Once upon a time in the valley of death
Part - I Zero protocol
Wajahat S Khan
Thursday, September 19, 2013
From Print Edition
Once upon a time, a grandmother from a border village that lay in a bleeding valley contested by two rival lands crossed over to the other side to go meet her sons. Her departure was noticed by fellow villagers, who in turn reported it to the local commander. The commander, disturbed that an old woman who lived in his area of responsibility had eluded his soldiers and fences and moreover, embarrassed him, started building fortifications near where she had breached the border. Never on his watch, swore he, would another grandmother cross over to the enemy.
In the real world, the Indian press would report that 70-year-old Reshma Bi crossed over to Pakistani-administered Azad Kashmir in September 2011, from the village of Charonda in Indian-held J&K. Reshma’s flight “set off alarms” at the Uri-headquartered 19 Infantry Division, which would allow the 9 Maratha Light Infantry, the Indian army unit overseeing the area, to start the construction of observation bunkers “inside a week” of her departure which, according to Indian police cited in January 10, 2013’s The Hindu, was prompted by “the hope of living out her last years with her family” across the LoC. It was an innocuous beginning to a terrible clash.
Though his orders to his men were to work stealthily, soon enough, the enemy noticed what the commander was doing. Now, according to an old pact, the commander wasn’t supposed to be doing what he was doing at all so close to the border, grandmother or good weather. For years, such rules had been respected to keep the peace. But despite the enemy’s warnings, he continued building his fortifications.
In the real world, The Hindu – India’s newspaper of record – would report that Indian commanders “conceded that the construction was in violation of the ceasefire” of 2003 – which has largely held for the last decade – but Indian soldiers “refused to stop work, arguing that the posts faced out towards the village, posing no threat to Pakistan.” Eventually, The Hindu would report, the construction “provoked furious protests from Pakistani troops”, followed by “announcements over a public address system demanding Indian troops end the construction work”.
Soon enough, the enemy did what enemies usually do when provoked: retaliate. The commander’s men retreated back to their well-protected positions, but some poor villagers got killed in the assault that the angry enemy unleashed. Nobody noticed, as poor villagers from this bleeding land died all the time this way, but only when the commander’s boss, a more important commander, got whiff of this bloody situation unravelling over months did things take a decisive turn. Even though his men had provoked the other side, the more important commander decided to take the fight to the enemy and show them who’s boss. And so he did. That’s when things got heated up.
In the real world, the situation escalated in October 2012. Eventually, Pakistan’s retaliatory actions against the bunker construction would lead the Indians to a tipping point, when on January 6, 2013, India’s 161 Brigade commander G S Rawat “sought and obtained permission for aggressive action against the Pakistani position from where his troops were being targeted”. It’s not clear whether the Indians crossed over to attack the Pakistani position (India officially denied it, though an Indian official would be quoted in The Hindu saying “in the heat of fighting, these things have been known to happen” from both sides). The bottom-line is: Pakistani soldiers were dead.
This wasn’t the first time in recent memory that fire had been exchanged over India’s construction of outposts violating the ceasefire. In the summer of 2012, the Krishna Ghati sector saw fighting as Pakistan protested on the same premise. Back in 2008, both sides reported losses in Handwara, again because of “disputes over the construction of new fortifications around an Indian position, code-named Eagle Post.” So if this was just a rinse-and-repeat LoC face-off, triggered by an Indian bunker-buildup followed by Pakistani retaliation, why did it all go south in January 2013?
Even though he attacked the enemy successfully and killed its men, so hurried was the commander’s attack that he even left behind some equipment in his daring assault. Maybe crossing over wasn’t his fault, for the fervour of battle makes it tough to keep track of the rules, especially when grandmothers are involved.
But, most importantly, the commander had underestimated how enraged the enemy would be about the escalation, because what happened next, according to the commander’s army (the enemy would just deny it), would give his countrymen nightmares: The enemy, the story went, in its thirst for revenge, crossed over in the darkness of night and butchered his soldiers, taking back their heads as a prize – or so claimed his high command. Perhaps the enemy too had lost track of the rules of engagement in the fog of war.
