US pressreports indicate that the US Ambassador toAfghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, has recom -mended caution and that the White House is inclined towards the smallestpossible increase.
This increase in trainers must quicklybuild up the capability of ANA and AfghanNational Police (ANP) and their numbersmust be stepped up to above 400,000.
The prospect of reaching accomm -odation even with moderates within theTaliban runs up quickly against a range ofbiases. The most hackneyed of themremains, “a moderate Taliban is a contra -diction in terms”. But a quick look through alist of Kabul’s existing power brokers placesthings in context.
The Northern Alliance, a long-standinganti-Taliban bastion, contains factions likethe Jamaat-e-Islami which has an approachas fundamental as the Taliban. EveryAfghan knows that chieftains likeMohammad Fahim and Karim Khalili weredirectly responsible for the deaths of hun -dreds of civilians in inter-faction fighting.The President’s brother, Wali Karzai, standscredibly accused of drug dealing andwarlording. Abdul Rashid Dostum, theUzbek warlord, remains a truly chillingfigure even in that blood-soaked landscape.
In such circumstances, where the moraldifferentiator is already so heavily blurred,there is hardly a moral argument forrefusing a dialogue with moderate sectionsof the Taliban. There is, however, a strategicargument for such an approach: many ofyesterday’s “good guys” are today’s Taliban;if they can be won back, the growingprospect of Mullah Omar calling the shotsin Kabul will recede for the present.
38
A Hazara man looks on as he walkshome to his cave in Bamiyan,
Afghanistan. The Hazaracommunity has faced intense
Despite repeated reviews and revisions, the new provisions introduced in theDefence Procurement Procedure appear to be highly convoluted and imprecise
Consequent to the acceptance of theReport of the Group of Ministers,constituted after the Kargil War,a new set-up was established in theMinistry of Defence (MoD) to handlecapital procurements in October 2001.
Con currently,detailed guidelines wereissued in the form of a DefenceProcurement Procedure (DPP) in October2002 with the stated objective of expeditingprocure ments in a transparent andcompetitive environment. The saidprocedure has undergone four revisions
since its promul gation. The currentversion, the Defence ProcurementProcedure–2008 (DPP-2008) was put intoeffect in September 2008.
Belying all hopes, however there hasbeen no discernible improvement on theground. Seven years later, the initialeuphoria has given way to despondency,both amongst the armed forces and theindustry. Every proposal remainsembroiled in bureaucratic functioning andprocedural quagmire. No major contracthas been successfully concluded since 2001in a multi-vendor open competition. Everyinked contract has been on a single-vendor, Government-to-Governmentbasis, confirming a total inability of thesystem to deliver.
Despite much trumpeted claims oftransparency, every single deal has beenquestioned for probity and irregularities. Infact, the Comptroller and Auditor Generalof India (CAG) has been scathing in hiscomments. The cancellation of theEurocopter deal at an advanced stage,ostensibly on the grounds of a flawedevaluation procedure, has dented thecredibility of the system internationally.Indeed, foreign vendors find the wholeenvironment highly dissuasive and arereluctant to participate. For example,Boeingand Bell both declined to submit their
proposals for combat helicopters for the AirForce. Bell even opted out of bidding forlight utility helicopters for the Army.
The current procurement procedure hasalso been faulted by the Indian defenceindustry basically on two counts. First, it hasfailed to help develop India’s indigenousdefence industry. Even the Ministry ofDefence (MoD) has conceded that thepresent Buy and Make route has not helpedin building up higher technical capabilities.
Secondly, the procedure is highly tilted in favour of the public sector. Invariably,the production agency (PA) selected toreceive technology for indigenous manu -facture is a public sector undertaking.Consequently, the role of the private sectorremains limited to the supply of some low-tech items to the public sector.
It is with a view to streamline procure -ment and integrate the private sector in the defence production process that theMoD issued a set of amendments to theDPP-2008 on November 1, 2008. Theprofessed objective of these amendmentsis “to provide encouragement to theindigenous defence industry to play amajor role in meeting the needs of thearmed forces, ensuring transparency andaccountability in all procurement cases andliberalising offset provisions to enablevendors to fulfill their obligations.”
KEY POINTSn Foreign vendors find the DefenceProcurement Procedure highlydiscouraging and ambigous. n The current procedure has failed to helpdevelop India’s indigenous defenceindustry and is highly tilted in favour ofthe public sector.
Despite repeated reviews and revisions, the new provisions introduced in theDefence Procurement Procedure appear to be highly convoluted and imprecise
Consequent to the acceptance of theReport of the Group of Ministers,constituted after the Kargil War,a new set-up was established in theMinistry of Defence (MoD) to handlecapital procurements in October 2001.
Con currently,detailed guidelines wereissued in the form of a DefenceProcurement Procedure (DPP) in October2002 with the stated objective of expeditingprocure ments in a transparent andcompetitive environment. The saidprocedure has undergone four revisions
since its promul gation. The currentversion, the Defence ProcurementProcedure–2008 (DPP-2008) was put intoeffect in September 2008.
Belying all hopes, however there hasbeen no discernible improvement on theground. Seven years later, the initialeuphoria has given way to despondency,both amongst the armed forces and theindustry. Every proposal remainsembroiled in bureaucratic functioning andprocedural quagmire. No major contracthas been successfully concluded since 2001in a multi-vendor open competition. Everyinked contract has been on a single-vendor, Government-to-Governmentbasis, confirming a total inability of thesystem to deliver.
