Manipur scene
Breakdown of internal securit

By Vinod Vedi

The announcement by Chief of Army Staff N.C.Vij that Manorama Devi, the girl, whose death at the hands of the Assam Rifles personnel in Manipur had sparked off the sustained campaign against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, was not raped will act as a salve to the conscience of every Indian.

It was very disturbing to have such a stigma on a group of men who are expected to display exemplary behaviour. The shooting itself still remains a matter of controversy and tends to highlight the criticism that excessive force was used and this is a proclivity among armed forces because of the laissez fair provided by the Special Powers Act.

There are aspects of the situation in Manipur that ought to be, irrespective of the widespread agitation by the people of the State, of concern to everyone at the Centre and in the State Government and the security forces themselves is that time and again the place can so easily explode into violence and pose a grave danger to national security.

It has not been very long when the place went up in flames on the announcement that the talks being conducted by former Home Secretary Padmanabhaiah with the Naga ultras (NSCN-I/M) in Bangkok had opened the possibility of the creation of "Greater Nagaland" incorporating the Naga tribal populations of contiguous States like Manipur. .

Nobody, least of all Padmanabhaiah who ought to have known, had the faintest clue of the consequences of such an announcement. And this happened after a committee was set up to review the Kargil debacle and a group of ministers of the NDA Government made far-reaching changes in the infrastructure of internal security so that events like the attack on Parliament do not recur.

The NDA did manage to set up concentric circles of security apparatus around Parliament but in the larger ambiance of "internal security" it failed to analyse the signs of trouble in potential trouble spots. A part of Gen Vij' s announcement about Manorama Devi was that it was known to governments at the State and the Centre that the lady was involved with the insurgency that necessitated the imposition of the Disturbed Areas Act in the State.

The consequences of arresting such a person and then killing her in custody should have been known to those in-charge of internal security. Quite apart from the mechanics of intelligence gathering in an insurgency-infested region neither the civilian nor the military apparatus involved in counter-insurgency understood the power of what is known in military jargon as psychological operation or psyops.

Psychological warfare

Psychological warfare is the science of discrediting an enemy by the use of the media to turn sentiments against the very instruments of state that are deployed to curb the insurgency. That the State Government, the Central Government and the Indian Army should fail so dismally not once but twice to detect and understand the undercurrents in Manipur and avoid acts that would exacerbate the situation shows that they have not learned the lessons of decades of counterinsurgency operations. The killing of Manorama Devi is a case in point.

Ever since it happened the nation-state has been held to ransom by those who have used both the factum of her death by gunfire and, as now disproved, by allegations of rape. It was the kind of double whammy that the nation could have done without. A proper analysis needs to be done to assess the underlying factors that are feeding the insurgency in the north-east in general and in Manipur in particular.

It is of no little significance that the NDA Government that swore by the Hindu factor of its philosophy was unable to understand the ethos of Manipuris. Majority of them owe allegiance to Hinduism. Even then!

The apparatus of assessing threat to security, both internal and external, is clearly seriously flawed; the UPA government needs to conduct a review of its own of both aspects at the earliest because no amount of splurging on weaponry will help if one is blissfully unaware of the kinds of dangers that could undermine security both on the periphery and within the nation.

In counter-insurgency, the security forces themselves need to do some serious introspection and come up with remedies of their own that are able to assess local factors that could undermine internal security and then go about using appropriate force to deal with it without having to become ham-handed in the process.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has within its fold an institution known as the Defence Institute for Psychological Research (DIPR), which is supposed to provide the psychological inputs to warfare, both conventional and the guerrilla type. It ought to be this institution's responsibility to assess ground realities and provide inputs- for psychological warfare in the counter-insurgency milieu.

Irrespective of what it can provide by way of actionable intelligence, its major contribution can be by way of enabling the soldier and the commander to understand the mindset of the local population within which, as experts in guerrilla warfare have described it, the insurgent moves about as a fish in water.

