Cyber Neanderthals

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

The news story about the Chinese hacker corps getting into the Eastern Naval Command (ENC) data net and stealing information related to the Arihant nuclear submarine came as no surprise. Like everything else they do, the Chinese are thorough in casing out likely adversaries as part of their military preparedness regime.

The senior echelon in government had been warned through unofficial channels about the Chinese achieving improbably high levels of access into ostensibly “fire-walled” servers with the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Trombay, missile design facilities (such as the Advanced Systems Laboratory, Hyderabad) and other critical DRDO installations, the ministry of defence and the various service headquarters and, perhaps, even the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

How vulnerable such agencies are can be gauged from the fact that at one point in time not too long ago Indian hackers forcefully assumed control of  the Indian Navy, Indian Air Force, and BARC servers (named after Indian rivers — Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati, etc.). A more malicious force intent on harm could on that occasion have wreaked merry havoc, sucked out information, and secreted away bugs of the kind the Chinese hackers placed in the Indian Eastern Naval Command computer network designed to relay targeted classified information to external sources. There’s no guarantee this was not done.

One might, in the circumstances, wonder just what it is that official Indian agencies tasked with cyber defence are doing. The supposedly premier National Technology Research Organisation (NTRO), like every other institution in the overly bureaucratised Indian state, is busily aggrandising turf and monopolising capability but, by itself, has conducted near zero offensive or even defensive cyber operations — the reason why the Indian government remains exposed to almost any passing cyber threat.

Heavy financial investments in NTRO have so far led to it successfully warding off Research & Analysis Wing’s (RAW) attempts to have its own offensive cyber operations cell, for instance, but not to its mounting even a single sustained offensive against Chinese networks. Such offensive programmes, protocols, and algorithms as have been created are products of informal Indian hacker groups working for the NTRO. Except NTRO has expropriated and passed off this work as its own and won laurels for itself!

NTRO, which is manned by DRDO stalwarts, like the RAW, has huge funds at its disposal for which there is no accountability, affording ample opportunities for siphoning off public monies. How is this done? One method, as already indicated, is to hire highly motivated young privateers who hack as serious hobby but are eager to do their bit for the nation. They are promised much but paid a pittance and that too tardily, thereby de-incentivising them. By one account, as much as nine-tenths of any sanctioned expenditure is thus spirited away. NTRO, in other words, is yet another vehicle for unreported scams on a vast scale. If this organisation is proving to be more a cyber liability than help, what are the other agencies in the same business up to?

The Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff, ministry of defence, has under its wing the Defence Information Assurance and Research Agency. It is manned by veteran officers from the EME (Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) Corps of the Indian Army, who have almost no clue about the cyber warfare domain, leave alone what to do in it.

The Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force have separately developed capabilities for engaging in purely defensive operations. They can repel cyber strikes and penetration attempts — apparently not all that well in light of the Chinese cyber infection of the ENC communications hub — but cannot counter-attack.

Extant Indian cyber capability and efforts are, in actuality, so pathetic that NTRO has stalled exploratory inquiries by the US National Security Agency to jointly develop means to attack and defeat the Chinese cyber threat. NTRO understandably fears that any collaborative work with professional American organisations will quickly reveal them as poseurs and frauds or, at the very least, as incompetent.

The trouble is, despite boasting of incomparable cyber talent in the country in the non-governmental sphere, India is saddled with a government, a science and technology establishment, and a military that are strictly industrial age. It is doubtful if anybody in the PMO, for instance, knows anywhere near enough to appreciate the basic fact of cyber reality — that the most inspired offensive and defensive cyber operations and breakthroughs are done by youngsters barely out of school who can negotiate their way through the most complicated protection schemes and plant “logic bombs” in heavily defenced communication networks on a dare or just to show off to their peers.

This enormous human resource wealth is available and can be mobilised for the national cause by offering these computer whiz-kids not babu pay scales and suffocating bureaucratic environs of work but freedom to operate as they wish to overcome meaty challenges. Of course, they have to be compensated directly and well (without intervening organisations decanting the moolah). Pitting a huge number of teams of these young guns hired by military and intelligence agencies — the more of them the better — to compete with each other in relentless offensive, defensive and pre-emptive cyber campaigns, bypassing the usual mode of government functioning, is a desperate need. They would seriously discomfit any adversary — something the wretched NTRO and other, cyber-wise Neanderthal, government organisations cannot ever dream of doing.

