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SOPHISTICATED WARFARE TULBUL PROJECT |
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Human rights, terrorism |
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EDITORIAL As if all the sophisticated weapon systems introduced by Pakistan in the ongoing proxy war in J&K is not enough, some state-of-art air devices have been seized from hitherto peaceful area of Kalakot. These air devices are remote controlled with engine that could fly it within a radius of 1 to 2 km as per initial assessment by technical experts of the security forces. Obviously, it could carry some deadly weapons and strike to pin point accuracy any vital target like defence installations, power stations and/or rendezvous of crucial meetings. Use of rockets and other weapons probably has not yielded desired goals set forth by ISI for its mercenaries operating in the State. Invariably such rockets and missiles fired by ultras have missed the targets thereby upsetting ISI plans for large scale subversion with maximum impact and propaganda leverage. Some ack-ack guns have also been seized besides shoulder fire rockets to blend the ongoing proxy war with sophistication. It is apt to mention seizure of highly sophisticated communications systems so essential for success of any guerilla operation. In retrospect, it is time to recall events of Afghanistan when no less than 5 lakh Russian forces were present in that country to save its annexation by western interests led by America. Then it happened to be cold war period of Communism vs Imperialism when either side wanted its hegemony over as many countries as possible. Afghanistan was thus the victim of such cold war which hotted up when America succeeded in training and equipping Afghan guerillas based in Peshawar and other places in NWF Province. The weapons provided by America included shoulder fired ground to air missiles that blasted Russian helicopters whose losses averaged anything upto five daily. As choppers were the only authentic means of communication, supplies and logistic support to scattered Russian troops such shooting down by Afghan guerillas led to near chaos and mighty Soviet Union was compelled to withdraw its large armed forces from Afghanistan. This is being mentioned to bring home the point that when proxy war is conditioned with sophisticated weaponry it makes all the difference between victory and defeat. That is how induction of air devices guided by remote control has to be viewed. This latest seizure adds new dimension to ongoing warfare. First, capability of the terrorists, be they local or mercenaries, is enhanced manifold to hit the desired target to derive maximum leverage. One does not really know if our side has any system to stop such small device before hitting the target. So some sort of contingency plan has to be evolved to neutralise deadly impact of such devices. This calls for upgradation of our sophistication level. It is not the guns firing from across the border but some thing positioned right inside our territory to blast anything. One must take cognisance of the fact that only two such air devices are seized by chance and that too from least suspected area. There could be many more similar devices already positioned in the vicinity of likely targets. One shudders to think of the fatal consequences of this air device carrying say ten kg of RDX and exploding exactly on the wanted target. Second aspect relates to a new location used for dumping such devices which has remained free of terrorist menace till now. This implies that the enemy is ever on innovative spree location-wise and otherwise. It also implies stretching of our forces to take care of hitherto intact areas which goes counter to the proactive plan of reducing the area of their infestation. Third and by far the largest aspect pertains to the highly destabilising effect of such devices, if used, would have on the civil front as even highest category of security cannot save the often-announced targets.Fourth, only devices are seized, not the ultra trained to use these. As long as they are scot free and presence of more similar devices very much alive, both popular Government as also the security forces shall have to be on extraordinary vigil to thwart the enemy designs. It implies that there is simply no room for complacency and the road ahead before total normalcy is full of heavy odds at every stage. Even as our security personnel grapple with latest induction of sophisticated devices that cannot be neutralised effectively as on now, one really does not know why use of helicopter gunships continue to be avoided to flush out the mercenaries from heights and inaccessible areas. Why all initiatives in terms of sophistication and innovation continue to emanate from the enemy. This mentality has got to be reversed. As Indo-Pak talks get under way to discuss the six contentious issues, Tulbul Navigation Project bears special relevance for many reasons. It is the first item on agenda. It has been under discussion for almost 11 years since 1987 invariably at all the talks held between two sides at various levels. It happens to be the project that affects civil side more than the military one. It is also the project that stands aborted because of the wrong and unequal treaties thrust on this state by the Central power apparatus for which people of State continue to pay a very heavy price. On the face of it the issue may not appear that serious but a closer study and chronology is quite revealing. One has to delve into this project right from the time of its conceptualisation and beginning of work in 1984. Tulbul Navigation Project by its name itself means use of river Jhelum for navigation purposes i.e. for ferrrying of men, material and other items from Wullar Lake to Sopore via river Jhelum. It involved construction of a barrage to regulate flow of water to maintain certain level particularly during winter months so that Jhelum could be used round the year for navigation. It surely entailed either flow of water into Jhelum from the Lake or vice versa to keep the level navigational. Had it been through, it would have rapidly transformed economy of the area besides providing highly economical