And this very description underscores the fluid nature of counter-insurgency operations where search and destroy or hot pursuit depends in large measure on the local milieu and how hostile it is to security forces or whether it is amenable to lend support to Government efforts to curb the insurgents.

The role of the DIPR is to provide inputs in a fluid situation. It is not easy but it ought to have the expertise to be able to guide the security forces of what to expect by way of reactions of the local people to the operations and how these ought to be conducted to win minds and hearts, which, in the final analysis, is the raison d'etre of counter-insurgency operations.

What is happening in Manipur is a rollback of those elements that have, over the years, become central to the cementing of a national ethos even within the diversity of the component states that form the Indian Union. The ability of the Government both at the State and the Central level has been eroded to an unacceptable level. That the instruments of state authority are being sought to be undermined is by itself a matter of concern more so because the security forces involved in the Manorama Devi episode have had decades of experience in counter-insurgency in that area.

There is definitely a need to include in the process an element of accountability so that those involved in human rights violations are dealt with appropriately and swiftly before the situation escalates out of control as it did in Manipur.

On securing the nation against the-threat from outside, there is need to be able to reduce cross-border terrorism by the strength of our own institutions rather than depend on the uncertain goodwill of the US and its European allies to bring pressure to bear on Pakistan or any of our other neighbours to cease and desist in its attempt to delink parts of Jammu and Kashmir from the rest of India under the guise of an internal insurgency for self-determination or create instability on the basis of a larger game plan as is emerging in relation with Bangladesh.

Even events in Bhutan, Myanmar and Nepal will increasingly, impinge of India's own internal security and-there will have to be a better appreciation of the factors that could, willy-nilly, contribute to a sense of alienation or disgruntlement within India's own population.

The Centre is trying to retrieve the situation by restructuring the internal security apparatus in Manipur. The unified headquarters of security forces under the overall command of the Chief Minister will help to stem the groundswell against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

Yet, it needs to be clearly understood that the Government's role in maintaining internal and peripheral security cannot be allowed to be undermined. But at the same time it needs to be understood by the official machinery that the manner in which sword arm of the State is wielded does not contribute to disgruntlement of the local populations. (Syndicate Features)

Terrorism-a barbaric course

By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

The evil of terrorism has come to be a present-day affliction. It is widely condemned, but what terrorism is has not yet been clearly defined. After a great deal of thought on this subject, I have come to the conclusion that terrorism can be defined as an armed action carried out by non-governmental organizations.

Everybody has the right to peacefully present his/her point of view, but on no consideration do he/she has the right to engage in militancy- for armed movements of this sort run counter to the accepted national and international principles. What is known as terrorism in present times is the result of armed action by NGOs.

Morever, war can be waged only by an established Government. And even for an established Government there are a number of essential conditions for launching armed campaigns. For instance, it can only fight a defensive battle. It cannot commit aggression. Similarly, even a lawful war can be fought only after making a formal declaration of war.

There is no room for undeclared war in a civilized society. Then, even in a lawful defensive battle, a Government must issue strict order that only combatants may be attacked. Killing or injuring non-combatants is not lawful even in a state of war.

According to established humanitarian principles, only one form of war is acceptable and that is one waged unaoidable in self-defence. Any other kind of war, for instance, aggressive war, proxy war, guerrilla war, undeclared war-- are all totally unlawful according to international ethics. On no consideration can these wars be held lawful.

According to the above definition, any movement based on terrorism is certainly unlawful. It cannot be justified simply by giving it a high-sounding name. Any attempt to achieve human objectives by engaging in terrorism, rather than using lawful means to do so, is to transgress all bounds.

Modern terrorism must, therefore, be brought to an end. But this cannot be done through counter attacks. For one thing, this would be like trying to quell non-state terrorism by State terrorism. And for another, modern terrorism derives its strength less from guns and bombs than from its ideology. That is why a counter ideology rather than counter-bombing would be the more effective way to put an end to terrorism.