In the real world, after India’s ‘raid’ on January 6 (which the Indian Army claimed was not an across-the-border engagement, but still an engagement), the narrative would become the classic, Indo-Pak he-said-she-said game, with a twist. Shouting incursion, ISPR would release pictures of an Indian pistol and equipment left behind in the alleged incursion. Meanwhile, a new, minted-in-India term, the ‘Border Action Team’, which New Delhi would claim is a new formation combining “Pakistani jihadists and Special Forces”, would dominate the Indian narrative. Pakistan would protest the ‘dastardly’ aggression. India would shout ‘mutilation’. Meanwhile, the Mendhar sector’s ‘beheading’ would become the new diplomatic black.
The heralds and soothsayers had warned of this moment: headless soldiers would bring on a larger war, where the earth would split, the mountains would melt, and history would end. And so the soothsayers and bards would go to their pens and platforms and shout that the war to end all wars was coming, and commanders far more important than the one who had started it all thumped their chests and throttled their birds of steel.
In the real world, high commissioners would be called in, flag meetings would fail, and India would expectedly reject Pakistan’s proposal for a UN probe. Only after Praveen Swami’s game-changing exclusive for The Hindu, which would connect the dots of the fighting back to a lonely grandmother and the bunker construction, would the narrative shift in India. But Swami would also trace another incident (in Karnah, 2012) where Indian Special Forces allegedly beheaded Pakistani troops in a tit-for-tat response, also shattering the Indian myth that the ‘beheadings’ were just a Pakistani habit. So, despite a raging, military-sourced media onslaught by India – never really matched by Pakistan’s primetime divas – the war of wars never came.
But 2013’s Battle of January is remarkably different from the more recent Guns of August. Following The Hindu’s premise, January is clearly a tactical miscalculation from the Indian side that escalated as one side kept violating ceasefire terms while the other kept retaliating. Think of it like a game of chicken, played over months, which started mildly but ended tragically, as neither side wanted to back down.
Largely irrelevant is if the feared BATs do or don’t exist; it’s more relevant that the Indians thought they existed, and even more importantly, the sick habit of ‘mutilating’ the enemy was an admitted Indian trait, not just an alleged Pakistani one. Yet, the Indian Army continued to escalate the face-off by building their fortifications and ratcheting up tensions, triggering Pakistani retaliation, BAT, beheadings or whatever.
However, the recent August tensions saw a larger, less tactical game at play. And unlike last winter, both Islamabad and Rawalpindi claim that New Delhi’s latest moves are geared less around grandmothers and more around grand designs.
To be continued
The writer is former Shorenstein Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a broadcast/online journalist.
Twitter: @wajskhanEmail: [email protected]d. edu
Part - I Zero protocol
Wajahat S Khan
Thursday, September 19, 2013
From Print Edition
In the real world, the Indian press would report that 70-year-old Reshma Bi crossed over to Pakistani-administered Azad Kashmir in September 2011, from the village of Charonda in Indian-held J&K. Reshma’s flight “set off alarms” at the Uri-headquartered 19 Infantry Division, which would allow the 9 Maratha Light Infantry, the Indian army unit overseeing the area, to start the construction of observation bunkers “inside a week” of her departure which, according to Indian police cited in January 10, 2013’s The Hindu, was prompted by “the hope of living out her last years with her family” across the LoC. It was an innocuous beginning to a terrible clash.
Though his orders to his men were to work stealthily, soon enough, the enemy noticed what the commander was doing. Now, according to an old pact, the commander wasn’t supposed to be doing what he was doing at all so close to the border, grandmother or good weather. For years, such rules had been respected to keep the peace. But despite the enemy’s warnings, he continued building his fortifications.
In the real world, The Hindu – India’s newspaper of record – would report that Indian commanders “conceded that the construction was in violation of the ceasefire” of 2003 – which has largely held for the last decade – but Indian soldiers “refused to stop work, arguing that the posts faced out towards the village, posing no threat to Pakistan.” Eventually, The Hindu would report, the construction “provoked furious protests from Pakistani troops”, followed by “announcements over a public address system demanding Indian troops end the construction work”.
Soon enough, the enemy did what enemies usually do when provoked: retaliate. The commander’s men retreated back to their well-protected positions, but some poor villagers got killed in the assault that the angry enemy unleashed. Nobody noticed, as poor villagers from this bleeding land died all the time this way, but only when the commander’s boss, a more important commander, got whiff of this bloody situation unravelling over months did things take a decisive turn. Even though his men had provoked the other side, the more important commander decided to take the fight to the enemy and show them who’s boss. And so he did. That’s when things got heated up.