The problem, however, is the reliance on technology imports. Everyone is aware of the Chinese Army-controlled Huawei telecommunications company being permitted to sell area networks, including switching systems in India, on the condition that its wares are certified by a Huawei-funded centre at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. This is a joke considering the centre is given select units to examine.

Worse, the Indian government talks incessantly of “buying Indian” but its agencies as studiously purchase possibly compromised cyber software and enabling systems from RSA, Cisco, etc., rather than support indigenous development of comparable software and hardware, such as the enormously efficient router developed by IIT Mumbai. In the event, one should be prepared for cyber-savvy states like China to disable the Indian government and military at will early in any crisis.

[Published July 5, 2012 in the ‘Asian Age’ at www.asianage.com/columnists/cyber-neanderthals-925 and the ‘Deccan Chronicle’ at www.deccanchronicle.com/columnists/bharat-karmad/cyber-neanderthals ]

Posted in India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Internal Security, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer | 10 Comments

Sanya analogue on Andhra Coast

Posted on July 1, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

The story in today’s ‘Sunday Express’ about the Chinese hackers penetrating the Eastern Navala Command’s communications hub and planting bugs to relay any info or communication involving the Arihant SSBN, etc.  China’s strategic concerns understandably revolve around the deployment patterns of the Arihant-class ballistic nuclear missile-firing nuclear powered submarine (SSBN), the performance aspects of this boat, and especially the new submarine facility being built to get around the operating difficulties posed by Vishakaptanam given its narrow, vulnerable, channel to the open sea.

The mention in the story of the Chinese interest in the strategic submarine base as alternative to Vizag that is under construction elsewhere on the Andhra Coast frees those of us who have known about this upcoming base to be a bit freer  on the principle that what is known to our principal adversary, China, should also be available to an interested Indian public!

The limitations of Vizag (a narrow, vulnerable, channel from the port to the open sea that in the 1971 conflict with Pakistan led to the Paki sub PNS Ghazni to lie in wait for the carrier Vikrant to come out to sea before torpedoeing it, but which wait resulted in a mishap and explosion inside the sub that sank the Ghazni instead) compelled the shifting of the strategic submarines operations base to a site that promised easy underwater entry and egress from a tunnel excavated well below the waterline in the cliffs rising from the sea, making the detection and tracking of subs in and out of the base difficult. Because on India’s east coast there is no long continental shelf but a sharp drop in the depth, this underwater submarine complex — first mooted for the Karwar base (Project Seabird) — was shifted to the east. (Such a basing concept was first featured, as many may recall, in a James Bond film, but is not any less practical for it!) It is a near analogue of the Sanya base that PLAN has built on Hainan Island to house and run its SSBns and SSNs of the South Seas Fleet from. Except, Sanya does not, to the same extent, enjoy the advantage of (warm water) thermal layers that so complicate sonar detection and tracking in the Indian Ocean.

With the debugging and correctives adopted by IN, China cannot rely over much on whatever information it may have gleaned about the Arihant-class SSBN deployment mode and pattern that the Indian naval planners may have contemplated. It is likely however that it has information re: Arihant’s performance in harbour trials

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East | 3 Comments

Army nixed Pak PM candidature?

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

It is mighty curious that the front runner to replace Raza Gilani as Pakistan Prime Minister is the texiles minister Makhdoom and not Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar, a former defence minister. Is it not reasonable to believe that when a list of probable appointments to the PM’s post was run by General Kayani, Mukhtar’s name was nixed by the army chief. If so why? One can speculate about two reasons. One, that because the army would like to have the upper hand, GHQ has more secrets about Makhdoom and has okayed his appointment because he will then be more malleable, especially at a time when delicate negotiations are on with the US over Afghanistan. etc..  And two, contrarily, that the Pak army desired a relatively clean PM for a change and Makhdoom was the better bet.

