10 December 2016

Nagrota Attack : Focus On Solution Not The Problem

By Rameshwar Roy

There is a very popular Japanese story about a complaint having been received from a customer who had been sold a soap package without the soap. Since the company’s image was at stake, a high profile investigation was ordered into all aspects of such a lapse. The study group came up with the recommendation to install a very sensitive and expensive scanner to detect any soap case going empty out of the assembly lines in future. When the same problem was projected to a group of workers in the soap factory, they came up with a very simple solution – that of installing a high speed circulator fan to blow away any empty soap case that may be there on the conveyer belt. One may wonder what relevance this has to the terrorist attack in Nagrota cantonment? This article will discuss the the logic of it all from a soldier’s perspective.

India has been victim of terrorist strikes for close to three decades. They have struck with impunity and reactions have been inadequate to say the least; pathetic, hollow, non-committal and routine. The Kargil conflict in 1999 resulted in the all-empowered Group of Ministers (GOM) report in 2002, called the Kargil Review Committee (KRC) for overhaul of security mechanism in the country. Tragically nothing much would have happened, so we cried over it by setting up the Naresh Chandra Committee report to review the progress of the KRC, ten years later in 2012. Another four years went past but we have heard nothing yet again! May be due to the highly classified nature of ‘National Security’ issues involved in the report? How long should we continue to hide our inadequacies under the veil of ‘secrecy’?

Armed Forces of a country are the most powerful tool in the hands of its national leadership to enforce its ‘WILL’ on an adversary when all other instruments of diplomacy have failed. Hence there is a need to maintain the highest credibility of its ‘deterrence’ power. Nations that do not understand this are doomed to suffer loses of irretrievable proportions. When the attack on the World Trade Tower in USA was carried out by terrorists in 9/11 in 2001, although it was not a military target, it had hit the psyche of the nation that had always perceived it-self to be an invincible sole super power in the world. Therefore, in order to repair the national psyche and maintain its credibility as the power that it was, it moved quickly and without delay to punish the nation that had been the abode of the perpetrators. The pressure was kept up for over a decade until Osama Bin Laden was buried in the sea in May 2011.

Coming closer home, we are facing Pakistan’s declared policy of bleeding India with thousand cuts and actually seeing its implementation for decades. Is our national pride dead or has it been over taken by rhetoric? Tragically all these terrorists’ attacks are taken in isolation and nation quickly calls it a problem of the outfits who suffer from it; be it civilian targets, Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) like BSF /CRPF or even the Army. Do we all exist by ourselves individually or as a nation? Be that as it may, I leave it to the ‘sound’ wisdom of our national leadership and get back to focus on the ‘solution’ rather than the problem.

Let me first elucidate the passive measures. Do we ever analyse how terrorists reach the target area in each case and that too well equipped with arms and ammunition, like has been the case in Nagrota. It is reported that they came in a stolen vehicle and in J&K police uniforms. Imagine this happening in a state which has been facing terrorism directly for the last 26 years and has a well-defined unified command structure to deal with such threats. Not to mention layers of intelligence set-ups which were totally missing here, notwithstanding the fact that except in this case, in all other cases we are always informed that intelligence warning was made available, which once read sounds more like “This Week for You” as it appears in many columns of magazines and newspapers. So the simple solution would be to have fort-like walled structures for our cantonments/defence installations with added means of electronic surveillance. These exclusive areas cannot be a thoroughfare for passage without proper identification. The present system of barbed wire fencing is ‘mockingly’ inadequate. Lastly, these cantonments must not be vulnerable to encroachments. Yes, all this will cost money and time but then is the soldier not entitled to his ‘Basic right to life’ under Article 21 of the constitution like other country men; are we not already late on this issue. Is the national pride not at stake?

On the other hand we do have proactive options of abrogating the decade long ceasefire that in any case has held more because of our restraint, than the good intentions of our worthy neighbours. It has been a proxy war that has onlydiluted in interpretation over the years in the garb of our strategy of restraint and have been finding space for diplomacy where none ever existed. How long are we going to be in denial mode, when we well know that for Pakistan, Kashmir has been the unfinished agenda of partition wherein even creation of Bangladesh was not as much of an emotional issue for them as Kashmir is (Not entire J&K). So we must respond to any terrorists strike having leads to Pakistan, with hard core military options since we do not have the “Luxury” of having cheap “strategic assets called terrorists”. If it must, then go up the escalatory ladder to the point of even facing nuclear face off; why can’t we too assert like a nuclear power which we are unless we have forgotten it or doubts our capabilities!

Finally, let the world then sit up and understand the need for getting hold of this great ‘Epicentre of Terrorism’ and keep their veto powers reserved for better human endeavours. It will not be out of place to quote what Dr Javad Zarif, Foreign Minister of Iran while speaking on Terrorism and Extremism at the Observer Research Foundation on 3rd December 16, said “In the world today, one cannot gain at the expense of others….we win together or lose together. The era of hegemony is long gone”.

It is time we must understand that we need to fight our own battle and win against our adversary. We must stop looking at world bodies to come out for help, if they have not helped situations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere; there is little hope here in the Indian sub-continent. 

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