At the height of the Operation Parakram in the summer of 2002, a few days after a terrorist attack on an army camp in Kaluchak in May 2002 that took the lives of family members of the army personnel, a retired Chief of the Army Staff made a presentation to a group of parliamentarians and strategic thinkers about the possibility of a ‘limited war’ with Pakistan under a nuclear overhang.
When the Two Countries Came Close to War
Lest it be forgotten that Operation Parakram was the single largest mobilisation of the Indian Armed forces ever since the 1971 war that liberated Bangladesh. It was a consequence of a terrorist attack on the Parliament of India. In terms of scale, it was larger than Operation Brass Tacks that in 1987 had spooked the then dictator of Pakistan, General Zia-ul-Haq into believing that India was about to launch a pre-emptive strike on Pakistan.
For a nation already reeling under the twin assaults on the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly in October 2001 and the temple of Indian Democracy, the Parliament in the December of that year, the Kaluchak outrage was literally the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back. The national mood was belligerent and pugnacious. You could literally smell the desire for retribution in the air. The Armed Forces were already in battle mode. A million men in uniform both Indian and Pakistani stood eyeball-to-eyeball sabers drawn and weapons cocked.
Replaced for Moving Close to the Border
A few months earlier India had virtually sacked one of its strike force commanders – Late General Kapil Vij of the Ambala-based 2nd Strike corps also known as the Kharga Corps ostensibly because elements of his command had crossed the Indira Gandhi canal and and taken up assault positions, two kilometers from the International border.
The rattled Pakistanis complained to the Americans who after real time verification of the 24X7 satellite feed of the Indo-Pak border virtually accused the then NDA government of wanting to start a Nuclear Armageddon. Under pressure, the then NDA government quickly backtracked and said that the movement was unauthorised and offered General Vij’s head on a platter to mollify the Americans even while he was just perhaps following laid down Standard Operating Procedures.
Remember, all this was happening merely three years after India had cleared the heights of Kargil of Pakistani intruders in the June-July of 1999, albeit at a very heavy price in terms of officers and soldiers killed as they charged up the icy bare slopes much like the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean war immortalised by those prophetic lines in Lord Tennyson’s poem – “into the valley of death rode the six hundred”.
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When Would the Extreme Step be Taken?
Coming back to the exposition of this distinguished former Chief of the Army staff, as the power point briefing proceeded, it soon became evident that all thresholds were dynamic. What would constitute an existential threat to Pakistan that would bring nuclear weapons into play? India crossing the International border/ Line of Control, an assault on Lahore, the bombing of Kahuta where the Pakistani strategic programme is consecrated. There was no clarity on that paradigm.
It remained enveloped in the fog of uncertainty. This was much before Pakistan started tacticalising its nukes and transforming them into battlefield weapons. It was therefore, impossible for the political leadership that had to take a call in the absence of any reasonably predictable action-reaction scenarios. The only constant in this whole equation were just variables.
Futility of the Operation Parakram
Operation Parakram also demonstrated that there was a huge lag time between the commencement of mobilisation and the troops reaching a stage of battle readiness. It gave the enemy, in this case Pakistan, enough time to have an appropriate countervailing strategy in place. Thus, was born the“Cold Start doctrine” to cut the mobilisation time to forty-eight hours or even less by initiating the mobilisation of elements of the strike corps rather than the entire Corps per se, a doctrine that India publicly disavows.
Unable to take Parakram to a logical conclusion, the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee ultimately asked the army to stand down in the November of 2002. The army lost men and material to friendly fire and attrition during those eleven months but the Armed Forces had learnt valuable lessons.
Unable
to calm a hostile public opinion, Vajpayee who had acknowledged the existence of
Pakistan by going to the Minar-e- Pakistan during his brave but ill-fated bus
journey to Lahore in the spring of 1999, kept Indo- Pak relations close to a
boiling point between the November of 2002 and the May of 2004 blowing hot and
cold simultaneously. It was the only instrument to manage and mollify public
sentiment.
Need a Rational Policy on Pakistan
- The futility of the Operation Parakram in 2002 is not yet
lost on anyone, with Vajpayee calling it off after being unable to achieve any
result.
- Despite 26/11, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the UPA
govt never considered war as an option.
- Modi came to power in 2014 on the basis of high-pitched
rhetoric that dwelled more on jingoism with respect to Pakistan.
- After every terror attack, PM Modi looked helpless as he
failed to deliver what he had promised in his high decibel speeches.
- A pragmatic solution is to ensure that Uri-like incidents
are not repeated and India has the ability to neutralise terror attacks.
UPA’s Pakistan Policy
As the Pakistani terrorist attacks continued in varying degrees of intensity for another decade after the United Progressive Alliance came to office in 2004, the same variable remained the only constant – when would the “N” word come into play.
Even as the 26/11 outrage was unfolding in the hotels of Mumbai, the then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had taken the “W” word off the table ostensibly because he was advised by his military brass that “war is not an option”. Diplomacy was the only lever available to India however limited maybe it’s efficacy.There is a buzz that covert operations were perhaps attempted but the tit-for-tat put paid to such initiatives also.
Modi’s High-Pitched Rhetoric on Pakistan
Unfortunately during the Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh years, there was a man ensconced in Gandhinagar (Gujarat), who made it his singular obsession to exploit national security imperatives and limitations for partisan purposes. An almost penile debate on masculinity was rolled out, where everybody else was sought to be painted as impotent, with only the gentleman in question exalting himself to divine virility as the only defender of the nation.
The country lapped up the rhetoric and Narendra Damodardas Modi became the Prime Minister of India on the 26 May 2014. While the incumbent in office may have changed, the facts on the ground had not. Even now the “N” variable was the only constant. No military scenario or war gaming could predict with any degree of certainty how a conventional conflict between India and Pakistan, limited or otherwise would play out. All military advice was, therefore, really redundant for when the chips were down and the juggernaut moving, all the balls were in the air. There is no rational way of predicting irrationality.
After every terror attack, the prime minister’s rhetoric started sounding hollower and hollower as he sought to increase the pitch and decibel level of his bellicosity, trying to find a fig leaf for both his exasperation and embarrassment.
The only option that he saw staring him in the face was the Vajpayee template of keeping India- Pakistan relationship in a no peace–no war freeze and that is how it would remain between the autumn of 2016 and the May of 2019.
Uri Shouldn’t Be Repeated
For what should the prime minister do in this disconcerting hiatus that he finds himself in, for starters talk less. What about the braves who lost their lives in Uri, the only real hard solution is that India has to build better interdiction capacity to pre-empt and neutralise terror attacks. The best-case scenario would be that there is no repeat of Uri. India is unfortunately paying the price of living in the erstwhile Bronx of the world.
(The writer is a lawyer and a former Union Minister in the government of India. Views are personal. He can be reached at @ManishTewari. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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