In the real world, the situation escalated in October 2012. Eventually, Pakistan’s retaliatory actions against the bunker construction would lead the Indians to a tipping point, when on January 6, 2013, India’s 161 Brigade commander G S Rawat “sought and obtained permission for aggressive action against the Pakistani position from where his troops were being targeted”. It’s not clear whether the Indians crossed over to attack the Pakistani position (India officially denied it, though an Indian official would be quoted in The Hindu saying “in the heat of fighting, these things have been known to happen” from both sides). The bottom-line is: Pakistani soldiers were dead.
This wasn’t the first time in recent memory that fire had been exchanged over India’s construction of outposts violating the ceasefire. In the summer of 2012, the Krishna Ghati sector saw fighting as Pakistan protested on the same premise. Back in 2008, both sides reported losses in Handwara, again because of “disputes over the construction of new fortifications around an Indian position, code-named Eagle Post.” So if this was just a rinse-and-repeat LoC face-off, triggered by an Indian bunker-buildup followed by Pakistani retaliation, why did it all go south in January 2013?
Even though he attacked the enemy successfully and killed its men, so hurried was the commander’s attack that he even left behind some equipment in his daring assault. Maybe crossing over wasn’t his fault, for the fervour of battle makes it tough to keep track of the rules, especially when grandmothers are involved.
But, most importantly, the commander had underestimated how enraged the enemy would be about the escalation, because what happened next, according to the commander’s army (the enemy would just deny it), would give his countrymen nightmares: The enemy, the story went, in its thirst for revenge, crossed over in the darkness of night and butchered his soldiers, taking back their heads as a prize – or so claimed his high command. Perhaps the enemy too had lost track of the rules of engagement in the fog of war.
In the real world, after India’s ‘raid’ on January 6 (which the Indian Army claimed was not an across-the-border engagement, but still an engagement), the narrative would become the classic, Indo-Pak he-said-she-said game, with a twist. Shouting incursion, ISPR would release pictures of an Indian pistol and equipment left behind in the alleged incursion. Meanwhile, a new, minted-in-India term, the ‘Border Action Team’, which New Delhi would claim is a new formation combining “Pakistani jihadists and Special Forces”, would dominate the Indian narrative. Pakistan would protest the ‘dastardly’ aggression. India would shout ‘mutilation’. Meanwhile, the Mendhar sector’s ‘beheading’ would become the new diplomatic black.
The heralds and soothsayers had warned of this moment: headless soldiers would bring on a larger war, where the earth would split, the mountains would melt, and history would end. And so the soothsayers and bards would go to their pens and platforms and shout that the war to end all wars was coming, and commanders far more important than the one who had started it all thumped their chests and throttled their birds of steel.
In the real world, high commissioners would be called in, flag meetings would fail, and India would expectedly reject Pakistan’s proposal for a UN probe. Only after Praveen Swami’s game-changing exclusive for The Hindu, which would connect the dots of the fighting back to a lonely grandmother and the bunker construction, would the narrative shift in India. But Swami would also trace another incident (in Karnah, 2012) where Indian Special Forces allegedly beheaded Pakistani troops in a tit-for-tat response, also shattering the Indian myth that the ‘beheadings’ were just a Pakistani habit. So, despite a raging, military-sourced media onslaught by India – never really matched by Pakistan’s primetime divas – the war of wars never came.
But 2013’s Battle of January is remarkably different from the more recent Guns of August. Following The Hindu’s premise, January is clearly a tactical miscalculation from the Indian side that escalated as one side kept violating ceasefire terms while the other kept retaliating. Think of it like a game of chicken, played over months, which started mildly but ended tragically, as neither side wanted to back down.
Largely irrelevant is if the feared BATs do or don’t exist; it’s more relevant that the Indians thought they existed, and even more importantly, the sick habit of ‘mutilating’ the enemy was an admitted Indian trait, not just an alleged Pakistani one. Yet, the Indian Army continued to escalate the face-off by building their fortifications and ratcheting up tensions, triggering Pakistani retaliation, BAT, beheadings or whatever.
However, the recent August tensions saw a larger, less tactical game at play. And unlike last winter, both Islamabad and Rawalpindi claim that New Delhi’s latest moves are geared less around grandmothers and more around grand designs.
To be continued
The writer is former Shorenstein Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a broadcast/online journalist.
Twitter: @wajskhanEmail: [email protected]d. edu