Posted in Afghanistan, Asian geopolitics, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian Ocean, Strategic Relations with the US & West | 1 Comment

Time to revisit Article 370

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Set up by the Manmohan Singh government in 2010, the Kashmir panel comprising M.M. Ansari, formerly with the Central Information Commission, Radha Kumar, an academic with interest in conflict resolution, and journalist Dileep Padgaonkar, submitted its report about a fortnight back. Predictably, it satisfied nobody. The Hurriyat with its one-point agenda of assimilating Jammu & Kashmir into Pakistan had early on damned the panel as insufficiently high-level and as lacking in political clout. The rest of the country cared little – just another committee to flog a dead horse. Those who were interested didn’t know what to make of the panel tasked with soliciting the range of views within J&K and to come up with guidelines for a solution acceptable to all parties. This was tantamount to asking a dog’s tail to be straightened – it can’t be done.

The panellists are liberal intellectuals but the orientation they brought to their job can be gleaned about only one of them – Kumar, who edited a book of case studies containing “simulations” of various conflicts – Northern Ireland, J&K, Nagaland, an imaginary African country in a civil war situation, etc., written up by various people. In the introduction to the book, she wrote that in the context of centre-state relations, “the crux of the problem” is “Kashmir’s political status” and, unexceptionably, that any solution would require the separatists and independence-seekers to be drawn “into the consensus-building process” which, she deemed, “the key issue”. In the event, the separatists did not meet with the panel. Even so, it is clear Kumar’s views prevailed, with the panel recommending in the main the establishment of a Constitutional Commission to consider afresh J&K’s position within the Indian Union in terms of the applicability of Indian laws to Kashmir with a view to strengthening its separate status.

Helpfully, Padgaonkar has weighed in with a newspaper article on the subject, with a good portion of it devoted to the reasons why he believes the panellists and their report are relevant to such solution-seeking as the government may pursue in the months ahead. However, with the general elections looming and the ruling coalition’s prospects dimming by the day, it is unlikely that the Kashmir issue is going to be raked up any time soon. The report by Messrs Ansari, Kumar, & Padgaonkar, for all intents and purposes, has been interred in the shelves of the Parliament library as its principal promoters are preoccupied — the Home Minister P. Chidambaram with saving, not Kashmir, but his Lok Sabha seat, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, overwhelmed by his own irrelevance in government, contemplating inconsequence as president of the country.

Now, Ghulam Nabi Fai – the Kashmiri activist jailed in Washington for illegal lobbying in the US Congress, has jumped into the fray. In an article, he has voiced the aspirations of Kashmiris directly derived from the quixotic belief of Maharaja Hari Singh’s about an independent Kashmir. In the troubled times immediately following the lapse of British paramountcy in the subcontinent, the Maharaja held back on his decision about which Dominion to join in the hope that in the extant confusion and disorder, he’d get his “Switzerland in Asia”. But the circumstances of the invasion by the Pakistani raiders compelled him to accede to India. The enduring problem was, however, created by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who instead of pushing to militarily recover all of the presently Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, including the Northern Areas (Hunza, Gilgit and Baltistan), which the Indian Army was poised to do at the time of the 1948 ceasefire, took the dispute disastrously for this country, to the United Nations. There it instantly became a pawn in big power politics. Having made this horrible mistake, Nehru compounded it by agreeing to the right of self-determination based on nothing more than his conceit that, offered the choice, Kashmiris would join India rather than the rump state of Pakistan.

A still graver internal problem Nehru created for the country was to accord J&K separate Constitutional status (Article 370) within the Union. The question remains: What is so unique about Kashmir that it should enjoy such status? If one were to go by legal documents and the accords signed by the various princely states, the British Raj accepted a differential scale of sovereign functioning. Meaning, some kingdoms within the colonial architecture functioned more freely than others. By this criterion, Travancore and Manipur, for example, deserved special status far more than did Kashmir.

If, on the other hand, the issue boils down to Nehru’s promises to Sheikh Abdullah, these have even less sanctity than the Constitutionally-mandated privy purses Indira Gandhi abolished. Signed accords and paper deeds have been routinely abrogated by newly founded countries in the process of  consolidating themselves as nation-states.  Consider, for instance, the innumerable treaties the US government signed with the native American-Indian tribes and consigned to the dustbin once they became obstacles to territorial expansion and nation-building.

