Tag Archives: Jammu and Kashmir

Continuing Turmoil in Gilgit-Baltistan

Reports of a major Chinese presence in the Gilgit-Baltistan area have been pouring in. While Selig Harrison of the New York Times put the figure at 11,000, the Indian Army Chief said recently that about 4,000 Chinese workers, many of them PLA soldiers, are engaged in construction and mining activities in the Northern Areas. This unprecedented Chinese presence is being deeply resented by the local people.

The Gilgit Agency and Baltistan in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), that now comprise the Northern Areas, were part of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) at the time of partition. The woes of the people of the Northern Areas began on November 4, 1947, soon after J&K acceded to India in terms of the Independence of India Act. A young British major who was commanding the Gilgit Scouts overstepped his authority and illegally declared the accession of the Northern Areas to Pakistan. It shall remain one of the quirks of history that a Major of the British Raj could violate good order and military discipline and seal the fate of the people of an area almost as large as England.

Since then, the people of the Northern Areas have been denied all fundamental and political rights by Pakistan just like the Kashmiris in the rest of POK. They had for long been governed with an iron hand by a Federal Minister for Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas nominated from Islamabad and supported by the Pakistan army. Now, while the Governor is still appointed by the president of Pakistan, there is a Legislative Assembly with 24 members. The Assembly elects a Chief Minister. The judiciary still exists only in name and civil administration is virtually non-existent. The result has been that almost no development has taken place and the people live poverty stricken lives without even a semblance of health care and with only primitive educational facilities based primarily on madrasas run by Islamist fundamentalists.

These simple and hardy people have never reconciled themselves to their second-class status and have for long resented the tyrannical attitude of the Pakistan government. Consequently, there have been frequent riots and uprisings. The most violent political outbursts took place in 1971, 1988 and 1997. In fact, it was General Pervez Musharraf, then a brigadier commanding the Special Service Group (SSG) commandos, who had been handpicked to put down a Shia uprising in Gilgit in 1988. He let loose Wahabi Pakhtoon tribesmen from the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) on the hapless protestors. These tribesmen invaded Gilgit and went on a deliberately unchecked rampage. They lynched and burnt people to death, indulged in loot, rape and arson, ransacked houses and destroyed standing crops and left the area smoldering for years.

The Pakistan army used the people of the Northern Areas as cannon fodder during the 1999 conflict with India. It refused to acknowledge the contribution of the Northern Light Infantry (NLI) battalions to Operation Badr. Of the 772 Pakistani soldiers, including 69 officers and 76 SSG personnel, who laid down their lives for a militarily futile venture, almost 80 percent belonged to NLI battalions. Of these, over 200 were buried with military honours by the Indian army in graves at heights ranging from 15,000 to 17,000 feet because the Pakistan army had refused to take their bodies back. The people of the Northern Areas were extremely agitated by these developments.

The simmering discontent of the last 60 years and deep resentment against being treated as second-class citizens has led to a widespread demand for the state of Balawaristan. The people are demanding genuine democratic rule and the right to govern themselves. A large number of influential leaders of the Northern Areas have buried their political differences and joined hands to form the Balawaristan National Front (BNF), with its head office at Majini Mohalla, Gilgit.

Though some sops are now being offered to them, the people of the Northern Areas are completely disenchanted. Their alienation from the Pakistan mainstream is too deep to be ever reconciled and Balawaristan is quite obviously an idea they will pursue vigorously.

Capacity Building for Future Conflict

In view of India’s unresolved territorial disputes with China and Pakistan in the mountainous Himalayan region, there is a very high probability that the next major land conflict on the Indian sub-continent will again break out in the mountains and, in order to avoid the possibility of escalation to nuclear exchanges, the conflict will in all probability remain confined to mountainous terrain.

A strategic defensive posture runs the risk of losing some territory to the adversary if capabilities do not exist to be able to launch a deep ingress to stabilise the situation. India’s must upgrade its military strategy of dissuasion against China to that of genuine conventional and nuclear deterrence that can come only from the ability to take the fight deep into the adversary’s territory through the launching of major offensive operations. To achieve this objective, it is necessary to raise and position one mountain Strike Corps each in Jammu and Kashmir for offensive operations against China and Pakistan and in the northeast for operations against China. In addition, other defensive corps must be given limited capability to launch offensive operations with integral resources.

