A C Chaturvedi
Actions and activities originating across the borders continue to challenge the country, especially border areas of J&K. Internal Security is a complex matter, spanning overt as well as covert realms, some times complimentary and at times not. Essentially, security frame of reference is accepted as made up of manpower, material/equipment and procedural components. A chain is only as strong as the weakest link, so goes axiom. The overt part of hostile activities calls for corresponding physical steps of prophylactic, deterrent and neutralizing nature.
Deterrence, in a way, is a matter of making the cost-benefit factor so steeply and decidedly adverse for the hostiles as to make the chances of success too remote and too costly for them.
The lay of the land in a place invariably points to possible areas deserving surveillance, without overlooking scope for surprises.
Interdiction in this high technology era has to be possible, if desired, where the area is our own and terrain and topography entirely identifiable in the hinterland (Jammu as well as Kashmir regions) for critical,vulnerable and “weak” areas therein. Strategic synergy of operations, if and when achieved always bolsters the efforts.
All operations are unique in terms of detail. In field operations numerical superiority is always a force multiplier but “how much is too much” for a given static location is a moot question in internal context.
Uncalibrated “quantity” may not make a substitue for quality especially when the “unknown variables” don’t really add up to much and surgical action may be the need. As the attackers in the recent attack on National Highway locations demonstrated numbers is not a pre-requisite. Security is fundamentally preventive and primarily physical.
Success experience to hostile elements intending to execute armed attack is denied and delayed when physical security architecture in functional places does not downplay or overlook local harsh ground realities which may take avoidable toll of brave country men, especially in rural regions.
The “fidayeens” on such missions as the recent one on the highway, besides being provided convincing uniform have evidently been trained pretty well in demeanour, dialogue delivery, down to the hair cut so that they carried off the “role play” without instant suspicion. They took a audacious chance in trying to make the handing over of “criminals” so important and urgent, at an hour rather too early for such activity when security personnel in full gear normally don’t move about in isolated two’s.
Evidently these men had clearly rehearsed plans A and B for the attacks. They would have worked on scale models of topography they were targetting. As has been seen these infiltrators from across international border get going at “first light” and seek to reach their targets- so far static locations of police and security forces- when the movement of people and traffic is still very thin; they are people in a hurry for whom “delay would be deadliest form of denial”. They have been using coercive “hitch hiking” at times with cold blooded killings. Certain days of the week seem to be favoured repeatedly by these attackers, who opt for darker nights for ingress.
It is a well realized tenet that responses- in -place have to be thoroughly tactical rather than notional, and further strengthened by meaningful operating procedures drill.
Men on the spot are the people who face the challenges most directly and for the most part would be oriented to have a practical comprehension of the threats and all conceivable forms and shapes these could take locally, and the manner of direct and indirect responses required in contingency.
Thoroughly irregular offensive actions by hostile quarters are ill matched by conventional defensive and active responses. Highly professionally carried out hostile attacks call for non-traditional, unorthodox and equally professional up stream and down stream counter action at tactical level, denying them stealth, surprise and anonymity of movement.
As a case in point it can be recalled that modified and armoured tractors have been used in Punjab scenario in 1980’s for off road offensive mobility in the bad terrains of sugar cane fields.
In terms of countermeasures, Terrain Modification in a variety of ways and local versions is a strategy used since long to effectively deny adverse use of terrain with ease and can well be area or region specific in any given context.
In unstructured scenarios things may not always turn out in “text book fashion”, but upstream measures can be made to achieve success in neutralization of hostile elements before they cause harm. Local populace have a decisive role.
This is an age of primary, secondary and “off shoot” proxy wars where terrorism in different forms tends to be an industry and collaborative corporate activity across borders in some regions in our near and distant neighbourhod. The incidence of hostile attempts across the borders of our country, and for that matter the LOC, is not going to come down any time soon.
(The author is former Director General of Police)
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel