WAR BY OTHER MEANS (‘WOM’)---PART TWO
May 24 2008 | Views 1901 | Comments (8) | Report AbuseA well-meaning young lass, writing on TERRORISM on SULEKHA pages, has raised a very vital point while stating that we do not want theories but solutions. She is absolutely right. But the problem is not of a solution but as to WHO WOULD IMPLEMENT THE SOLUTION? Can we take harsh decisions in a democracy when over one billion people are running in different directions and the administrators have lost sense of national duty in favour of penuiary gains for self? India in the year 2008 AD is a mesh of vulnerabilities, chaos and disorder, while its leadership at national, regional and local levels suffers from myopia. We ought to understand this before we think of solutions. Also, there are no quick fix solutions to as complcated a problem as India has. Let us understand this first--sure, I will talk of the solution in the next instalment.
For a while, let us
flash back to the years 1990-92, in India. Punjab was in flames; Assam was in
turmoil; Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura were burning; J&K had begun to
generate heat; Mumbai and Maharashtra were exploding under the weight of serial
blasts; UP was being torn apart by communal riots and Tamil Nadu had begun to
get the tremors. Do not forget about Naxlite in Andhra Pradesh, ORISSA, West Bengal and
MP.
Now turn to the present times. In the year
2008, fires in Punjab have not yet been fully doused. Assam continues to be
rocked by ULFA and Bodo extremists. Do not discount ISI-backed Muslim militant
organisations in Assam? Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura have not been cured of
separatist fever. The ever increasing stream of Bangla Deshis (BDs) pouring into
India—an unhindered outcome of vote bank politics--, provides easy recruits for
ISI-sponsored 'WOM' in India. A most conservative estimate suggests there are 20
million BDs in india---living in metros and major cities as labourers, who are
the potential Irregular soldiers of ISI, for blowing up JAIPURS and HYDERABADS.
The ISI is no more dependent upon Indian Muslims—bulk of whom have rejected
ISI-triggered operations. BDs are surviving in INDIA due to lopsided
governmental policies of all political parties. ISI feels that India had used
EASTERN PAKISTAN (read Bangla Desh) to break up Pakistan and ISI too would use
them to break up India. This is the new ball game.
Add to the above list, UPVA (United
People’s Volunteer of Arunachal) and ULVA (United Liberation Voluneeers of
Arunachal Pardesh) movements in Arunachal Pardesh; MELTA (Meghalya Liberation
Tigers) and MULA (Meghalya United Liberation Association) organisations of
Meghalya and HPC (Hammer people’s Convention) rising aspirations in Mizoram,
you get a rather gloomy picture of entire North East.
Come further west. While one
finds Gorkhaland issue waiting to erupt again( you know what has happened in
Nepal! Don’t you?). At the same time, West Bengal will soon have another headache from
Malda and its surrounding areas where demand for a separate state is raising its
head. Moving West of it, you find UP and Bihar rampant with the growth of
private armies, equipped with sophisticated weapons, which are assuming
cancerous proportions. Private wars of ‘Lal-Sena’, ‘Ranbir-Sena’ and even
criminal gang-lords have all the ingredients of turning it into an unmanageable
civil-war. As the first decade of 21st century comes to its close, UP
and BIHAR are one click away from the blood-smeared faces of their own blood.
The bleeding war is at their door step.
Go North from here. J&K
threatens to become a painful brain-tumour for India. No cure seems to be in
sight. Its pain is even extended to Himachal Pradesh. Moving South from here,
Mumbai and Maharashtra, as always, sit on a communal power keg, which can be
anytime ignited by ISI operatives. Its shock waves can always travel unhindered
to Gujrat, Madhya Pardesh and Rajasthan. Gujjar movement in Rajsthan had
paralysed life in rajsthan in the year 2007 and again since 23 May 2008 they
are on the rampage, disrupting rail sevices. 17 people have already died in the
police firing on this Gujjar agitation, near Bharatpur in Rajsthan, on 23 May
2008. Who says they can not be exploited by ISI and its well entrenched 'white
coats' in India?
Rise of Al-Umma type of organisations in Tamil
Nadu, give it a great prospectus of turning into another Kashmir. Let us also
not discount LTTE bases there which will get activated as and when required.
What about Andhra Pardesh, where Naxalite movement of people’s war Group (PWG)
continues to be a painful ulcer in the abdomen. And now long-drowned voices of
Telenga have again begun to be heard. Karnataka and Kerala have their own
problems of communal mayhem.
Thus, in the year 2008, the
body-politic of ‘Mother India’ presents a gory tale of multifarious diseases
afflicting its various limbs from arms to head to toe. There is a tumour in the head; murmur in
the heart; ulcer in the abdomen; arthritis in the body-joints and undying pain
in all other limbs. The internal wounds of India makes it a fit case
for external virus to enter its body politic and enlarge its wounds to ooze its
blood out. Unless India quickly heals these wounds, the blood-sucking Vampires
of the world are going to feast on its blood. India is in the thick of a
bleeding war, aided and abetted both from inside and outside. Merely blaming the
external virus will not help in the matter. What India needs to do is to apply
balm on internal wounds and at the same time immunize itself from external
virus.
The irony is, in India, people still do not realise that they have been
at war for the last 15 to 20 years. It is because we have not yet grasped the
nuances of WOM and the Bleeding War. Indian mind-set continues to see war as
monkey – dancing across the borders. We called Kargil conflict of 1999 as
‘War-Like-Situation’ and not war. Pray, what was it, if not war. Their
definition of war is partaken from the model of Bangla Desh war of 1971.
No
wonder, while India has been bleeding form head to toe for the past two decades,
we have been dismissing it as insurgency, terrorism, sponsored violence or even
as ‘War-Like Situation’. Some people are as naïve as to describe the situation
in various states as law and order problem. While others, who are more
clear-visioned, go to the extent of calling it a proxy-war. No one seems to
accept, nay, not even Generals and Colonels, that India ahs been involved in an
active war ever since Zarb-E-Momin’ was practiced by late General Zia-Ul-Haque
of Pakistan.
Designer War was launched on
India through ‘Operation Azadi’, though some Indian analysists call it,
‘Operation Topac’. It is a different matter it could not create conditions
conducive enough to go beyond the second act of ‘Bleeding War’. May be the fast
changing geostrategic environments, after the gulf-war of 90-91, forced it to
drop the idea of a surgical strike as it had envisioned it through
‘Zarb-E-Momin’. It may perhaps be a missed opportunity for Pakistan. All the
same ‘Operation Azadi’ was a brilliantly conceived and cleverly launched version
of the Designer War,. No one should grudge the military brilliance of
Zia-Ul-Haque, who foresaw and understood the nuances of the ‘Designer War’ much
before his contemporaries in South Asia could even think of it.
Perhaps, the gulf-war in 1991
robbed Pakistan off its master stroke in Kashmir. Also, by then, Zia-Ul-Haque,
had been three years in his grave, cursing ‘Mirza Aslam-Bag’(Zia’s successor as
pak military Chief) for his inaction and inability to pursue the exploits of the
success of ‘Bleeding-War-act’ of his Zarb-E-Momin. An opportunity had gone
abegging in 1990-91. Ask Jagmohan, the then Governor of J&K, who
knows how India had goofed it up in Kashmir. He is right when he says: He pulled
Kashmir out of the jaws of Pakistan. Perhaps the gulf-war came as a
silver-lining for India and we in India must thank late Saddam Hussien of Iraq
for saving us a biggest disgrace since 1962. ‘Operation Azadi’ was launched 20
years back. Ever sincethen, in India, we have failed to recognize it as a ‘war’.
Perhaps, the nation awaits a
clarion call from the ramparts of the Red Fort by the Prime Minister of India to
formally tell the nation that it was at war. Such is the degree of
thought-bankruptcy and mind-stagnation in India that we fail to clearly read the
writing on the wall.
Many centuries back, the great Indian political philosopher,
Chanakya or Kautlya spoke of four kinds of dangers which threaten national
security. The first danger, he said was that originated from inside and
was aided and abetted from inside. This was a state of internal revolt or coup
against the kind which seeks to replace the central authority or the king. The
cause may be incompetence of the king or the hidden ambitions of close relatives
or the trusted lieutenants. The second danger, according to him, originated from
inside but was aided and abetted from outside. This implies that a section of
king’s subject refuse to accept the sovereignity of the king and years for an
independent status. This leads to secessionist movement or insurgency. Both
these dangers arise from the internal weaknesses and may lead to civil war and
end up with the fragmentation of the state. External foes will be thereto
exploiting these weaknesses. The third danger, he felt was that originated from
outside but was aided and abetted from inside. This was a case of a proxy war,
where adversary seeks to destroy the nation with the help of paid traitors or
greedy sympathizers. The last danger, Chanakya advocated, originated from
outside. This is what people, down the centuries, have been calling war or the
other extension of the political aim of a nation. This sought to violate the
territorial integrity of other nations either to subjugate them or to fragment
the enemy nation to cease it from being
a potent threat.
The world history bears testimony
to the fact that the four dangers to national security, as enunciated by
Chanakya, have either singly or in combinations and the countries. From
Alexander’s Greece to Napoleon’s France; from Queen Victoria’s England to
Hitler’s Germany; from Ottoman Empire to Soviet Empire, story is the same. All
fell victim to outside pressures and rising inner vulnerabilities. Here, one
ought to note while outside pressures had only acted as a catalytic agent, it
were the inner weaknesses i.e. political, social, economical and military, which
accounted for the dissipation of these great sand-stones of
history.
History falsifies any notion of nations
or empires breaking up purely due to external dangers. In fact, external danger
or the outside threat alone is always the cementing factor of a nation. It is
only when the nations ignore their internal vulnerabiltiesthat the external
threat multiplies. Consider the four dangers enunciated by Chanakya. Out of the
four conditions, three are related someway or the other, to the internal
dangers. Consider the Soviet Union of Mikhail Gorvachav. The mighty
superpower of the world with the tremendous military strength and all the
nuclear arsenal could not avoid its disintegration because it allowed its
social, political and economical weaknesses to spiral into an unmanageable
storm. It did not need external push to break it up.
It is therefore a lesson for those nations,
who ignore their social, political and economical vulnerabilities and
concentrate only on military that they will soon come to grief. Military
strength is only the representation of elephant like bulk- the brawn, while
inner stability, represents the brain. It is the brain which sustains the
matching physical prowess and not the other way round. The elephant like
structure will always be vulnerable to Tiger-like force.
Brain-Force-Wars of
‘Third-Wave’ essenttially mean this. Therefore, if nations concentrate on
overcoming their internal vulnerabilities, the external threats will be
automatically reduced. National power is a sum total of its social harmony;
political stability; quantum of national resources; geographical spread, level
of scientific and technological knowledge; wealth of industrial infrastructure
and the degree of economic development which automatically translate themselves
into its matching physical-prowess. Whoever achieves Social harmony and
political stability to a reasonable degree becomes a global player in the
international conduct of the nations. The clouds of external dangers begin to
disappear.
Alongwith a tremendous shift
(not merely change) in the global geo-strategic environments, the regional
environments in the South Asia, too, have undergone a change. With the rise of
the nuclear clouds over the region, since May 98, both India and Pakistan have
lost the vital options of pursuing their national interests across the borders
directly. South Asia today is a flash point in the world affairs and all eyes
are gleefully fixed on the region. Proportionate nuclear deterrence and the
increasing concern of the world in the region, disallow any option of ‘Hot pursuit’ or the monkey –
dance across the borders. If we need a proof, then Kargil-99 provided us a good
lesson on this. A report authored by the study team of the think-thank of US
based ‘Rand-Corporation’ envisaged a stage of
‘Ugly Stability’ in the
South Asia for a period of next 10 -15 years. When one considers this report was
authored much before the emergence of the nuclear deterrence in the region, one
feels the period of ‘Ugly-stability’ for 10-15 years
may; be an understatement. This period may extend much beyond this
estimate.
Kashmir will continue to fuel the ugliness in
their relations. Theirs is going to be a sad tale of two monkeys’s quarrelling
over a piece of bread. Emotionally blinded by self-perceived unfinished agenda
of partition in 1947 and humiliated by the injury caused by India in 1971,
ruling elite in Pakistan will continue to be driven to seek revenge on India.
Similarly, pained by the continuous pin-pricks in Kashmir and the rest of India,
no government in India is going to ignore ISI backed mischief.
If leadership across the
borders continues to be blinded by the emotional logic of the past and do not
compromise with the realities of the modern times, sure South Asia will witness
an unprecedented ‘Blood-Bath’. ‘War-by other-means’ or WOM has sounded the bugle
of its presence in South Asia with the fan-fare of the nuclear explosions in May
98. Kargil-99 has further assured its sanctity. It should now be apparent that
the danger to Indian security was more form ‘WOM’ than nuclear bombs or
missiles.
It is in this context the internal
vulnerabilities of India pose a serious threat to the security of India. Their
magnification spell catastrophe for the very survival of India as a nation. They
are the needles pointed at the body-politic of India which will ooze its blood
out. Their pricks are so painful that, at the dawn of 21st century,
India lies prostrate in agony from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Mumbai to
Kohima. It is this aspect of National security which needs greater attention of
the nation ratter than ‘Ghauri’ and ‘Gaznabi’ from chugai Hills in Pakistan or
S-11 from peeping. At least this is what the future portends for the next 25 to
30 years. Notwithstanding the peace gestures of India and Pakistan Kashmir
remains the most poisonous needle for the security of India. The ongoing
Bleeding war in Kashmir must be understood in the context of
WOM. The conventional military wisdom in analyzing the threat in Kashmir needs a
rethink.
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