Manoeuvre is extremely limited in the mountains due to the restrictions imposed by the terrain. In the plains too India’s Strike Corps cannot execute deep manoeuvres due to the risk of Pakistan’s nuclear red lines being threatened early during a campaign. As firepower is the other side of the coin, it is necessary to substantially upgrade capabilities of the armed forces to inflict punishment and indeed achieve victory through the orchestration of overwhelming firepower, or else India will have to be content with a strategic stalemate.

These capabilities include conventionally-armed SRBMs to attack high value targets in depth. Air-to-ground and helicopter-to-ground attack capabilities need to be modernised, particularly those enabling deep ground penetration and accurate night strikes. In fact, the Indian Air Force should aim to dominate the air space and ground strikes must paralyse the adversary’s ability to conduct cohesive ground operations. Artillery rockets, guns and mortars must also be modernised. Lighter and more mobile equipment is required so that these can be rapidly moved and deployed in neighbouring sectors.

India’s holdings of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) continue to be low. In recent conflicts like the war in Iraq in 2003 and the ongoing Afghan conflict, PGMs have formed almost 80 per cent of the total ammunition used. Indian PGM holdings must go up progressively to at least 20 to 30 per cent in order to achieve high levels of operational efficiencies. India’s defence planners must recognise that it is firepower asymmetries that will help to achieve military decisions and ultimately break the adversary’s will to fight.

Capabilities for heliborne assault, vertical envelopment and amphibious operations are inadequate for both conventional conflict and dealing effectively with contingencies that might arise while discharging India’s emerging regional responsibilities. Two rapid reaction-cum-air assault divisions (with an amphibious brigade each) need to be raised by the end of the 13th Defence Plan, i.e. by 2017-22. The expenditure on these divisions will be highly capital intensive and will be subject to the defence budget being gradually raised to first 2.5 per cent and then 3.0 per cent of India’s GDP.

C4I2SR capabilities are still rudimentary in nature and must be substantially modernised to exploit the synergies that can be achieved by a network centric force. A seamless intelligence-cum-targeting network must be established to fully synergise the strike capabilities of air and ground forces in real time. A good early warning network will enable the army to reduce the number of troops that are permanently deployed for border management and will add to the reserves available for offensive operations. Infrastructural developments along the northern borders have failed to keep pace with the army’s ability to fight forward and must be speeded up.

ISI in the Doghouse – Again

The Kashmiri American Council, based in Washington D.C. and headed by Ghulam Nabi Fai, has been established by Pakistan’s ISI to influence public opinion about Kashmir, according to the FBI. Fai is of Kashmiri origin but a US citizen. For almost two decades, the ISI has been channeling funds through Fai to make contributions to American political leaders by way of campaign contributions to lobby against India in the United States Congress, hold international seminars to launch attacks on the government of India regarding alleged human rights violations in Kashmir and print propaganda pamphlets. A total of US$ 4 million was allegedly funneled by the ISI to the U.S. to influence political leaders with a view to changing U.S. policy on Kashmir.

614_x_261All of these activities were in violation of U.S. laws but the authorities appear to have chosen to ignore them, possibly because of Pakistan’s status as an ally in the so-called global war on terror and perhaps as a quid pro quo for the Pakistan army and the ISI keeping quiet about similar CIA activities in Pakistan. The killing of Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad in May this year irrevocably altered the cozy relationship between the ISI and the CIA. This is what led to the arrest of Fai and his fellow conspirator Zaheer Ahmed on July 19th. Their prosecution will once again reveal the perfidious and duplicitous nature of the Pakistan army and its rogue intelligence agency – the ISI.

The international conferences organized by the KAC were attended by several influential Indians as well, among them Mr. Subramaniam Swamy, a member of Parliament and Mr. Dilip Padgaonkar, a former journalist who is now a member of the prime minister’s task force on Kashmir. Both of them have denied knowledge of Fai’s background and his affiliation with the ISI.