Despite much trumpeted claims oftransparency, every single deal has beenquestioned for probity and irregularities. Infact, the Comptroller and Auditor Generalof India (CAG) has been scathing in hiscomments. The cancellation of theEurocopter deal at an advanced stage,ostensibly on the grounds of a flawedevaluation procedure, has dented thecredibility of the system internationally.Indeed, foreign vendors find the wholeenvironment highly dissuasive and arereluctant to participate. For example,Boeingand Bell both declined to submit their
proposals for combat helicopters for the AirForce. Bell even opted out of bidding forlight utility helicopters for the Army.
The current procurement procedure hasalso been faulted by the Indian defenceindustry basically on two counts. First, it hasfailed to help develop India’s indigenousdefence industry. Even the Ministry ofDefence (MoD) has conceded that thepresent Buy and Make route has not helpedin building up higher technical capabilities.
Secondly, the procedure is highly tilted in favour of the public sector. Invariably,the production agency (PA) selected toreceive technology for indigenous manu -facture is a public sector undertaking.Consequently, the role of the private sectorremains limited to the supply of some low-tech items to the public sector.
It is with a view to streamline procure -ment and integrate the private sector in the defence production process that theMoD issued a set of amendments to theDPP-2008 on November 1, 2008. Theprofessed objective of these amendmentsis “to provide encouragement to theindigenous defence industry to play amajor role in meeting the needs of thearmed forces, ensuring transparency andaccountability in all procurement cases andliberalising offset provisions to enablevendors to fulfill their obligations.”
KEY POINTSn Foreign vendors find the DefenceProcurement Procedure highlydiscouraging and ambigous. n The current procedure has failed to helpdevelop India’s indigenous defenceindustry and is highly tilted in favour ofthe public sector.
In addition to introducing a newcategorisation of procurement proposalsto encourage joint ventures, the newamendments also contain certain enablingand amplificatory provisions.
New ProvisionsPresently, the Defence Acquisition Council(DAC) categorises all acquisition proposalsinto three categories: Buy; Buy and Make and Make. Buy implies the outrightpurchase of the complete quantityrequired, Buy and Make entails the initialpurchase of a limited quantity in a fullybuilt up form, followed by licensedproduction in India of the balancerequirement; andfinally, Make cases refer to the indigenousdevelopment of the equipment. Underthe DPP, the Govern -ment has nowintroduced anothercategory called Buy &Make (Indian).
Based on aCapability DefinitionDocument (CDD)prepared by the ServiceHeadquarters (SHQ),DAC can now select a project under the newBuy & Make (Indian) category. CDD willoutline the requirement in operational termsand briefly describe the present capabilitiesdetermined on the basis of the existingequipment and manpower. The SHQshould on its part also indicate long-termrequirement in terms of numbers, timeschedule, immediate fund availability and the critical technologies (as identified by the Defence Research and DevelopmentOrganisation) to be absorbed by the Indian vendor.
Under the guidelines, indigenouslymanufactured products must have aminimum 50 percent indigenous content ona cost basis. The Indian partner shouldabsorb the identified critical technologies,50percent of which will be in respect of itemsfor which engineering and manufacturingdocumentation will be provided to theIndian vendor to enable him to carry outfabrication,assembly and testing.
For acquisitions covered under the newBuy & Make (Indian) category, requests forproposals (RFP) will be issued only to Indianpublic and private sector companies whichhave been assessed to possess the requisitetechnical and financial capabilities toundertake such projects. It will be left to
them to negotiate the transfer of technologyand finalise co-production arrangementswith foreign manufacturers.
The shortlisting of Indian companieswill be made on the basis of a detailedproject proposal submitted by them inresponse to the CDD. Companies will berequired to outline the roadmap fordevelopment and production of the item,either by themselves or through anyproduction arrangement with a foreignproducer. In turn, the proposal must alsospell out details of the proposed work-share and transfer of technology, both inrange and depth. Once the RFP is issued to the selected companies, the currentprocedure described for the Buy and Makecategory will apply.
Two other provisions will also aim at co-opting the defence industry indecision-making process:
First, to dovetail the future needs of thearmed forces with the industry, a publicversion of the perspective documentoutlining the technology perspective anda capability road map spaning 15 years willbe put up on the MoD website.
Second, in acquisition cases, whereparticipation by the Indian industry is considered probable, the representativesof industry associations will be invited by the Cate gorisation Committee to seek their views and issue clarifications, ifany. However, these representatives will not be present during the decision-making meetings.
Changes have come in other areas too.In 2006, An Integrity Pact (IP) for allprocurement schemes over Rs 100 crorewas introduced. The policy provides forthe appointment of indepen dent monitorsby the Government to oversee the
42
DEFENCE PROCUREMENT PROCEDURE
adherence to the pact. With regard to theirrole, the current policy simply states “Assoon as the monitor notices, or believes tonotice, a violation of this pact, he will soinform the Head of the Acquisition Wing.”
However in its latest amendments, theMoD has further spelt out the functioningof the monitors in detail. Their role haschanged from one of pure oversight to thatof a recipient of complaints and conductof follow-up enquiries. The names andaddresses of the monitors nominated foreach case are now required to be givenupfront in the RFP itself.
On the receipt of the complaint withregard to violation of the IP, the buyer hasto refer it to the monitors for theircomments and enquiry. If required, themonitors can peruse the relevant records.Then an enquiry report has to besubmitted to the Director General
Acquisition for his final decision.Another enabling provision relates to
offset contracts. Although no subsequentchanges are allowed in respect of offsetcomponents or value, change in the offsetpartner may be allowed in exceptionalcases, when considered desirable to enable the foreign vendor to fulfill hisoffset obligations.