means of transportation. Looked from any angle, the project was well meaning initiated to improve the economy and life of the people enroute. In 1987 the work had to be stopped on objections from Pakistan as violation of Indus Water Treaty signed by the two countries under the auspices of World Bank in 1960. The treaty barred use of Indus, Jhelum and Chenab river waters by the State except for run-of-the-river power projects like Salal and Dul Hasti, use for drinking water purposes and navigation but otherwise India could not draw any water. Navigation usage is thus part of the Treaty and to that extent project should have gone ahead. But Pakistan even after reaching some sort of agreement in 1991 whose draft was ready for signing made it conditional to resolve of Kashmir issue. The position is slightly different now as Kashmir appears to have been segregated from resolve of other issues. This State is thus the victim of delays, deprivations and denial of using its own rivers for which Centre has never compensated this State. Think of the benefits that would have accrued to the people. Think of the cost escalation even if Tulbul project is restarted now. Think of the gross interference in our affairs whenever any project on these rivers is conceived and started by this country. Unequal Treaty needs revision or the State must be fully compensated by the Centre. |
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Human rights, terrorism and organised crime By: Arun Shourie "Sir, for a moment put yourself in the kind of situation in which we are every other day,'' a police officer said. "A young girl has been kidnapped. The kidnapper has been caught. But the girl has not yet been recovered. Where she is being held is not known. The kidnapper is brought to the police-station. Should the investigating officer offer him a cup of tea, and try to cajole him into revealing the whereabouts of the girl, or should he use third-degree methods and extract the requisite information from him?'' We were at a discussion organised by the Delhi Police on balancing human rights and the needs of law enforcement. Arun Jaitley, the senior advocate, gave a considered response. "We should leave that decision to the policeman on the spot, but he should lean towards the side of law.'' The presumption--not Jaitley's, but that of public discourse--is that policemen do not adhere to the second part of Jaitley's rule: that all too often they overstep the limits prescribed by law. The problem is that the rest of us do not sick by the first part of the rule either. Imagine that the girl is someone we know--our sister, a niece. We would want the policeman to do whatever he wants so long as he extracts the whereabouts of the girl from the kidnapper, and rescues her. Similarly, when the policeman on the spot has in fact taken the decision and acted accordingly, and specially once the problem is over, we match in and arraign him for doing what he thought was appropriate. Not just what he thought was appropriate, we arraign him for doing what we ourselves were shouting at him to do. What else explains the prosecutions to which policemen in Punjab are being subjected today? Prosecutions which have been instituted after a concerted campaign by religio-politicos who went from congregation to congregation exhorting people to file complaints against those who had prevented Khalistan from coming into being. Prosecutions which have been instituted in violation of the law-when terrorism was at its height in Punjab and Kashmir in 1991 section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code was amended to foreclose precisely this kind of persecution of security forces. But the terrorists having been thwarted by the policemen, we are at the ones who saved the country. In assessing the proper balance between human rights and the tasks assigned to our security forces, the following benchmarks should be kept in mind. First, we should bear in mind the scale of the threat we have asked the forces to counter. The very words we use minimise the problem: "terrorist'' conjures in our minds the image of a loner operating on his own, at worst with a small band; "low-intensity war,'' "proxy war''--such expressions conjure the image of a lesser-war, a war in the second order of smalls. The fact is the opposite. We have had three wars with Pakistan. We lost a total of about 2,700 servicemen. Since 1984, terrorism has taken the lives of about 5, 100 security personnel. In the three wars, the number of civilians killed was negligible. Since 1984, terrorists have killed over twenty nine thousand five hundred civilians. Approximately four thousand explosions have been caused. About two lakh seventy eight thousand have been rendered homeless. The quantity of arms and explosives which have been recovered is itself mind-boggling. About forty four thousand kilograms of RDX alone have been recovered: to get an idea of what that figure means, recall that the Bombay explosions were caused by using about 275 kilograms of RDX. To get a measure of the magnitudes, contrast that figure of twenty nine thousand five hundred killed with the number of Americans who have been killed in different events and which have been sufficient to justify American retaliation. In 1986, the US launched air raids on Tripoli, killing uncounted civilians, including Gaddafi's little daughter. The raids were in retaliation for an explosion in a West Berlin nightclub-the US President declaring, "That mad-dog of the Middle East, Kaddafi has done it.'' How many Americans had been killed in the explosion? One. The explosion at the World Trade Center in New York resulted in the death of six Americans. That number was enough for the US to assert its right to seize and arrest suspects in far-off Pakistan. And this time a dozen or so in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salam, and the missiles flew into Afghanistan.... The position regarding organised crime is no less alarming. At the seminar, I asked the Police Commissioner of Delhi for the total budget of Delhi police. Rs. 700 crores, he said. The previous night the premises of one of a local businessman-politico, had been raided--the police was said to have uncovered properties worth