It is, however, Nehru’s faulty premise that has seeped into the thinking of Indian liberals, that nation-building is a morality tale, an exercise in ethical norms. Actually, as history shows, nations are sewn together, often from disparate parts, by craft, graft, and bloodletting. It is dirty, usually violent business in which peoples who would otherwise have remained separate were dragged kicking and screaming into the national fold, and no nonsense about it. Again, ask the American Indians who, because they resisted, were exterminated. By reinforcing the notion of their distinctness, Article 370 has perennially fuelled discontent and insurgency, stoked dreams of independence in Kashmir, ill-served India, and should be done away with. It is best that the Kashmiris be told that once however in, there’s no out. If the Hurriyat and that ilk don’t accept it; they can go take a hike. Better still, they should be placed in a tub alongside Arundhati Roy — who seceded from the Indian republic (remember, she threatened to do that?), towed out to sea, and there left to contemplate their virtuous selves. Outside the 12-mile territorial limit.

[Published in the ‘New Indian Express’, Friday, June 15, 2012 at http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/article542867.ece]

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Geopolitics, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian Politics, Internal Security | 12 Comments

Panetta trip — problems ahead in Indo-US defense ties

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

US Defense Secretary Leon E Panetta was accompanied by a big retinue of DOD officials and US military officers to the IDSA auditorium for his speech yesterday evening, among them the old stand-bys — Peter Lavoy, and the highest ranking American of Indian origin — Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and South East Asia, Vijay Singh.

The speech by Panetta at IDSA was not significant in terms of anything new. It was a rehash of things he has been saying on this Asia trip of his. Except for two things.

One, he talked of collaborative ventures, co-development projects, to produce new weapons systems and military-use technologies but only as something that may happen down the line AFTER a number of big item sales/deals are consumated and the US defense Companies take home the profits. When Russia, Israel, and France are involved/getting involved in just such enterprises, where’s the incentive for India to choose American equipment? There’s a huge opportunity cost component to America’s staged buildup to genuine defense industrial cooperation that US DOD has not factored into the calculations. The United States is setting itself up to lose out.

And two, Panetta vociferously denied there is any attempt by US Govt/Pentagon to halve the Indian army’s order for the Raytheon/Lockheed Javelin anti-tank, man-portable, missile. The fact is this is precisely a restriction the American interlocuters injected into the talks with their Indian army/MOD counterparts. With this bit of American imposition becoming public info, the US defense team had to express strong denials, and try to explain it away as I have indicated in my “Countering US pressure piece”. But this sort of thing only reinforces the view that Washington is keying narrowly on its own agenda — still keen to maintain an India-Pakistan conventional military balance, but try and use India as strategic counter-weight to China in Asia, while holding out the threat of sanctions in case India conducted nuclear tests to validate rejigged Indian thermonuclear weapons designs. These sorts of anomalies and fundamental flaws in the US policy premises and construction should be the bread and butter issues that the Indian side ought to bring up in the next round of the strategic dialogue with the US to be held in Washington the coming week. But that won’t happen because the Indian govt is acting as if these things are not important enough to matter.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Defence Industry, Geopolitics, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Army, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer | Leave a comment

Countering US pressure

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Assuming the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has done its job, the government must be aware of the fact that North Korea is preparing to conduct its third nuclear test, this time of a Chinese-designed boosted fission device. Transferred in toto to Pakistan by Beijing, Islamabad has, in turn, passed it on to Pyongyang for validation by an actual explosive test. China ceaselessly exploits North Korea’s status as a pariah state beyond the pale which can do things other states cannot without incurring cost. From the Chinese perspective, this will further tighten the nuclear screws on India by bringing Pakistan a step closer to the thermonuclear weapons threshold that India crossed in 1998, but not fully. The flawed Indian design did not produce the enhanced yield but has, ever since, been sought to be corrected and configured into a usable weapon, not by actual explosive testing but by simulation. Dr. R. Chidambaram, science & technology adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has been a votary of obtaining nuclear weapons by simulation. But he cannot, in good conscience, guarantee that fusion weapons so produced will actually work as they are supposed to, in real time, in real life. Surprisingly, the users of these weapons — the Strategic Forces Command and the military chiefs of staff — are not making any noise about it, though a minor defect in any conventional weapon has them hitting the rafters.