The terrorists' self-styled ideology gives them the conviction that, by dying in battle, they become martyrs and that, as such, they will have a new and far better life in paradise. It is this belief, which has made suicide bombing totally acceptable to them. Given this situation, it is only when their self-styled ideology is shown to be baseless by producing a counter ideology that their violent actions will ever come to an end.

It should be appreciated, moreover, that the present terrorists, many of them very young people, would never be able to continue their efforts without the vast monetary contributions, public sympathy and adulation as heroes, which as ''active militants'' they receive from ''passive'' militants, that is to say, from those who are not actively engaged in violent activities.

The passive militants are, so to speak, the second line of terrorism. Their role is an important one, that of providing infrastructure and logistic support. A war can be successfully waged only if the supply lines continue to provide all military requirements without any disruption. If they were to be cut off, war would autmatically come to an end, just as a man would die if his oxygen supply were stopped.

But, ideologically, passive militants regard it as their duty to give full assistance to active terrorists. And if such terrorists are in their thousands, the number of their supporters runs into millions. This being so, the annihilation of known active terrorists would not suffice to put an end to the phenomenon of terrorism.

It is essential, therefore, that the issue of the enormous support given by the world-wide network of passive terrorists be immediately addressed. Their minds must be changed. Their violent thinking must be transformed into pacifism. Only then will it be possible to rid the world of the menace of terrorism.

From revenge to violence

It often happens that if one person is hurt by another, or one group suffers at the hands of another, revenge is perceived as the immediate goal. Those who are bent on revenge tend to forget the warning of history- a warning inscribed on every wall in silent, language : 'think before seeking vengeance'.

In this way a chain of violence is built up that continues and then it is brought to a conclusion only when both sides are so depleted in energy and resources that they are no longer able to exact vengeance.

Whenever an individual or a group has any cause for complaint, the solution lies not in retaliatory activities, but rather in continuing to move forward by adopting a policy of avoidance of conflict. Such avoidance puts an end to the problem at the very outset, while refusal to ignore the problem leads to an unending chain reaction of hatred, revenge and violence. Thus, the policy of avoidance of conflict is the way of the peace-loving, while that of revenge is the way of the violent.

Revenge is always directed against another but, in actual fact, the greatest victim is the one who opts for this course. The heavy price to be paid for this revenge policy is that one's mind becomes a storehouse of negative thinking. Instead of expanding his resources on building his life, he begins to squander them on the destruction of others.

Say, an antagonist had caused him to use up fifty percent of his energies, resources, ets, he would himself, as a result of his policy of revenge, fritter away the other fifty percent. Taken to logical extremes, revenge would imply that after an attempt on one's life, one would launch out on a course which would end in one's own death!

The truth is that revenge is an evil, whatever the circumstances, while refraining from revenge by ignoring the matter at issue is at all events a virtue. If the taker of revenge is your enemy, after returning revenge for revenge, you become your own enemy. And those who turn their own enemy cannot be saved from destruction by anyone

Formula for Social Peace

Peace is nature. In any society, peace is disturbed only when any violent activity causes man to deviate from his nature. The truth is that every one of us has ego. It is a state of mind, which if provoked, takes no time in flaring up and wreaking havoc. But by nature, in accordance with the system of creation, it generally lies dormant.

The easiest way, therefore, to have a peaceful society is to let this ego remain undisturbed. Those whose egos have been provoked disturb social peace. If we refrain from such provocation, there will be no disturbance of the social peace.

This shows that the establishment and maintenance of social peace are wihin our control, and are not at the mercy of anti-social elements. This shows that if you do not provoke the ego of others, you will certainly remain safe from their violence.

The possession of weapons is no guarantee of social security. The principle of social security is to become a a peace-loving neighbour for others. Perpetrate no voilence upon others and you will, of necessity, be safe from the evil and violence of others.

If you hate others you will receive hate from them in return. If you have feelings of love and well wishing for them, you will receive the same from them. In this world, peace is received in return for peace and violence is received in return for violence.- CNF