JOIN USThe Indian Army’s Special Forces or Para-Commandos recently conducted surgical strikes on terrorist camps in the Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir (PoK) for the first time with political clearance from the Cabinet Committee on Security in response to the assault on the Army’s brigade headquarters at Uri last month.
For the Indian policy makers, the instruments of foreign policy towards Pakistan include trade, diplomacy, covert action and war. Covert action or surgical strikes as a foreign policy instrument indicates an inability to pursue diplomacy towards another country – but reluctance to wage a full scale war. While war amounts to an unrestrained use of force, a surgical strike is about highly limited and narrow use of force against an adversary. Clearly, India has not declared war on Pakistan but only targeted the terrorist launch pads across the LoC to safeguard its national security interests.
These surgical strikes suggest a major shift in New Delhi’s policy towards Pakistan from one of strategic restraint to use of force. Till now, New Delhi appeared to lack clarity on how exactly to respond to the Pakistani terrorist assaults. Intermittently, Indian and Pakistani soldiers have had skirmishes across the LoC, where they beheaded each other’s troops. The Indian political leadership has over the years allowed its military commanders to manage the relationship with Pakistan and respond to the terrorist assaults at their level.
As a result, the Indian Army through the 1990s had no option but to empower their commanding officers of infantry (foot soldiers) battalions and even Para Commandos to conduct trans-border shallow penetration raids in hot pursuit of terrorists. To that extent, the political leadership has been hesitant to overtly empower the military to project force across the border to respond to terror strikes.
Perhaps, the Indian Special Forces have never been used in peacetime as a strategic weapon, largely because the political leadership and also the police-led security and intelligence bureaucracy is militarily illiterate. They may not be too well-versed about the role and capability of the Special Forces due to lack of adequate exposure. The Special Forces battalions are designed and trained as much smaller fighting units than infantry battalions.
While an infantry battalion has 1,000 soldiers, the Special Forces battalion has only 550 soldiers. They could be employed to, among other tasks, rescue hostages or strike clandestine, violent non-state actors. The political and military leadership should employ Special Forces imaginatively and boldly without being too-risk averse to obtain the best dividends. The latest covert operation should serve to alter that impression and the political leadership could factor this strategic weapon into their thinking to deal with security-related problems in future.
In 1976, the Israeli commando raid on the Entebbe airport successfully freed Israeli airline passengers held hostage in Uganda. The then Israeli prime minister’s brother had led the commando raid which suggests military literacy of the political leadership.
‘Pseudo’ operations
Officers of the Special Forces say, they practice ‘pseudo’ operations where they themselves masquerade as terrorists to strike at the foe. Their objective is to fight the terrorist like a terrorist with the same guile and surprise. The Special Forces are a valuable military asset, especially in the Kashmir Valley characterised by a perennial terrorist threat.
India’s latest employment of Special Forces to promote its strategic interests vis-a-vis Pakistan only makes its diplomacy more credible in future. Till now, India’s foreign policy towards Pakistan was reactive in nature wherein New Delhi only resorted to diplomacy which gradually proved ineffective because it was not backed by the threat of use of force. To that extent, the recent surgical strikes serve to strengthen New Delhi’s diplomacy and deter Pakistan from further terrorist attacks.
The fact that India never officially sanctioned a military response to Pakistan despite a series of terrorist attacks launched from its territory that targeted Parliament in 2001, 26/11 sea-borne assault on Mumbai besides Air Force Station, Pathankot, had only lulled the Pakistani Army’s General Headquarters, Rawalpindi into complacency about any retribution from India.
Evidently, this helped the Indian Special Forces to mount their offensive operation into the PoK. The hallmark of a successful surgical strike is surprise, stealth and speed which favoured the Indian Special Forces in their endeavour.
In 2015, the Special Forces launched a commando raid across the India-Myanmar border to avenge the killings of some Indian soldiers in an ambush by Northeastern insurgents who then sought refuge in Myanmar.
The political will to authorise a surgical strike into Myanmar and PoK indicate that the political leadership in New Delhi has realised the significance of military as an instrument of national power.
(The writer is a Professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the Christ University, Bengaluru)