Rs. 500 crores. Imagine the kind of resources such a small will be able to mobilise-top potch lawyers, influential politicians, helpers in the system. And he is just one of the men said to be associated with Dawood Ibrahim, indeed one of the minor s frontmen. When this is the scale of the task we pile on to our security forces, we should not allow them anything less than the margin that is allowed to forces in all-out, open war. The second factor is the nature of the adversary. A petty thief is one thing, a revvedup- brain-washed terrorist out for martyrdom is another. To ask the forces to deal with him the way they deal with an ordinary criminal is to ensure defeat. In one case, by merely depriving the person of sleep for a while, you can get the truth out of him. In the other, you will get nothing but scorn. There is only one rule of thumb in dealing with such a person: yes, we will respect his human rights--to the exact extent to which he respects the human rights of his victims. Even more important than the individual terrorist or criminal is the nature of the controller behind him. And that yields the third rule. The terrorist--I would say, even the partner in organised crime--is today not acting on his own. And when we pitch our security forces against him we must bear in mind the nature of that controller at the back. There is in our recent annals a most educative exchange--that between Gandhiji and the great Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber: it becomes apparent that Gandhiji's non-violent methods succeeded in India in large part because the adversary was Britain, that they would have been swiftly snuffed out had the adversary been Hitler. The terrorism we have faced is the handiwork of Pakistan-a country that defines its identity in terms of negating and destroying India, a country in which the most powerful organizations--ISI, fundamentalist groups such as the Lashkar Taiba--exist only to destroy India, organizations for which the jihad against India is the fount of power, of lucre. The scale of resources which such a backer can-and given his singular objective, will--deploy is one factor to bear in mind. Even more important is the ideology which that backer has internalised. A regime, a movement, a pack which has internalised a totalitarian ideology--one that claims to regulate the totality of life, a millenarian ideology--one on behalf of which the followers claim that if it is followed the millennium will break out, an exclusivist ideology one that insists that it alone possesses the truth, that regime or group will wage a war to the end-till it prevails or till it is defeated. The regime in Pakistan, the ISI, to say nothing of the Dawat wal Irshad etc. are indeed fired by such an ideology. To expect security forces to counter them by securing writs from the Supreme Court is to not just to play the fool oneself, it is to sign the death warrants of our soldiers. War is not the only way of fighting such ideologies-the victory covering the most extensive areas and peoples, that of the free world over the Communist world, was a completely non-violent one. But the capacity to defeat regimes and groups drunk on those ideologies, and actually defeating them if they launch into hostilities is essential for saving oneself. There never is a kind-hearted, sanitary way of waging a war. That is even less so when the adversary has been fired up by a totalitarian exclusivist, millenarian ideology-for an essential ingredient of such an ideology is the proposition that, because the adherent is working for The Great Cause, he is exempt from all restraint, from all norms. "But you must make sure to use only minimum force,'' our commentators admonish the security forces. They never say of course what the force is which they would accept as the minimum that was required in a given situation, nor do they ever tell us how they are qualified to assess what force is the minimum that is required. Moreover, there is the conclusive point: no war has been won by deploying "minimum force.'' Wars have invariably been won by overwhelming the enemy with force. So, not only is the admonition empty in that it specifies neither a level of force which would be acceptable, nor a criterion by which such a level might be arrived at by the officer suddenly confronted by ban of terrorist. Worse, it is just plain wrong. The responsibility for the quantum of force which will be required to acquire control of the situation is not that of the security personnel who in the end are sent to contain it, but of the persons who have let the situation become that in the first place: in the cases we have passed through recently--Punjab, Kashmir, the Northeast-the responsibility is precisely of those who, having allowed the situation to deteriorate to that extent, then hectored the security forces--that is, our political establishment, our media and intellectuals etc. There is of course one point on which the forces can legitimately be faulted: they should be speaking out much more, they should be making themselves heard much earlier. Well before the situation has deteriorated so much that they are called upon to retrieve it, they should be speaking up--about the nature of war, about what it will take for the situation to be reclaimed. Serving officers should speak up within the system. Retired officers should speak up in public. Three additional elements need to be factored in while assessing what the security personnel do. First, the amount of force they will need to deploy, the means they will have use depend to a large degree on the extent to which other institutions are attending to their duties. Those who carried out the blasts in Bombay are still on trial--five years after those terrible explosions. Far from the cases reaching a conclusion in the trial court, all sorts of appeals on technical points have been entertained and now lie in the laps of higher courts. Is such a sequence not an invitation to terrorism? And when the deeds go on piling up, and when ultimately even our somenolent rulers feel that something just has to be done, and they call in the security forces, will the police etc not have to deploy more force, will they not have to adopt more of the methods