Author: Gurmeet Kanwal
Publication: Hindustan Times
Date: December 11, 2008
URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=HomePage&id=929b2aff-42dc-4dc3-a021-3822424d8ce5
Introduction: Only covert can neutralise terrorist
organizations in the long run
The 'confinement' of Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM)
chief Masood Azhar and the arrest of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba's (LeT) chief commander
Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi suggest that the Pakistan government is cracking down
on terrorist outfits on Pakistani soil. At the same time, President Asif Ali
Zardari has rejected India's demand of handing them and others accused of
fomenting cross-border terror over to New Delhi. In this situation, several
viable military options are available to India to send a strong message to
the Pakistani army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate that
India's threshold of tolerance has been crossed.
So what are these military options? They include
trans-Line of Control raids on LeT, JeM and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) camps by
Special Forces; the destruction of Pakistani army posts on the LoC and its
logistics installations in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir by heavy doses of artillery
fire, and air-to-ground bombing of selected targets by the Indian Air Force.
However, hard military options will have only
a transitory impact unless sustained over a long period. These will also cause
inevitable collateral damage, run the risk of escalating into a larger war
with attendant nuclear dangers and have adverse international ramifications.
To achieve a lasting impact and ensure that the actual perpetrators of terrorism
are targeted, it is necessary to employ covert capabilities to neutralise
the leadership of terrorist organisations.
Clandestine operations can be methodically
planned and stealthily executed at an opportune moment. These are not time-critical
responses and also have an element of 'plausible deniability' built into them.
Other advantages include relatively low political, economic and military costs
and low risk of casualties to own operatives as local personnel - who harbour
grudges against the targeted organisations - can often be used.
After 1947, covert capabilities available
to Indian intelligence agencies were non-existent. Pakistan, on the other
hand, launched irregular warfare against India in Kashmir and sustained it
over the next few decades. After the 1962 war with China, India's newly-established
external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), received
help from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to establish capabilities
for clandestine operations across India's borders. When the ISI intervened
in favour of the protagonists of Khalistan in Punjab in the 1980s, and later
supported militancy in J&K, India retaliated in Sind and Balochistan.
Soon after the Brass Tacks IV crisis in 1987, R&AW chief A.K. Verma and
ISI chief Hamid Gul (now on India's wanted list) reportedly agreed to stop
launching covert operations against each other.
However, Pakistan did not keep its part of
the bargain in Kashmir on the specious plea that it is disputed territory.
Since then, Pakistan has often accused India of clandestine interference in
its internal affairs but has failed to corroborate its claims with hard evidence.
According to the intelligence grapevine, India's
covert capabilities in Pakistan were wound down on the orders of the Prime
Minister in 1997 so as to promote reconciliation. If that is true, a great
deal of effort will be necessary to establish these capabilities from scratch.
It will take at least three to five years to put in place basic capabilities
for covert operations in Pakistan as both the terrorist organisations and
their handlers like the ISI will have to be penetrated. The R&AW must
be suitably restructured immediately to undertake sustained covert operations
in Pakistan. The time to debate this issue on moral and legal grounds has
long passed.
- Gurmeet Kanwal is Director, Centre for Land
Warfare Studies, New Delhi