Amplificatory AspectsIn order to remove ambiguities in someprovisions of the DPP-2008, the MoD has issued amplificatory amendments,which are: n Issuance of request for information (RFI)has been made mandatory to seekrequired inputs to make broad-basedServices Qualitative Requirements (SQR).This will be done both by correspondingwith a maximum number of manu -
facturers and putting the details up on theMoD website. Earlier, the words used were‘may be’, which had led to multipleinterpretations. Besides, seeking of infor -mation regarding range and depth oftransfer of key technologies has also beenallowed now. n The formulation of the SQR has beenfurther clarified. The SQR must express theuser’s requirements in terms of capabilitydesired with minimum required verifiablefunctional characteristics. It has twoconnotations—the SQR should becapability-centric and functional charac -teristic should be verifiable. n In order to ascertain that the SQR willresult in multiple vendor competition, allnew proposals being put up to the DACwill contain details of essential verifiablefunctional characteristics vis-à-vis technicalparametres of the equipment available inthe world market.n As stated earlier, the current proceduremandates that all procurement schemesexceeding Rs 100 crore will compulsorilyhave an IP signed between the pro -curement agency and the vendor.However, it was not clear whether thevalue as indicated by the procurementagency was the sole criterion. Doubts usedto be raised as to the applicability of thisclause in case a vendor pegs hiscommercial proposal marginally lowerthan the threshold of Rs 100 crore. It has now been clarified that an IP will be required if the indicative valueintimated by the procurement agency ismore than Rs 100 crore.n In case of offsets, there used to be a doubtwhether repeat orders placed under an‘option clause’ can be subjected to offsetobligations. It has now been explained that
The latest amendment hasfurther spelt out the
functioning of the monitorsin detail and their role haschanged from one of pure
oversight to a receipt ofcomplaints and conduct of
In addition to introducing a newcategorisation of procurement proposalsto encourage joint ventures, the newamendments also contain certain enablingand amplificatory provisions.
New ProvisionsPresently, the Defence Acquisition Council(DAC) categorises all acquisition proposalsinto three categories: Buy; Buy and Make and Make. Buy implies the outrightpurchase of the complete quantityrequired, Buy and Make entails the initialpurchase of a limited quantity in a fullybuilt up form, followed by licensedproduction in India of the balancerequirement; andfinally, Make cases refer to the indigenousdevelopment of the equipment. Underthe DPP, the Govern -ment has nowintroduced anothercategory called Buy &Make (Indian).
Based on aCapability DefinitionDocument (CDD)prepared by the ServiceHeadquarters (SHQ),DAC can now select a project under the newBuy & Make (Indian) category. CDD willoutline the requirement in operational termsand briefly describe the present capabilitiesdetermined on the basis of the existingequipment and manpower. The SHQshould on its part also indicate long-termrequirement in terms of numbers, timeschedule, immediate fund availability and the critical technologies (as identified by the Defence Research and DevelopmentOrganisation) to be absorbed by the Indian vendor.
Under the guidelines, indigenouslymanufactured products must have aminimum 50 percent indigenous content ona cost basis. The Indian partner shouldabsorb the identified critical technologies,50percent of which will be in respect of itemsfor which engineering and manufacturingdocumentation will be provided to theIndian vendor to enable him to carry outfabrication,assembly and testing.
For acquisitions covered under the newBuy & Make (Indian) category, requests forproposals (RFP) will be issued only to Indianpublic and private sector companies whichhave been assessed to possess the requisitetechnical and financial capabilities toundertake such projects. It will be left to
them to negotiate the transfer of technologyand finalise co-production arrangementswith foreign manufacturers.
The shortlisting of Indian companieswill be made on the basis of a detailedproject proposal submitted by them inresponse to the CDD. Companies will berequired to outline the roadmap fordevelopment and production of the item,either by themselves or through anyproduction arrangement with a foreignproducer. In turn, the proposal must alsospell out details of the proposed work-share and transfer of technology, both inrange and depth. Once the RFP is issued to the selected companies, the currentprocedure described for the Buy and Makecategory will apply.
Two other provisions will also aim at co-opting the defence industry indecision-making process:
First, to dovetail the future needs of thearmed forces with the industry, a publicversion of the perspective documentoutlining the technology perspective anda capability road map spaning 15 years willbe put up on the MoD website.
Second, in acquisition cases, whereparticipation by the Indian industry is considered probable, the representativesof industry associations will be invited by the Cate gorisation Committee to seek their views and issue clarifications, ifany. However, these representatives will not be present during the decision-making meetings.
Changes have come in other areas too.In 2006, An Integrity Pact (IP) for allprocurement schemes over Rs 100 crorewas introduced. The policy provides forthe appointment of indepen dent monitorsby the Government to oversee the
42
DEFENCE PROCUREMENT PROCEDURE
adherence to the pact. With regard to theirrole, the current policy simply states “Assoon as the monitor notices, or believes tonotice, a violation of this pact, he will soinform the Head of the Acquisition Wing.”
However in its latest amendments, theMoD has further spelt out the functioningof the monitors in detail. Their role haschanged from one of pure oversight to thatof a recipient of complaints and conductof follow-up enquiries. The names andaddresses of the monitors nominated foreach case are now required to be givenupfront in the RFP itself.
On the receipt of the complaint withregard to violation of the IP, the buyer hasto refer it to the monitors for theircomments and enquiry. If required, themonitors can peruse the relevant records.Then an enquiry report has to besubmitted to the Director General
Acquisition for his final decision.Another enabling provision relates to
offset contracts. Although no subsequentchanges are allowed in respect of offsetcomponents or value, change in the offsetpartner may be allowed in exceptionalcases, when considered desirable to enable the foreign vendor to fulfill hisoffset obligations.