To begin preparing the ground for testing, as prelude to the next round of strategic dialogue, Delhi should issue a demarche to Washington, making it clear that the next North Korean nuclear test will be considered a Chinese-cum-Pakistani nuclear weapon explosive test, that’s likely to break India’s restraint on nuclear testing. Reminding the US about its complicity in China’s nuclear missile-arming Pakistan, the demarche should also lead to asking the Americans, point blank, just how an infirm Indian thermonuclear weapons capability will help maintain Asia’s balance of power. It is not a question to which India will get a straight answer because the grand US design, as I have maintained from the time the nuclear deal was being negotiated, is to push India, in small stages, into strategic dependency whereby India ultimately has to rely on Washington for its thermonuclear security because its own fusion weapons lack credibility.

By laying down the next North Korean nuclear test as tripwire, India should start pulling up when, for example, the US government — as it is prone to do — goes from friendly to bully in pursuit of its own agenda in double quick time. For instance, for Washington to insist that energy-deficient India must cut off its oil imports from Iran and opt for the “Mission Impossible” TAPI pipeline (Turkmen gas to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan), while allowing Taiwan, Japan and South Korea to import oil and gas from Iran, is a bit rich.

It is very likely that sooner or later Washington and Tehran will come to an understanding, even as India’s stand against Iran will jeopardise our leverage and goodwill in Tehran. All the effort India has made to fill the economic vacuum in Iran by ramping up trade will amount to nought. India learnt nothing from freezing relations with Myanmar to please the West. Nearly 25 years later, Delhi is scrambling to recover its position, only to find the Chinese too well entrenched.

Curtailing China’s ambitions is a convergent interest and, as Leon Panetta, the American defence secretary, said at the Shangrila Dialogue in Singapore, India “will play a decisive role” in Asia’s future. But this role will not materialise if India permits itself to be nudged and elbowed into accepting US terms. Two cases in point: the US insistence, in the main, on India signing CISMOA (Communication Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement) and LSA (Logistics Support Agreement) ignores the fact that India does not as yet perceive the US as trustworthy. Why not formalise  workable technical solutions  that have permitted joint military exercises to-date, instead? The other issue is American attempts to shape Indian military requirements. The Indian Army asked for a certain number of Javelin anti-tank, “fire and forget”-missiles, costing roughly $150,000 a piece. Washington, on its own, pared that order by half. Who is to decide on the quantity and quality of weapons purchased from the US  — the Indian military or the US government?  A senior US Defence official travelling with Panetta  explained  this as a snafu, as reflecting “old thinking” and not new ideas in the process of being “phased in”.  US Ambassador Nancy Powell has talked of $8 billion worth of arms deals with American companies in the pipeline. Delhi has to ensure the “old” US thinking does not end up factored into new arms contracts.

 

The United States cannot be blamed though for trying to get its way. The blame rests entirely with the Indian government for allowing itself to be pushed around. Alas, the Congress coalition government with Manmohan Singh as figurehead Prime Minister is so dead in the water that it cannot even summon the will to resist US-imposed strictures on stuff  India is paying hard cash for. It is frightening to think how much policy ground will be ceded to the US and other foreign governments till the next general elections by an Indian government that has apparently given up protecting this country’s sovereign prerogatives and interests.

The Washington round of the strategic dialogue, other than the demarche on North Korean test, should be about fleshing out cooperative military strategies to distract China and weaken its tendency to hegemonism in South China Sea and elsewhere, and fast-tracking co-development of new military technologies and weapons development, bypassing a series of arms deals that Panetta outlined as a prelude.  Delhi has to be mindful of America’s short-term outlook that can hurt India’s strategic position in the long-term, if Delhi does not push back. On issues where Indian interests are compromised, the US should be told, in plain words, to back off. Given the stakes in Asia, it will.

