archive: Push LoC outwards
Push LoC outwards
Bharat Karnad
The Week
Posted on Wed, 21 Jul 1999 10:38:51 +0530
Title: Push LoC outwards
Author: Bharat Karnad
Publication: The Week
Date; July 25, 1999.
Giving Pakistan a taste of its own medicine will be the most effective
course
There is no end to lessons from the war for the uplands around Kargil.
It brought home to a laid-back Indian government and people the
inherently elastic nature of the Line of Control (LoC) and the fact
that, not being an international boundary, it can be forcibly altered.
It shook up an equally complacent Indian military, showing just how a
relatively small expeditionary effort by the Pakistan armed forces in
the mountainous terrain of Jammu & Kashmir can fetch
disproportionately large returns.
The gambit hugely discomfited India and has compelled it to make a
large and ongoing commitment of military and financial resources to
roll back the incursion and to build up a deterrent presence in the
vicinity. The Pakistani strategists call it the Siachen-isation of
Kargil entailing a slow bleeding over time of Indian money and
military assets. And it indicated the ease with which Islamabad can
exploit western fears of a nuclear brushfire war in the subcontinent
in order to internationalise an outstanding dispute and to force the
United States/NATO/UN to intervene in the conflict. From the Pakistani
perspective, these are not inconsiderable politico-military dividends.
Need of the hour is an aggressive military approach: Soldiers
advancing towards Point 5347
Manning a long, difficult and disputed border is cost-prohibitive.
According to Defence Minister George Fernandes the expenditure
involved to upkeep the present level of forces in the Kargil sector is
Rs 10 crore per day. But high technology systems, in the form of laser
and infra-red sensors, may provide an economical alternative. Operable
in any terrain, these remote-controlled systems can instantly sound an
alert when infiltration takes place and pinpoint the location of the
breach, enabling the launching of effective containment measures,
including the use of helicopter gunships and airborne forces and
obviating the need for troop deployment in strength all along the LoC
and for an elaborate logistics network.
Earlier, such advanced technology solutions were deemed too expensive.
But passive sensor systems make sense, especially as their extensive
use may at once defeat Islamabad's immediate plans to turn Kargil into
a suppurating wound and undermine the long-term Pakistani policy of
waging sustained low intensity war in Kashmir by denying it material
support and mercenary manpower from across the Line.
India has so far based its case on Kashmir on the legalities of
accession and the provisions in the original 1949 UN Security Council
Resolution, and has generally acted as if the Marquess of Queensbury
Rules applied. It failed to make an impression.
India is faced with some very stark options. Inevitably, the
US-orchestrated pressures on India and Pakistan to settle the dispute
will increase. For India to resist these will require at the very
least that New Delhi come up with a more convincing explanation for
the continuing Indian interest in Kashmir. And, to compel Islamabad to
settle on the LoC as international border, India will have to
significantly raise the costs to Pakistan which, in turn, means
pursuing a more activist military policy. This becomes necessary in
any case because it will be suicidal for the Nawaz Sharif government
to implement two of the three Indian conditions of recognising the
sanctity of LoC and of preventing its violation in the future by the
so-called mujahideen.
The logic of demography is irrefutable and has the potential of
weakening the very foundation of Pakistani identity and of, in effect,
destroying the raison d'etat of that country. This logic should
spearhead India's Kashmir policy and it goes something like this:
India is the largest Muslim state in the world, barring Indonesia. At
the present rate of growth of the community, this country by the year
2010 will take over the top spot. Juxtapose this against the Partition
criteria for accession of princely states, namely, contiguity and the
country with the larger Muslim populace, and India's claims are
air-tight.
Were this argument to be incessantly made in international fora and
followed up by New Delhi declaring that on the basis of this reality,
India will henceforth act as the guardian of Muslim interests in all
of South Asia including Pakistan, a role Jinnah had conceived for his
founding state, India will have succeeded in demolishing the 'two
nation' theory, with what consequences for our neighbour can only be
imagined!
But political arguments buttressed with military pressure is what will
induce Pakistani respect for LoC. One idea that was mooted at the
height of the campaign in Kargil was to order air force
fighter-bombers to strike Skardu, the headquarters of the Pakistan
Forces Command, northern areas, with conventional bombs. A zanier idea
called for an Indian attack across the international border in the
Punjab and elsewhere. The dangers implicit in either course of action,
were obvious. It would straightaway bring the US to Pakistan's
diplomatic-cum-military defence and/or, prompt a rattled Pakistani
government to use nuclear weapons, though many believe that Pakistan
does not at the moment possess an operationally ready nuclear arsenal.
A more prudent and productive option would be for New Delhi to treat
the LoC exactly as the Pakistanis treat it, and to have the Indian
Army stealthily but steadily establish ever newer Lines of Control,
grabbing a peak here, occupying an enemy post there in a series of
sustained and relentless small unit and commando actions, which the
ministry of external affairs can then swear by! It will also be
incumbent on MEA to reject outright any evidence offered regarding
alleged Indian violations of the Line of Control.
The pushing of the LoC outwards in this manner will soon create a
dilemma for Islamabad. Given the sheer weight of numbers that the
Indian Army can bring to bear, General Parvez Musharraf and his
cohorts in general headquarters, Rawalpindi, will discover their
inability to thwart Indian measures to nibble away at the
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and the northern areas. Positive
incentives, like the promise of free trade and close economic and
cultural ties, not having worked; negative incentives contained in the
Indian policy of 'grab as grab can' just might convince the Pakistanis
to concede LoC as international boundary, because otherwise they face
the prospect of gradual loss of territory in their part of Kashmir. To
initiate this policy, however, requires guts and gumption, qualities
the Indian government has always been short of.
If New Delhi doesn't adopt a more activist mindset in its dealings
with Pakistan, India will be at the receiving end of the occasional
intense clashes on the LoC and an ongoing Islamabad-assisted
insurgency within Kashmir. It is not only not a recipe to advance the
cause of peace in South Asia but it may have encouraged Pakistani
obstreperousness. Islamabad revels in its 'bad boy' behaviour because
it knows it is risk-free as New Delhi has usually responded with
unnecessary restraint in the political-ideological realm and in the
conventional military sphere.
American (and Western-cum-Japanese) meddling in the subcontinent's
affairs, courtesy Kargil, is a different kettle of fish. Prime
Minister Sharif's brandishing of Kashmir as a nuclear flashpoint was
opportunistic but also guaranteed to get the US and the west into the
act. Washington and the other P-5 nuclear weapons states are unlikely
to surrender the leverage afforded them by Islamabad's rattling of the
nuclear sabre. They will use it as a stick to beat the two countries
into signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile
Material Cut-off Treaty on the anvil. This is the greatest peril that
Kargil has brought in its train.
Two things will neutralise the latter type of pressures. One, India's
embarking on a deliberate course of megatonne thermonuclear
weaponisation coupled to its acquiring intercontinental ballistic
missiles, a capability well within India's technological and
industrial competence. Secondly, a show of nerve and resoluteness by
our rulers in securing for the country a strategic deterrent of
consequence, and there's the rub. As always in India, it is the
political leadership which is the weakest link in an otherwise strong
security chain.
(The writer is Research Professor in National Security Studies at the
Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, and member of the National
Security Advisory Board of the National Security Council.)
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