Amplificatory AspectsIn order to remove ambiguities in someprovisions of the DPP-2008, the MoD has issued amplificatory amendments,which are: n Issuance of request for information (RFI)has been made mandatory to seekrequired inputs to make broad-basedServices Qualitative Requirements (SQR).This will be done both by correspondingwith a maximum number of manu -
facturers and putting the details up on theMoD website. Earlier, the words used were‘may be’, which had led to multipleinterpretations. Besides, seeking of infor -mation regarding range and depth oftransfer of key technologies has also beenallowed now. n The formulation of the SQR has beenfurther clarified. The SQR must express theuser’s requirements in terms of capabilitydesired with minimum required verifiablefunctional characteristics. It has twoconnotations—the SQR should becapability-centric and functional charac -teristic should be verifiable. n In order to ascertain that the SQR willresult in multiple vendor competition, allnew proposals being put up to the DACwill contain details of essential verifiablefunctional characteristics vis-à-vis technicalparametres of the equipment available inthe world market.n As stated earlier, the current proceduremandates that all procurement schemesexceeding Rs 100 crore will compulsorilyhave an IP signed between the pro -curement agency and the vendor.However, it was not clear whether thevalue as indicated by the procurementagency was the sole criterion. Doubts usedto be raised as to the applicability of thisclause in case a vendor pegs hiscommercial proposal marginally lowerthan the threshold of Rs 100 crore. It has now been clarified that an IP will be required if the indicative valueintimated by the procurement agency ismore than Rs 100 crore.n In case of offsets, there used to be a doubtwhether repeat orders placed under an‘option clause’ can be subjected to offsetobligations. It has now been explained that
The latest amendment hasfurther spelt out the
functioning of the monitorsin detail and their role haschanged from one of pure
oversight to a receipt ofcomplaints and conduct of
offsets will not be applicable in ‘optionclause’ cases, where the same was notenvisaged in the original contract.
Addressing a seminar on defenceacquisitions in New Delhi on October 27,2009, the Defence Minister, A.K. Anthony,claimed that the new amendments aim at“promoting and facilitating wideparticipation of the defence industry,while enabling transparency and integrityin all acquisitions”. However, an indepthappraisal of the amendments reveals thatexcept for increased transparency, verylittle is expected to be achieved.
Peripheral Value Certainly, by making the issuance of aenhanced RFI mandatory, the Governmenthas taken a major step towards enhancingtransparency. Similarly, a broad-based andcapability-centric SQR will generate morecompetition and not prejudice the selectionof competing technologies.
However, the sharing of theperspective equipment plan with theindustry is likely to be of academic andperipheral value for three reasons. Firstly,as pointed out by the CAG, a 15-year Long
Term Integrated Procurement Plan of thearmed forces for the period 2002-2017 wasfinalised only in 2006, whereas it shouldhave been approved well before itscommencement. It shows a total apathytowards long term planning. Two, allperspective plans undergo frequentchanges, both for operational andextraneous reasons.
Finally, funds are allotted to the MoDon an annual basis. A procurement plan
without assured financial support meanslittle. Given the above limitations andconstraints, the industry is unlikely tocommit resources purely on the basis of aprovisional perspective plan.
However, the positives include theclarification regarding the applicability ofthe IP which will certainly prevent smartvendors from keeping their quotemarginally lower than Rs 100 crore toescape signing the pact.
As regards the enlarged role ofindependent monitors to oversee enforce -ment of the IP, it is unlikely to improve thecredibility of the procedure. Although theirappointments are to be made inconsultation with the Central VigilanceCommissioner, their competence to spotirregularities in complex and intricatedefence procurement mechanism willalways remain suspect. Moreover, theycannot be expected to be independent astheir continued employment depends ontheir pro-Government deportment.Worse, they are required to submit theirreport to the authority against whoseorganisation the complaint has beenlodged. Understandably, most vendors
44
DSINOVEMBER 2009DEFENCE PROCUREMENT PROCEDURE
An indepth appraisal of the new amendments
reveals that except forincreased transparency,
very little is expected to be achieved.
”consider the role of independent monitorsto be totally perfunctory in nature.
Promotion of Indigenous IndustryHowever, the introduction ofconsultations with the industry prior to thecategorisation of acquisition proposals is along overdue measure. This step will helpthe Categorisation Committee to take awell-considered decision, fully informedabout indigenous competence.
Unfortunately, the most hyped newcategorisation of Buy & Make (Indian) isperhaps the most flawed policy change.The Government’s muddled thinking isrevealed by the fact that while theamendment equates the new categorywith the existing Buy and Make procedure,the official press release calls it ‘akin’ to theMake procedure.
There are other major problems andambiguities in the proposed procedure. For example, under the normal Buy andMake route, indigenous productionfollows the purchase of a certain quantityof selected equipment after competitiveevaluation. In other words, facilities forlicenced production are set up in India
only after the outright purchase is con -cluded. However, the new Buy & Make(Indian) route entails the issuance of RFPto multiple Indian vendors, asking them tofield their equipment for trials. It impliesthat all participating Indian vendors willhave to form joint ventures with foreignoriginal equipment manufacturer (OEM)and finalise arrangements for indigenousmanufacture well in advance of submittingtheir technical and commercial proposalslest the successful OEM starts playingtruant later on. It is going to be a highlyuncertain route.
Inexplicably, the primary onus ofinitiating cases under Buy & Make (Indian)category has been put on the SHQ. It is not clear as to why and on what basisshould a SHQ propose such a route.Moreover, the SHQ is required to identifythe critical technologies that should beabsorbed by the Indian partner, albeit inconsultation with the DRDO. It is a verytall order and much beyond thecompetence of any SHQ.
Most importantly, it is going to behighly impossible to monitor and ensurethe transfer of technology as envisaged in
the contract document. As the indigenousvalue addition has been fixed at 50 percentby cost, foreign vendors will continue tosupply critical components from their ownfacilities. Thus, the Indian value additionmay remain limited to low-techmanufacturers and associated services.