[Published as “For US, India is doormat to Asia”  June 6, 2012 in the ‘Ásian Age’ at www.asianage.com/columnists/us-india-doormat-asia-556  and the ‘Deccan Chronicle’ www.deccanchronicle.com/columnists/bharat-karnad/us-india-doormat-asia ]

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Defence Industry, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Army, Indian Politics, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West | 24 Comments

Playing Favourites

Posted on June 1, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

On the weekend prior to demitting office, General V.K. Singh, using the media, publicly firebombed the government one last time as Chief of Army Staff (COAS). Separately interviewed by the main television channels intent on wringing the last few drops of sensationalism out of the situation, he gave notice that the government can expect more criticism in the future. Actually, a retired VK may prove a bigger thorn in the Congress Party coalition government’s side. In the know of everything that’s afoot in the army, and all the decisions in the pipeline, VK can be expected to hold his successor’s, the Defence Ministry’s, and the government’s feet to the fire. Several of VK’s immediate predecessors, it was known in army circles, were susceptible to corruption – the reason why his elevation two years back was welcomed by great many upright serving and retired officers. This, of course, raises the question: How is it that persons with soiled reputations get effortlessly promoted in the army, even as genuinely capable officers have their careers sidelined? The explanation is that a motivated army chief can play havoc with the promotion boards – throw out the grain, keep the chaff. I mean, how does a Tejinder Singh, the conduit for filthy lucre as alleged by VK, become Director-General, Defence Intelligence Agency, for god’s sake?

But one issue, however, remains unanswered: Why did VK approach the Supreme Court to “restore” his honour, rather than asking for an adjudication on his age? By making his personal ‘honour’ the principal legal concern, VK afforded the Court which was wary of getting sucked into this controversy the escape route of getting the government to withdraw the offending document that reiterated the wrong age. It is no use for him to now claim that the judges were leaning in the direction “the wind was blowing”. He undermined his own chances and voided the possibility of a ruling on whether or not, for government service purposes the school-board exam certificate is the only proof.

The in-coming COAS, General Bikram Singh, doesn’t have the soldierly credentials of VK and, during his tenure, will be operating under a cloud,  his every decision under the microscope. He will be like the teacher’s pet appointed class monitor on the basis of connections, not merit. In Bikram’s case, the “succession plan” crafted by General J.J. Singh, ignobly furthered by his successor, Deepak Kapoor, involved in the Adarsh housing scam, and diligently propelled by the government, will hang round his neck like the dead albatross on the ancient mariner.

Despite burning its fingers, this government is apparently convinced that pre-selection is a good thing and the next man in has already been so anointed. Except, by putting the present GOC, III Corps, Lieutenant General Dalbir Singh Suhag’s promotion as army commander on hold, VK has presented Bikram with a dilemma. He countermands VK’s rules-wise correct show-cause notice to Suhag, as desired by many in the government, and he further besmirches his reputation. Or, he lets the order stand, derails the next stage of the succession plan of an army command for Suhag, and courts enmity of the very people who helped him reach the top. Bikram’s strength of character, or lack of it, will soon become evident.

Many people wonder if VK’s actions have “politicized” the army. In a citizen army, the average officer and jawan alike is socially conscious and politically aware. But army discipline and tight-lipped, straight-backed demeanour are usually mistaken for political naivete by politicians and civil servants. It is the use by the latter two of their own more elastic morality and ethics in dealing with the military and when deciding on national security matters that poses the greatest danger to the republic.

The Congress Party has a track record of destroying institutions by playing favourites. Indira Gandhi undermined the integrity of the Indian Administrative Service during the Emergency in the mid-1970s from which the IAS has not recovered. Constitutional rights were suspended and a “committed bureaucracy” obtained by choosing select babus for certain posts. These babus bent rules and did her bidding. Up until then, promotions were generally on merit, and postings of civil servants were as per vacancy, and the entire process was managed by the Chief Secretaries in the states and the Cabinet Secretary at the centre. It was too useful an innovation, however, for subsequent non-Congress governments to give up, except they were less brazen about it than the Congress party.

Unfortunately, during the Emergency some favour-seekers among flag-rank officers, disregarding a military officer’s code of conduct, visited persons believed close to Sanjay Gandhi. That era is long gone, but uniformed officers still seek politicians’ help in promotions and postings, albeit more discreetly these days. However, if pre-selecting favourites for the top posts in the three Armed Services becomes the new normal, there’s nothing to stop the venal politician-bureaucrat nexus from auctioning off these posts to officers who promise the most returns, in the manner Delhi Police and other state police reportedly do when filling positions in “lucrative” police thanas. See where this is going?