which, after the problem has been contained, our commentators will pronounce to have been illegal? But who is responsible? The security personnel?Or the courts which delayed meting out punishments so long that they became a positive encouragement to potential recruits? Or the political rulers who did not institute the reforms which would have ensured speedy convictions? In Punjab, the judiciary had abdicated its function, prosecutors would not pursue cases involving terrorists, witnesses would refuse to appear. And all for the very good reason that were they to do right by the law, they would be finished in next to no time. It is fine to say, "But the cure was to get the institutions working first.'' The fact of life was different: terrorism had to be fought there and then, the war had to he fought in that circumstance. The fight could not be postponed till the other institutions had once again begun to do their job. Indeed, the precondition for the other institutions to recommence their work was that terrorism be vanquished. What procedures do our commentators recommend the police should have followed in that situation? What holds for institutions holds a fortiori for society as a whole. When the ones who are to decide, when those who have the instruments of public opinion in their hands are as confused as they are in India today, situations are certain to go on deteriorating often, and to go out of hand. There was only one law which had driven some fear into the minds of persons who would harbour terrorists: TADA. In 1995 politicians like Jafar Sharief--looking for issues by which they could warn their leaders of the nuisance they could be unless they were suitably mollified--launched on a campaign asking for its abolition. The law is being used against minorities, they started shouting. The human rightists jumped in. The media--without the slightest effort to eamine the facts--became the megaphones of the chorus. In fact, in 1994 only 535 persons had been booked under TADA. Of these, 333 had been booked in Assam, 142 in Andhra, 42 in Maharashtra. At the time Assam was plagued by ULFA, Andhra was being tormented by Naxalites, Maharashtra had just had the Bombay explosions. In each of these States the Government in office was that of the Congress. For the first two months of 1995, the data was even more telling: only thirty nine persons had been booked under TADA. Outside Kashmir, only four point six percent of the detenus had been Muslims. And in Kashmir those detained had been held not because they were Muslims, but because they were set upon breaking the country. But no one looked at the facts. A stampede in the name of human rights, in the name of minorities. The Act was abolished. And an essential weapon against terrorism was thrown away. When such is the condition of the thinking sections of society, situations are going to go out of hand, and when security forces are asked to step in and clean up the mess, they will have to be less than fastidious about the finer provisions of law. The final point to bear in mind concerns those who ask security forces to prove their innocence. Abroad, these are foreign governments, and organizations like Amnesty International. At home they are organizations specialising in civil liberties, and a body like the Human Rights Commission. Throughout the decade when terrorists were killing thousands, and thought the fact that they were being aided by Pakistan was patent, Governments like that of the United States asked us to provide proof of Pakistan 's hand in the war! It was only when four foreigners were taken by the Harkat ul Ansar that they acknowledged the truth--then they proclaimed it on their own! Two rules are important in such cases. First, it is worse than foolish for a country to put itself in a position when it has to produce to the satisfaction of the patron State that its client State is wreaking murder. The patron knows what the client is doing. He is allowing the latter to proceed with the havoc because the latter is being useful to the patron in the matter which is important to him at the moment. Second, when we are asked to provide proof, we should provide it to the extent which the regime asking for it has provided proof: what is the proof that the US provided establishing Gaddafi's complicity before it bombed Tripoli? What is the proof it has provided about Osama bin Laden's complicity before dispatching missiles on to Afghanistan? As for organizations that specialise in human rights, first we must subject their reports to the closest professional scrutiny. This should include the fullest inquiry into and disclosure of the amount of work that the authors have actually put in. I have personally known of reports ascribing "atrocities'' of our defence forces which were written by experts who did not even get out of the airport at Srinagar, who just put their signatures to what a person like Justice Bahauddin-committed to Azadi as he was-had concocted. Specific reports apart, the accounts of these organizations should be discounted for a reason that is germane to the work of all activists. An organization or group that is devoted to a particular cause-to stop large dams, for instance--is liable to receive more and more information that casts doubts on large dams: it will be on the look out for such information, those who come across such information will reach out and get it to this group. The more passionately committed it gets to this cause, the more likely it is to exaggerate the significance of every scrap that reinforces the case. When it is "totally committed,'' it wil go about hunting for such information, at times inventing it. Even when this is not the case, by the very fact that an organization has been set up to look into human rights violations, it will see these as the most important issue at hand. The testimony and strictures of all such groups, therefore, need to be put in perspective before being taken seriously. A society which first
allows situations to go out of hand, then throws in
security forces to contain it, and, once they have done
so, penalizes them for not having been fastidious enough
is signing the warrants for its dismemberment. |
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