The MoD does deserve credit for itscontinued efforts to streamline theprocurement procedure through regularreviews. Whereas amplification of certainprovisions to remove ambiguities is awelcome step, the euphoria created by themedia is totally misplaced, newspaperheadlines like ‘Indian Defence IndustryPoised to Grow’ not withstanding.
One is reminded of the excitementgenerated in 2006 when Make (Hi Tech)Policy was introduced to promote theindigenous development of projects based on proven or matured technologies.It has been a total non-starter. Not a single project has been initiated under thiscategory during the last three years. It isnow feared that the Buy & Make (Indian)category will also meet the same fate, as theprocedure spelt out appears to be highlyconvoluted and imprecise.
A F-16IN combat aircraft, a medium multi-role fighter plane,manufactured by Lockheed Martin.(Right) A M777 155 mm Light Weight Field Howitzer
offsets will not be applicable in ‘optionclause’ cases, where the same was notenvisaged in the original contract.
Addressing a seminar on defenceacquisitions in New Delhi on October 27,2009, the Defence Minister, A.K. Anthony,claimed that the new amendments aim at“promoting and facilitating wideparticipation of the defence industry,while enabling transparency and integrityin all acquisitions”. However, an indepthappraisal of the amendments reveals thatexcept for increased transparency, verylittle is expected to be achieved.
Peripheral Value Certainly, by making the issuance of aenhanced RFI mandatory, the Governmenthas taken a major step towards enhancingtransparency. Similarly, a broad-based andcapability-centric SQR will generate morecompetition and not prejudice the selectionof competing technologies.
However, the sharing of theperspective equipment plan with theindustry is likely to be of academic andperipheral value for three reasons. Firstly,as pointed out by the CAG, a 15-year Long
Term Integrated Procurement Plan of thearmed forces for the period 2002-2017 wasfinalised only in 2006, whereas it shouldhave been approved well before itscommencement. It shows a total apathytowards long term planning. Two, allperspective plans undergo frequentchanges, both for operational andextraneous reasons.
Finally, funds are allotted to the MoDon an annual basis. A procurement plan
without assured financial support meanslittle. Given the above limitations andconstraints, the industry is unlikely tocommit resources purely on the basis of aprovisional perspective plan.
However, the positives include theclarification regarding the applicability ofthe IP which will certainly prevent smartvendors from keeping their quotemarginally lower than Rs 100 crore toescape signing the pact.
As regards the enlarged role ofindependent monitors to oversee enforce -ment of the IP, it is unlikely to improve thecredibility of the procedure. Although theirappointments are to be made inconsultation with the Central VigilanceCommissioner, their competence to spotirregularities in complex and intricatedefence procurement mechanism willalways remain suspect. Moreover, theycannot be expected to be independent astheir continued employment depends ontheir pro-Government deportment.Worse, they are required to submit theirreport to the authority against whoseorganisation the complaint has beenlodged. Understandably, most vendors
44
DSINOVEMBER 2009DEFENCE PROCUREMENT PROCEDURE
An indepth appraisal of the new amendments
reveals that except forincreased transparency,
very little is expected to be achieved.
”consider the role of independent monitorsto be totally perfunctory in nature.
Promotion of Indigenous IndustryHowever, the introduction ofconsultations with the industry prior to thecategorisation of acquisition proposals is along overdue measure. This step will helpthe Categorisation Committee to take awell-considered decision, fully informedabout indigenous competence.
Unfortunately, the most hyped newcategorisation of Buy & Make (Indian) isperhaps the most flawed policy change.The Government’s muddled thinking isrevealed by the fact that while theamendment equates the new categorywith the existing Buy and Make procedure,the official press release calls it ‘akin’ to theMake procedure.
There are other major problems andambiguities in the proposed procedure. For example, under the normal Buy andMake route, indigenous productionfollows the purchase of a certain quantityof selected equipment after competitiveevaluation. In other words, facilities forlicenced production are set up in India
only after the outright purchase is con -cluded. However, the new Buy & Make(Indian) route entails the issuance of RFPto multiple Indian vendors, asking them tofield their equipment for trials. It impliesthat all participating Indian vendors willhave to form joint ventures with foreignoriginal equipment manufacturer (OEM)and finalise arrangements for indigenousmanufacture well in advance of submittingtheir technical and commercial proposalslest the successful OEM starts playingtruant later on. It is going to be a highlyuncertain route.
Inexplicably, the primary onus ofinitiating cases under Buy & Make (Indian)category has been put on the SHQ. It is not clear as to why and on what basisshould a SHQ propose such a route.Moreover, the SHQ is required to identifythe critical technologies that should beabsorbed by the Indian partner, albeit inconsultation with the DRDO. It is a verytall order and much beyond thecompetence of any SHQ.
Most importantly, it is going to behighly impossible to monitor and ensurethe transfer of technology as envisaged in
the contract document. As the indigenousvalue addition has been fixed at 50 percentby cost, foreign vendors will continue tosupply critical components from their ownfacilities. Thus, the Indian value additionmay remain limited to low-techmanufacturers and associated services.
The MoD does deserve credit for itscontinued efforts to streamline theprocurement procedure through regularreviews. Whereas amplification of certainprovisions to remove ambiguities is awelcome step, the euphoria created by themedia is totally misplaced, newspaperheadlines like ‘Indian Defence IndustryPoised to Grow’ not withstanding.
One is reminded of the excitementgenerated in 2006 when Make (Hi Tech)Policy was introduced to promote theindigenous development of projects based on proven or matured technologies.It has been a total non-starter. Not a single project has been initiated under thiscategory during the last three years. It isnow feared that the Buy & Make (Indian)category will also meet the same fate, as theprocedure spelt out appears to be highlyconvoluted and imprecise.