The frightening thing to consider is that the Congress government is now insinuating practices it has perfected elsewhere in government in its dealings with the military. Hoisting chosen persons into choice slots is one such practice. The motivation is not hard to fathom. With thousands of billions of dollars worth of hardware purchases in the pipeline, if you apply the 15% Kamal Nath standard, revealed by the Confederation of Indian Industry’s then top honcho, Tarun Das, in the Nira Radiia tapes, that amounts to how much by way of commission/cut to the politicians? Do the math. In the event, it is good business to appoint your own chaps to manipulate the field tests, the weapons short list, and the terms from foreign suppliers.

The fact is the Armed Forces being a microcosm of Indian society, most of the societal ills have been steadily seeping into the military for a while now. Like all things bad their progress has been rapid.

[Published in the ‘New Indian Express’ as “No favouritism in army” on June 1, 2012 at http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/op-ed/no-favouritism-in-army/397262.html]

Posted in civil-military relations, Indian Army, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Military Acquisitions | 2 Comments

Lavoy and Indian Tanks in Afghanistan?

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Heard the other day from Rahul Bedi of Janes’s and, following up on my blogging re: Lavoy, said he had heard from his MoD army sources that Lavoy, during his trip here last week, had urged India to dispatch Indian army’s T-72s and T-90s to Afghanistan!! Lavoy, I know, did suggest that India quickly up its stake and occupy at least part of the space being vacated by ISAF. But tanks? I am doubtful he pitched this, in the main, because, well, how would you get these monstrous things from here to there? Have the Indian armoured columns take the Grand Trunk Road to Peshawar and across the Khyber, or detour via Quetta past Bolan? And how would this armored formation be logistically supplied — through Pakistan? Or, the round about route presently used by NATO the so-called Northern Distribution Network via Latvia, Russia, Kasazkstan, Uzbekistan or up through the Caspian entrepot? Simply isn’t feasible.  But if Lavoy did ask for this, he must be loco. Then again, the US comes with some damn fool ideas.

Posted in Afghanistan, Asian geopolitics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Army | Tagged | 11 Comments

Mission Taliban

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

There are some immutable laws of military history that repeated attempts at disproving them only end up confirming their veracity. One such law has to do with certain countries being simply intolerant of interventions by foreign powers. Vietnam and Afghanistan come readily to mind; they are the fabled “graveyards of empires”. India is at the other end of this spectrum; it is, in military sociologist Stanislaw Andreski’s pithy phrase, “the land of subjugations”. No invader in India has not succeeded in establishing his rule on parts or whole of this country.

Vietnam has kept the Chinese empire at bay for a thousand years, and compelled Chairman Deng Xiaoping, “the great helmsman”, to ponder his folly of sending the People’s Liberation Army into Vietnam in 1979 to “teach” this pesky country a “lesson” only to see his forces get mauled. Afghanistan is the other black hole that many outside powers have, at great cost, discovered is best left undisturbed and to its own devices. There is always a huge cost to getting involved in Afghanistan.

It is easy to capture Kabul, immensely more difficult to control the Afghan countryside – a fundamental lesson few invading forces have understood before going in. So when Lieutenant-General John C. McColl of the British Army led the Nato forces into Kabul in January 2002 and fairly easily ran the Taliban regime of the one-eyed Mullah Omar out of town, he must have believed his job was done. General John Keane at the head of the East India Company Army must have felt much the same way as he took Kandahar, reduced Ghazni, and marched to Kabul in the Spring of 1839, and replaced the reigning monarch, Dost Mohammad, with the more pliable Shuja Shah Durrani – a feat repeated by the UN-mandated ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) in 2004 with the installation of Hamid Karzai. There might be no annihilation of the departing ISAF like the one suffered at Gandamak in the winter of 1842 by the retreating Company forces, but there’s also no doubt as to who has won this fight, and how it might spur the jihad.

The Chicago summit on Afghanistan ended May 20 with President Barack Obama’s plan to “cut and run” from Afghanistan being endorsed by relieved members of Nato, who have been hankering to get the hell out. This will be the third time in recent history — after Vietnam and Iraq — that the United States, following a forceful intervention, got mired in a hopeless and bloody war, decided that enough was enough, and pulled out with the mission goals unachieved. What this says about America’s staying power and stamina to its strategic allies and potential partners in Asia contemplating a belligerent China, is not hard to guess.

