Monday July 15, 2019
https://www.dropbox.com/s/34phetyszz4itia/Kashmir%20Times%20Op%20Eds%20Ali.pdf?dl=0
Kashmir: Strategic Sense and Nonsense
Kashmir Times Op-eds 2010s
By Ali Ahmed
Ali Ahmed is a former UN official and military officer. Currently, he is an academic affiliated with a central university in New Delhi. Views are personal and have no relevance to any organization the author has been associated with.
For the people of Kashmir
Preface and acknowledgement
The title needs explaining. I believe a nonsensical strategy has attended India’s Kashmir problem over the past decade. In the United Progressive Alliance government period, the government was afraid of its own shadow. It missed a splendid opportunity to address the Kashmir issue meaningfully. No doubt, it had the shadow of the right wing looming across it staying its hand. As for the right wing, when it came to power, it has willfully messed up the situation further. As the right wing has another lease of life in power, there can only more nonsense up ahead. The assumption is that Kashmiris will bear the brunt and, therefore, it is not of consequence for the rest of us in South Asia. This is untenable. The right wing is perfectly capable of worse and this shall surely come to pass too over the coming five years.
This volume of my opinion pieces in the Kashmir Times over the 2010s are proof of India hurtling down hill as a country, taking Kashmir down with it and looking to drag down the rest of South Asia with it too. This understanding is reverse of the popular notion that it is Pakistan as a failing state that is out to drag India down with it. I believe the democratic take over of India by the right wing is an existential danger to the subcontinent. Its conjoined Kashmir and Pakistan policies are not merely potentially explosive, but are an explosion in slow motion. The answer is not to be found in Kashmir. It is to be looked for in the rest of India, where the electorate needs to rethink its self-interest. The apprehension is that this will not happen till the calamity impending is not over and done with.
In the main, the commentaries here deal with Kashmir and India’s Pakistan policy as relevant to Kashmir. There are several largely critical pieces covering the counter insurgency campaign. Since a significant proportion of the army is deployed in Jammu and Kashmir, the op-eds covered the meaing of the 'strategy' in Kashmir - of which the army was a major instrument - for the army as an institution. The commentaries link India's Pakistan and Kashmir strategies to internal politics in India, in which the ascendance of the right wing meant preclusion of any peace headway. The constant call is for the passing opportunities to be seized. The needs of the strategy of Othering that brought the right wing to power in India account for the advocacy being ignored.
The nonsense in the Kashmir strategy owes to contamination of strategy by ideology. It is no secret that the strategic establishment owes right wing allegiance. The strategic community has had its share of right wingers, who were in the closet till early this decade. Since a major plank of such cultural nationalist thinking is anti-Muslim, any strategy geared to addressing South Asian Muslim issues cannot but be contaminated by ideological baggage. To expect a rational strategy – even one based on realism – is to be wishful. The Pakistan strategy needs no edification. Needless to add, that the strategies will fall flat in good time. The issue is how to survive the deneument.
Plainspeaking is the need of the hour. The compilation is to focus minds. Nothing can be done to avert the catastrophe, but seeing off the right wing back to the margins would require to be done once the dust – hopefully not radioactive - has settled. This would require the shoulder of all institutions. In alerting the nation, the collection of op-eds would have served a purpose.
The compilation would be of interest to students, academics, practitioners in uniform, policy makers and the attentive public. The issues dealt with are at the interstices of strategic. security and peace studies. It has insights for the military engaged in countering insurgency, for their political masters and the bureaucratic intermediary layer both in Srinagar and the national security establishment in Delhi. The book is dedicated to the people of Kashmir, both within and outside of the Valley.
I thank Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal for her unstinting support. Her liberality shines through. Her paper Kashmir Times has ploughed a lonely furrow and done a national service in keeping the liberal torch aloft in trying times. I thank the editorial staff for the support over the past decade of my writing for the paper, the writings put together between these covers: some 100 op-eds comprising 1.25 lakh words. Needless to add, all shortcomings in the language, style and facts are mine. I thank my family for its usual forebearance. Hope their optimism that the essays shall prove useful is proven true.