A F-16IN combat aircraft, a medium multi-role fighter plane,manufactured by Lockheed Martin.(Right) A M777 155 mm Light Weight Field Howitzer
THE Indian Army is initiating a process to acquire300 light tanks to augment its firepower inmountainous terrain above 3,000 m along thefrontiers with nuclear rivals China and Pakistan.As part of its revised doctrinal, “cold start”strategy of going on the offensive in a limited warscenario, the Army also wants light tanks foremployment in battlefield reconnaissance in desertregion, in urban and semi-urban environments andin riverine terrain similar to that along the eastern,Bangladeshi border.
To meet this requirement for 200 wheeled and100 tracked light tanks weighing 22 tonnes, theArmy has recently issued a request for information(RFI) that requires them to be capable ofdep loy ment in peacekeeping operations and highintensity urban conflicts with multi-role weaponsystems including gun and missile systems. Theplatform needs to be “highly maneuverable” withsurveillance and communication capability toendow it with more flexibility.
Both the wheeled (8X8) and tracked light tanksneed to have a low silhouette to make them lessvisible to the enemy and to possess all-weather,night fighting and amphibious capability. They alsoneed to have high ground clearance, defensive aidsuites to provide protection against laser, thermaland radar guided munitions and should be nuclear,
biological and chemical (NBC) protected. Logistically, these tanks will be far easier
to transport in the Air Force’s IL-76 aircraft. They will significantly increase the Army’sflexibility and capability to operate in harsh terrainlike the 5,000 m high Ladakh plateau and the Sikkimregion where incursions by the People’s LiberationArmy (PLA), across the undemarcated Line of Actual Control between the neighbours, are on the increase.
Military planners say that in all likelihood anumber of the light tanks will constitute part of thetwo mountain divisions,presently under raising fordeployment along the Chinese frontier in theNortheast. The proposed divisions will also beequipped with attack helicopters and lightweighthowitzers,presently under procurement, are aimedat dealing with the incipient PLA threat.
Though it’s too early to confirm theirdeployments, military planners suggest that two additional armour regiments to the existing 64 can be raised to accommodate around 90-100light tanks for attachment to the new divisions. The remaining 200-odd tanks can constitutere con naissance regiments attached to the Army’stwo principal Strike Corps based at Ambala, 200km north of Delhi, and at Jhansi 400 km, southeastof India’s capital.
ORGANISER: DSA EXHIBITION AND CONFERENCE SDN BHD (423338-H)Suite 1402, 14th Floor, Plaza Permata, Jalan Kampar,Off Jalan Tun Razak, 50400 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.Tel : +603 4041 0311 Fax : +603 4043 7241E-mail : [email protected]
Presently, the bulk of the Indian Army’s64 armoured regiments operate a mix of over2, 800 Russian and locally built T-72 M1s andT-90s Main Battle Tanks. Around 11regiments still operate retrofitted T-55s,which are in the process of being replaced byT-90s and upgraded T-72 M1s equipped withfull and partial solution fire control systems(FCS) to provide them the night fightingcapability which they lack.
The Gorshkov PlotThickensTHE Defence Minister’s A. K. Antony’smid-October visit to Moscow has, onceagain, failed to resolve the murky con-troversy over the revised cost of refurbishingthe INS Vikramaditya (ex-Admiral Gorshkov),the 44,750 tonne Kiev-class aircraft carrier,that the Indian Navy (IN) is acquiring for theprice of its refit.
But what has finally been resolved, afteryears of obfuscation, is the mystery over theendless rumpus surrounding the escalatingcost of the carrier’s retrofit. The answerrecently provided in a Right to Information(RTI) response revealed that the decision toacquire the Gorshkov was taken incre-dulously after a mere “visual examination”of the damaged ship in an “as is condition”.
This conclusively nails the IN’s concertedcampaign that has consistently blamedRussian perfidy alone for the carriers’increasing cost estimated eventually to rise toan astronomical $ 3 billion. But, as always, inthese times of what passes for Governmentausterity, no one is listening or will ever beheld accountable.
Responding to the RTI applicationsubmitted by the anti-corruption activist S. C. Aggarwal, the IN admitted that it hadinked the deal to procure the carrier in 2004on the specious “thought” that mere repairscosting $ 974 million will render the carrieroperational. Thereafter, the Russians agreedto supply the IN the fire-ravaged and rustingcarrier commissioned in 1982 and badlydamaged following a boiler room explosionin 1994, for that price.
An additional $ 526 million was negotiatedfor 16 MiG-29 KuB fighters, including fourtrainers that were to comprise the carriers’air group in the overall $ 1.5 billion dealannounced with much fanfare and billed as a ‘bargain’.
But it was only after the carrierunderwent a detailed inspection of its hullstructure, systems and cabling that the INrealised that “entire replacements” and not
mere repairs were required to resurrect thecarrier currently undergoing its extensiveretrofit at the Sevmashpredpriyatiyeshipyard in northern Russia. “As per the contract signed in January
2004, the original package was drawn upbased on a visual examination in an “as iscondition” wherein it was found that themajority of the equipment and systems couldbe repaired while the electronic equipmentcould be renewed,” declared Vice Admiral S.P.S. Cheema of the Integrated Head-quarters, Ministry of Defence (Navy) in his RTI reply.
But these “additionalities” had resultedin enhanced project costs. Adm. Cheemaalso stated in his response that these werealso responsible for postponing the carrier’sdelivery to the IN by four years to 2012 oreven the following year.