But the Nato plan to transfer the fighting to the newly raised 325,000 soldiers strong-Afghan National Army (ANA) and police, and to decamp by 2014, is absurd. The US has spent some $20 billion all told on ISAF operations over a decade, and no military technology has been spared — not drones, not the latest sensors that can detect movement and direct precision-guided munitions to the spot in real time — to obtain results. But nothing quite worked, and Americans lost to a motley collection of religious brigands with only their faith, Kalashnikovs and Improvised Explosive Devices to rely on. Now the nascent ANA is supposed to finish the job ISAF started with nothing like the battlefield tech-support and infrastructure the foreign armies benefited from, and with only a bare-bones presence of American Special Forces to buck up the Karzai government’s spirits. And all this is to be accomplished on an annual Nato dole of $4.2 billion for a country with a diminished GDP of $17 billion. Fat chance!

The response, in the event, to contemplating any kind of Indian military role in Afghanistan would instinctively be “Good god, no”! Think again. India has not had the foresight to protect itself by securing a defence perimeter at a distance from the homeland, and has time and again found the enemy at the gate. Moreover, it has been a habitual free-rider on security usually provided by the United States. Every American official passing through Delhi in the last several years has dutifully heard Indian pleas to not distinguish between the good and the bad Taliban, for ISAF not to leave Afghanistan precipitately, and for Washington to stay militarily committed to the Karzai government. Well, the Western troops are going home and a friendly Afghanistan is in peril. Ideally, the best thing would have been for the Indian and Pakistani governments to agree to send a joint South Asian peace-keeping force to that country. That isn’t feasible, or is it? Surely, MEA can send out feelers to Islamabad.

On its own, India should, of course, quickly ramp up its “training, mentoring and instructing” efforts. But it is in India’s interest to do more. The Indian government had almost dispatched an Infantry Division to Iraq in 2003 to please Washington. Surely, the Indo-Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement signed on October 4, 2011 hints at much larger Indian stakes in Afghanistan and an Indian military role in that country. With their vast counter-insurgency experience, Indian army contingents can leverage the high comfort levels the Afghan people will naturally have in dealing with them. They will be able to conduct their business with empathy while retaining Afghan goodwill. Deploying a static Indian military presence, say, in the Hajigak region where Indian companies have mining concessions and will need protection, seems a reasonable first step. It will free up ANA for fighting elsewhere. The more kinetic element could be Indian Special Forces deployed to fight in support of ANA and alongside the American Rangers and SEALs in the toughest terrain against currently the most formidable guerrilla adversary – the battle-hardened Taliban cadres. Para-commandos are the sharp edge of expeditionary forces that India needs to stress and to bulk up for the future. No better place for them to sharpen their fighting skills than in a difficult country related to us intimately by history.

[Published May 24, 2012 in the Asian Age www.asianage.com/columnists/mission-taliban-402 and Deccan Chronicle at www.deccanchronicle.com/columnists/bharat-karnad/mission-taliban ]

Posted in Afghanistan, Asian geopolitics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Army, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Special Forces, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Terrorism | 2 Comments

More strange, Lavoy

Posted on May 20, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Peter Lavoy, leading a Pentagon team to convince India to up its stake in Afghanistan, acted strange. May be he wears his intel background too seriously on his sleeve. In the dinner table conversation, I brought up the matter of Lt Gen Ausaf Ali, Director — Operations and Plans  the most important man in SPD (Strategic Plans Division) – the Pakistani nuclear command secretariat. And Lavoy acted mystified. He kept saying Khalid Kidwai, repeating it everytime I mentioned Ausaf. This was passing curious! I mean does Lavoy think that Ausaf and his position in SPD is secret, not known to anybody in India??? If it was a joke and he was playing the innocent, it was being taken too far.

I also said that, may be, GOI could condition India’s greater involement in Afghanistan on a  few stray US drones taking out, separately, you know who! And there was absolute silence from the Americans at the table — not a stir or a cough to break the tension for, as dinner table conversations go — a while. Not sure how to interpret the American reaction. Has such a quid pro quo been broached?

Posted in Afghanistan, Geopolitics, India's Pakistan Policy, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West | 8 Comments