Contents1. Kashmir: Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, 6 July 2019 12. At The Doorstep Of Indian Military Politicization, 6 June 2019 23. Kashmir: As The Army Surveys The Next Five Years, 12 June 2019 4 4. Event management is no substitute for strategy, 3 June 2019 65. Gratis advice for the next National Security Adviser, 21 May 2019 86. Kashmir: Radicalisation and what to do about it, 10 May 2019 107. The Doval And Hooda Prescriptions Examined, 5 April 2019 128. Balakot: Divining India’s strategy from its messaging, 9 March 2019 149. Reminding The Political Class Of Clausewitz's First Injunction, 18 Feb 2019 1610. The Army's land warfare doctrine, 9 Feb 2019 1811. Operation Kabaddi Revealed But Only Partially, 26 January 2019 2012. Kashmir: Towards peace with dignity, 17 Dec 2018 2313. Contextualising the army chief’s news making, 6 Dec 2018 2514. Governor, 'root causes' matter, 6 Nov 2018 2715. Divide and kill, 30 Oct 2018 2816. Ajit Doval's platter: Centralisation with a purpose, 16 Oct 2018 3017. India on the brink, 24 Sep 2018 3218. India's spooks: Getting too big for their boots?, 4 Sep 2018 3419. Noting the spokesperson-minister’s remarks, 19 Jul 2018 3620. Human Rights: All so unfortunately ho-hum, 3 Jul 2018 3721. The army chief as regime spokeman?, 16 May 2018 3922. The 'incident': Nothing but political, 2 April 2018 4123. Is there an Indian 'deep state'?, 23 March 2018 4224. A political army or an apolitical one?, 6 March 2018 4425. The Army: Introspection is warranted, 10 Feb 2018 4626. War in 2018?, 25 Jan 2018 4827. Spiking possibilities: What is the army chief up to?, 4 Jan 2018 5028. When Ideology corrupts Strategy, 10 Oct 2017 5229. Pakistan: Not down for the count, yet, 23 Sep 2017 5430. Kashmir: From conflict management to a conflict resolution?, 14 Sep 2017 5631. In defence of Hamid Ansari, 16 Aug 2017 5832. Debating the 'harder military approach', 4 Aug 2017 6133. An Army to fear: The Army's future?, 12 Jun 2017 6334. Reading the Army Chief's words, 8 June 2017 6435. Ummer Fayaz: Another Kashmiri icon, 16 May 2017 6636. Kashmir's scenery makes its way to the 'hinterland', 9 May 2017 6837. The hovering nuclear clouds, 25 Apr 2017 7038. To the army: Any gentlemen left please?, 22 Apr 2017 7239. Terror: More serious than most know, 11 March 2017 74 40. Stolen gold: A ghost from the past that scares none, 24 Feb 2017 7641. COAS selection and the doctrine of ‘relative ease of working’ with, 25 Dec 2016 7742. Saluting Bipin Rawat but with a caveat, 20 Dec 2016 8043. The nuclear doctrinal implications of 'surgical strikes', 15 Nov 2016 8244. The myth of ‘strategic restraint’, 16 Oct 2016 8445. How much of a departure since Uri?, 4 Oct 2016 8646. India-Pakistan: In a dialogue of sorts, 23 Sep 2016 8847. A problem wider than Kashmir, 24 Aug 2016 9048. A War at Hand, 15 May 2016 9249. Handwara: Going Beyond SOPs, 19 Apr 2016 9450. Book Review – Op ed, 21 Feb 2016 9551. Gen Rao’s place in the history of Kashmir, 5 Feb 2016 9852. The conspiracy angle to the Pathankot episode, 7 Jan 2016 10053. India-Pak bonhomie: Can it last?, 15 Dec 2015 10254. Is Mani Shankar Aiyar right?, 19 Nov 2015 10455. What the next war spells for Kashmir, 4 Nov 2015 10656. Getting practical over an important report, 15 Sep 2015 10757. A cautionary word for the NSA, 11 Sep 2015 11058. India-Pakistan: Silver linings and band aids are not enough, 7 Sep 2015 11259. Kashmir: Not the moment for a tryst, 1 August 2015 11360. Kashmir and India’s Muslims, 10 Jun 2015 11561. Kashmiri Pandits: Undoing injustice, 25 April 2015 11762. Kashmir: Fifty years since 1965 War, 28 Feb 2015 11963. Looking Back a Quarter Century On, 20 Jan 2015 12164. India-Pakistan with Kashmir in between, 11 Dec 2014 12365. Hooda Walks The Talk, 10 Nov 14 12666. Politicisation of security and its consequences, 15 Oct 2014 12767. What is Mr. Modi's Kashmir strategy?, 8 Sep 2014 12968. Modi forges a commitment trap, 19 Aug 2014 13169. The echo of Gaza closer home, 1 Aug 2014 13370. What the PM did not say out loud at Badami Bagh, 16 Jul 2014 13571. The coming threat of politicization, 26 May 2014 13772. India's brass: What the controversy misses, 9 May 2014 13973. Second Guessing Modi's Kashmir Policy, 11 Apr 2014 14174. Kashmir and the bomb, 29 Apr 2014 14275. Pathribal: Back in the news, 29 Jan 2014 14576. The debate between the generals, 13 Dec 2013 14777. Ideologues as 'strategists', 28 Nov 2013 14978. The expansionist agenda , 31 Oct 2013 151 79. Vanzara gets it right: The meaning for J&K, 16 Sep 2013 15280. The LoC incident calls for self-regulation by the army, 13 Aug 2013 15481. Distancing from Cloak and Dagger, 18 Jul 2013 156 82. Implications of a NaMo foreign policy, 11 June 2013 15783. Daulat Beg Oldi: More than a storm in a tea cup, 13 May 2013 159 84. Countering insurgency and sexual violence, 8 May 2013 161 85. India’s security under Modi, 11 Apr 2013 16386. Lessons from Bandipore, 8 Sep 12 16587. Kashmir: More of the same, 3 Jul 12 16688. The agenda this winter, 6 Nov 2011 16889. Fixing responsibility CI decisions and consequences, 29 Aug 2011 17090. Solving Kashmir: Feasible?, 9 Oct 2011 17191. Acknowledging the blind spot on Kashmir, 27 Jan 2012 17392. Kashmir: Declaring premature victory, 2 April 2012 17593. AFSPA: A Question of Justice, 13 Feb 2012 17694. An agenda point for the foreign secretaries, 16 June 2011 17895. Kashmir: Its now or never, 9 Dec 11 180