Since 2007,Russia has steadily raised itsprice to retrofit the carrier, claiming theextent of repairs were grossly under-estimated. The IN’s riposte was that theRussians were the villains in the deal,determined to hold India to ransom.
Over the years, senior IN officers havebeen leaking stories to the media thatwithout the carriers’ blueprints andnecessary technical drawings, Russian
engineers had originally estimated that itwould require 700 km of cabling, but oncework began this figure was revised to 2,400km. The IN, they maintain,was blameless butare mysteriously silent when they arequizzed over their role in evaluating therepair work involved.
Various other essential repairs to thecarriers such as the specialised, angleddeck and other systems too appear to havecome as a complete surprise to the IN,which originally had been unmindful of itsown flippancy and casual attitude whileselecting the vessel and confirming thecontract as a steal. It seems all theassertions made by successive IN chiefsthat a detailed audit of the carrier has beenconducted were dubious; and hystericalthreats,by at least one Admiral to pull out ofthe deal, are little more than feeble rhetoric.
Delays in the INS Vikramaditya’s arrival has forced the IN to yet again retrofit INS Viraat, the Navy’s sole aircraft carrier forthe fourth time to keep it diffidently inservice till at least 2014. The 23,900-tonneCentaur-class carrier, formerly the HMSHermes, that turned 50 this November 18,entered the IN service in 1987. It now hasupgraded radar, fire control systems,combataircraft landing aids and communicationsuites. Additional plating to its hull, anoverhaul of its twin steam turbine propulsionsystem and re-tubing of its boilers hascompleted the retrofit of the carrier whichwas laid down in 1944 and commissioned intothe Royal Navy in 1959.
In the IN, the carrier has undergone threeupgrades, including a major one in 1999-2000,which included equipping it with the Israelaircraft industry’s Barak-I, an anti-missiledefence system, improving its ski jump tocomplement it to the Sea Harrier fightersand electronic warfare and communicationsystems. TheViraat has also got new hangarfire curtains and a revamped lift system toreduce reaction time in the event of an attackand flood alarms.
Ironically, the IN also faces seriousshortage of the Sea Harrier Mk.51 fighters tooperate off Viraat’s deck. Merely eightsingle-seat Sea Harrier Mk.51s and threetwin-seat Sea Harrier Mk.60s, of the original30 BAE Services naval fighters inducted intothe IN 1984 onwards, today remain operationalwith the majority lost in accidents.
The first batch of four MiG-29 K/KuBfighters, equipped with multi-functionalDoppler radar and advanced optic electronicsystems scheduled for delivery earlier thisyear, are also not likely to arrive before theyear-end or by early 2010. The remaining 12
MiG-29 KuBs will arrive 12 to 14 monthsthereafter. But they will take time to beinducted into service, operating from theIN’s shore-based facility at Goa till theVikramaditya joins the IN.
Special Force To GetBetter EquippedTHE Army is procuring an unspecifiednumber of 7.62 mm General Purpose MachineGuns (GPMGs) and 9 mm pistols for itsSpecial Forces (SF) and parachute units toprovide them more firepower for anti-terroristand counter-insurgency operations.
In the recently issued request forinformation (RFI) to oversee weaponmakers, the SF is seeking a “light weight,easy to carry and operate” GPMG with a 1, 200 m range,one with which a paratroopercan ably execute “static line and free fallparachute jumps”.
SF sources say, that the successfulemployment of 7.62 mm GPMGs by US andNATO forces on counter anti-insurgencyoperations in Afghanistan and Iraq hasprompted the proposed purchase as IndianArmy SF units are increasingly beingassigned an anti-terror role after theNovember 2008 strike on Mumbai by tengunmen in which over 160 people were killed.
Presently the Army’s SF’s sevenbattalions or around 5,000 personnel are equipped primarily with the Tavor 21, Israel assault rifles, as their primary
close quarter battle weapon. The RFI for 9 mm pistols requires them to
be equipped with night-fighting equipmentlike laser illuminators and high intensityflash lights, as replacement for thedecade-old Beretta 9 mm pistols theycurrently use.
Army sources say that a two-star officerhas recently been appointed AdditionalDirector General, SF to hasten equipmentprocurements for these elite units and to‘fine tune’ their somewhat indeterminaterole and employment.
Over the years, Indian Army SF unitshave been deployed largely in tactical ratherthan broader, strategic roles that wasoriginally envisaged for them. But thechanging regional security environment,with an increasing number of terroriststrikes capped by Mumbai’s siege last year,was ushering in a doctrinal change in theemployment of these elite troops.
In a related RFI, the Indian Army is alsoseeking a thermal weapon sight for assaultrifles for over 350 infantry battalions. Thesight should be an uncooled system capableof being mounted on a Picatinny Rail andable to capture and transmit digital imagesto a personal digital assistant up to 2 m utilising cable or wireless technologyusing standard data interfaces.
IAF Needs ImportedTrainer AircraftTHE Indian Air Force (IAF) is demanding theimmediate import of some 200 Stage-1trainer aircraft to cope with the crisis in itspilot training schedule. This follows therecent grounding of its entire fleet of locallyconstructed Hindustan Piston Trainer-32(HPT-32) initial trainer aircraft following aseries of fatal accidents.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) isevaluating the IAF’s request to cope with thetraining crunch till the State-ownedHindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) candesign and construct the single-engineHindustan Turbo Trainer-40 (HTT-40) it hasproposed by 2015. “The IAF has little or no faith in
delay-prone HAL’s ability to develop a basictrainer and deliver it on time andconsequently were pushing the MoD to makeoff-the-shelf purchases quickly in order tosustain its pilot training timetable” a seniorofficer said declining to be named as he wasnot authorised to speak on the matter.