There are other such organizations which are supported by the ISI in Europe and elsewhere. They are usually NGOs that support the Kashmiri people’s ‘right to self determination’. The never tell the paid audiences that gather for their propagandist conferences that free and fair elections have been held in Jammu and Kashmir continuously at least since the mid-1990s and that a people’s government has been in power. On the contrary, Pakistan Occupied Kashmir is governed directly by Islamabad and the people of POK are treated like second class citizens.

According to the Washington Post, “News of the case reverberated through Pakistan’s military and intelligence apparatus on Wednesday, where many suspect the timing of the charges was in retaliation for recent expulsions and arrests of Americans in Pakistan.” However, the FBI has denied any such linkage. The arrests are certainly likely to lead to yet another dip in US-Pakistan relations in the short term. However, as long as American troops remain in Afghanistan in large numbers and their supply lines continue to pass through Quetta and Peshawar, the U.S. has no option but to keep the Pakistan army and the ISI humored in its own national interest.

Constructive Engagement: India-Pakistan Foreign Secretaries Talks

Although talks between India’s Nirupama Rao and Pakistan’s Salman Bashir in the last week of June 2011 did not produce a major breakthrough, the fact that these were viewed positively by both the sides and were described as constructive and cordial makes the talks special. This is because nothing more than the reiteration of known positions on the resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute and on the export of terrorism into India had been anticipated in both the countries. The talks focussed on peace and security, including terrorism and nuclear and military confidence bldg measures; the Kashmir issue; and, the promotion of people-to-people contacts as well as friendly exchanges.

During the talks, India sought early closure on the trial of Pakistani terrorists who were involved in the planning and execution of the Mumbai terror strikes in November 2008 and pointed out that there cannot be any meaningful discussion on Kashmir under the shadow of the gun. Calling for an end to the “shadow of the gun and the violence it has unleashed”, Ms Rao expressed concern over continuing infiltration into Kashmir. She said at a joint press conference that the “ideology of military conflict should have no place in the paradigm of our relationship of the 21st century… Instead, this relationship should be characterised by the vocabulary of peace, all-round cooperation in the interest of our people, growing trade and economic interaction, as well as people to people contacts — and, all this, let me emphasise, in an atmosphere free of terror and violence.”

The issue of terrorism figured prominently in the joint statement: “The foreign secretaries noted that both countries recognize that terrorism poses a continuing threat to peace and security and they reiterated the firm and undiluted commitment of the two countries to fight and eliminate this scourge in all its forms and manifestations. They agreed on the need to strengthen cooperation on counter-terrorism.”

Both the sides agreed to make efforts to expand trans-LoC trade, increase the frequency of the Srinagar-Muzzafarabad bus service and to examine the feasibility of starting a bus service between Kargil and Skardu. Frank talks were held on the issue of peace and security between India and Pakistan. Discussions on CBMs included the establishment of contacts between the training establishments of the armed forces of the two countries, including India’s National Defence College and Pakistan’s National Defence University. New nuclear CBMs and measures for better coordination between India’s Coast Guard and Pakistan’s Maritime Security Agency were also discussed. India had presented a draft agreement to prevent “situations at sea” involving vessels of the two countries at a previous meeting. The Pakistani side agreed to examine the document.

A suggestion for contacts between defence and security think tanks, including the holding of seminars and conferences, was also taken up for discussion. Both the sides agreed that hostile propaganda should not be allowed to cloud the relationship. The two countries decided to constitute a group of experts to discuss conventional and nuclear CBMs to “discuss implementation and strengthening of existing arrangements, and to consider additional measures, which are mutually acceptable, to build trust and confidence and promote peace and security.”

Unlike the frosty talks between India’s External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi in 2010, the Foreign Secretary talks resulted in some forward movement. Krishna and Pakistan’s new Foreign Minister – to be appointed shortly, will meet in July 2011 and take up these issues where the two Foreign Secretaries have left off. If they succeed in building on the gains made at Islamabad, the India-Pakistan rapprochement process will once again begin to gather momentum.