Officials say that recurring problems with the HPT-32s which has registered some 100 emergencies in recent years led to their grounding in August 2009,
HPT-32s have registered over a hundred emergencies in recent years
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GSA ad 276x216 030909.indd 1 03/09/2009 3:12:09 PM
52
abruptly terminating Stage I of the IAF’s basic pilot training.
Ten HPT-32s have crashed over the pastdecade, the most recent being on July 31, inwhich two instructors from the Air ForceAcademy (AFA) at Hyderabad were killed.Earlier, in May 2008, a female IAF cadet diedafter fuel leaked into the HPT-32’s enginecausing the aircraft to crash. Such incidents,officials say, confirm the recent Comptrollerand Auditor General’s (CAGs) assessmentof the training aircraft being “technologicallyoutdated and beset by flight safety hazards”. “In spite of the loss of 11 pilots and 15
aircraft, it (HPT-32) continues to be usedtoday. Further, HPT-32 does not aid in thesmooth transition of trainees to the nextstage of training,” the CAG declared in itsaudit last year. IAF sources say that thepropeller-driven HPT-32 with twoside-by-side seats has officially recorded70 ‘incidents’, many of them fatal between1988 and 1995.
For nearly three decades, 40 to 50 IAFcadets have trained annually on the HAL-builtHPT-32s before graduating to the locallyconstructed HJT-16 Surya Kiran Mk.I inter-mediate flight and weapons training aircraft.
Thereafter, fighter pilots have movedonto the Surya Kiran Mk.II and the BAESystems Hawk-132 Advanced Jet Trainers(AJT) which were inducted into service inNovember 2007 to complete their instruction.
But with the HPT-32s grounded, a handfulof AFA cadets are now being trained directlyon Surya Kiran’s Mk.Is, a measure that notonly ‘thwarted’ training schedules but hasalso placed undue pressure on the aircraft.
Delivery delays by the HAL of locallyassembled Hawk 132s, has also adverselyimpacted IAF fighter pilot training sch-edules. HAL has so far delivered only three ofthe 42 Hawk 132s it has been contracted tobuild under license to the IAF, 12 aircraft lessthan its earlier commitment vindicating theAir Force’s lack of faith in the State-ownedaircraft company.
Desperate Attempts toPlug Artillery GapTHE Army’s Artillery Directorate is beingforced to consider the retrograde acquisition ofadditional Soviet-designed 130 mm M-46 fieldguns, developed in the 1950s from surplusstocks lying with the former Soviet Republics,to augment its fast depleting fire power.
Official sources say that the interminabledelays in acquiring new Howitzers to replaceand supplement the 410 Bofors 155 mm/39
calibre guns, acquired in the late 1980s, wasdriving the Army to consider taking thisbackward step to induct the nearly 60-year-oldtowed M-46s in a desperate attempt to plugits artillery shortfall.
India was the largest export customer forthe M-46 guns with an estimated 800purchased in the late 1960s onwards, latersuccessfully employed in the 1971 war withPakistan. Thereafter,under the Field ArtilleryRationalisation Plan finalised in the late1980s, the Army aimed at acquiring a mix ofaround 3,600 155 mm/52 cal and 155 mm/39 cal towed, wheeled, tracked andlight howitzers by 2020-25. They were to beused for some 180 out of 220 artilleryregiments. The new guns were intended toreplace the six different calibres the artillerypresently operates.
But all attempts to execute these artillerymodernisation plans have been sys t e m-atically stymied by both the Army and theMoD due largely to vacillation, complex andunrealistic bureaucratic procurementprocedures and allegations of corruption.
Under the most optimistic scenario it will take another five to eight years tovindicate this artillery requirement till whichtime the Army will remain largely dependenton the FH 77B Bofors guns,many of which hadbeen cannibalised to keep the rest ope-rational. The remaining firepower will beprovided by the relatively small number ofM-46 130 mm guns unsatisfactorily upgraded
by Israel’s Soltam to 155 mm/39 cal. On its part, the controversial Soltam
upgrade programme to retrofit 180 M-46 130 mm guns remains mired in controversy.The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)has been tasked to inquire into the “allegedirregularities” in awarding the $ 45,524,137contract by the BJP-led National DemocraticAlliance (NDA) Government in 2001. Theoutcome of the CBI inquiry, however, ispending nearly five years after theinvestigation was ordered by the incomingCongress-led administration: alongside, theoperational efficiency of the upgraded gunsremains questionable.
Artillery sources say that the principalproblem with the upgraded 130 mm guns istheir inability to hit targets at a distance of 40km to 41 km as agreed upon in negotiations.A senior artillery officer says their range is“substantially less” than what has beenpromised by Soltam and that the entireupgrade programme is thus “over ambitious”.There are additional problems that theupgraded guns face with their barrels andbreech block.
But the omnipotent Israeli lobby hassuccessfully managed to “persuade” theArmy to approve the upgrade much against itsbetter judgment and the retrofitted guns’substandard performance. And, ironicallymany years later, the Army is now being forcedto consider acquiring more 130 mm guns as yetanother ‘intermediate measure’.
More Soviet M-46s field guns to be acquired as an intermediate measure
Lockheed Martin’s F-16IN Super Viper is a unique new fighter sharing a heritage with the world’s only fifth generation fighters. This ultimate fourth generation fighter has been tailored exclusively to meet or exceed all of India’s Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) requirements. The F-16IN is the right choice for the Indian Air Force (IAF) and is ready for integration into India’s infrastructure and operations now. Evolutionary
technologies make the F-16IN the most advanced fourth generation fighter in the world today.
215x276dsi.indd 1215x276dsi.indd 1 6/16/2009 11:12:07 AM6/16/2009 11:12:07 AM
