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Pakistan pulls back troops from Indian border, leaving deterrence to nuclear missiles
Battling odds: Pak army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani during a military exercise in Bhawalpur
Pakistan pulls back troops from Indian border, leaving deterrence to nuclear missiles
It is a war, full scale, in Pakistan.
The enemy is entrenched on the mountain tops and in the valleys to the west of the Indus. The states army, or the army that owns the state of Pakistan, is fighting a full-scale war. Unleashing awesome firepower on the enemy are supersonic F-16 jet-fighters, squadrons of helicopter gunships, several score batteries of beyond-the-horizon artillery guns that once pounded Indias Kargil-Leh road and, of course, lakhs of hardy Pakistani infantrymen. The only missing elements are armour (tanks) and the navy.
India and the world may scoff at Pakistan that it is fighting an army of Frankensteins monsters it had spawned in the eighties through an illicit liaison with the US. Such historical prudery has no relevance in General Ashfaq Parvez Kayanis war room in the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi. It is war and he has to win it. Already he has cleared large swathes of territory from the enemy [see maps].
Last weeks announcement by US President Barack Obama that the Americans would begin pulling out of Afghanistan has added an urgency to Kayanis efforts to finish the war. Even prior to that, he has been taking the riskiest gamble ever taken by a Pakistani army chief. He has left the Indian border thinly defended. Kayani has drawn entire divisions and brigades from the Indian border and sent them to fight militants in the west, leaving his 2,240-km Indian border thinly defended. In the process, he has put blind faith in three thingshis less-than-100km range Hatf nuclear missiles to scare Indias three strike corps, a strategic insurance policy taken with the Chinese and the good sense of a 78-year-old man sitting in Delhis South Block.
The offices of both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and General Kayani have denied any contact between the two. However, it is clear that there has been an unspoken understanding between the civilian leaders of the two countries that Singh wont create trouble as long as Kayani is immersed, helmet to boots, in pursuing his civil war seriously. What they would now like to know is: would Singh continue to cooperate, even after the Americans get out of Afghanistan?
The generals and brigadiers at GHQ say Kayani has been serious. Look at the order of battle (orbat). Traditionally seven of Pakistans nine corps were poised against India; the exceptions were the Peshawar (XI) Corps and the Quetta (XII) Corps. Now the entire Peshawar Corps, complete with 7 and 9 Divisions, is committed to operations; the Quetta Corps has lent two full brigades.
The big news for Indian commanders is the orbat in the eastern theatre. A few months ago, US RAND Corporations Seth Jones and Christine Fair had estimated that troops drawn from two division headquarters, eight infantry headquarters, 20 full battalions, eight engineer battalions, one special battalion, two signals battalions and 38 Frontier Corps wings have been pressed into battle at various stages in Operation Al Mizan in South Waziristan. In the subsequent Operation Zalzala, the entire 14 Division, drawn from the India-centric Multan (II) Corps, was put to battle. In Operation Sherdil in Bajaur, a brigade headquarters, four battalions and seven Frontier Corps wings were pressed into action under the command of a three-star general.
The entire 19 Division, attached to the Rawalpindi (X) Corps and earlier stationed in Mangla on the Indian frontier, is still fighting in Operation Rah-e-Rast in Swat. Operation Rah-e-Nijat in South Waziristan involved 7 Division and 9 Division from the Peshawar Corps, plus two Special Services Group battalions and two infantry brigades taken off from the Indian border. Some 30,000 troops were inducted into battle, along with several artillery regiments, against 10,000 die-hard Pak Taliban in this operation.
Now THE WEEK learns that Kayani has drawn more from the east, including from the two strike corpsMangla (I) Corps and Multan (II) Corps. The strike corps are the sword-arms of Pakistan which would blitzkrieg into Indian Punjab and Rajasthan in the event of a war. The Mangla Corps has lent 17 Division and the Multan Corps 14 Division to the war in the west. The five defensive (pivot) corps, the shield arms that have to fend off Indian armoured thrusts, have lost more. The Rawalpindi Corps, charged with defending the entire capital region and reinforcing the Mangla strike corps, has been deprived of its prized 19 Division. It is left with just 12 Division (HQ Murree), 23 Division (Jhelum) minus a couple of brigades, Force Command Northern Areas (Gilgit), one infantry brigade, one armoured brigade and one artillery brigade.
The Gujranwala (XXX) Corps and the Bahawalpur (XXXI) Corps have lent one brigade each. In all, four full infantry divisions, 17 brigades (three in North Waziristan alone), 54 battalions, one Special Services Group battalion, one task force and 58 Frontier Corps wings are still battling the militants. The remaining line-up left in the east may appear utterly butterly to the knives of Indian generals.
Pakistani sources would not comment on the formations. Yet, we have committed 1,47,400 troops into the war on terror, said Brigadier Syed Aznat Ali, a director at the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Rawalpindi. Add to them the thousands who are manning, patrolling and doing sentry duties on the Durand Line. One-third of our force is in the west, said Major-General Athar Abbas, ISPR director-general.
Given a total active strength of 5,50,000, Abbass one-third would work out to more than 1,83,000 troops committed to the west-of-the-Indus theatre, compared with just about 1 lakh manning the precarious Line of Control in Kashmir against India. (Another 10,000 are on UN duties.) That leaves just about 3.5 lakh troops to defend Pakistan against an Indian Army that has three full armoured strike corps to thrust into West Punjab and Sind.
More than the crippled orbat, Kayanis worry is about the shortage of experienced commanders. A full two-star officer [major-general] has been sent to Miranshah just to supervise the Waziristan operations, said a brigadier. Field formations in the east have been left to be commanded by officers qualified to command lower formations. The 12 Division (Murree), reporting to the Rawalpindi Corps, has been robbed of several decorated brigade commanders who have been sent to the west. The Jhelum Valley Brigade, part of 12 Division and poised near Aman Setu on the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad highway, is commanded by Colonel Khalid Khan. Asked how a battalion commander (colonel) is commanding a brigade, a staff officer replied evasively that lieutenant-colonels command battalions in the Pak army. Probably. But do colonels command brigades? It happens, Colonel Khalid Khan said evasively.
Retired majors and lieutenant colonels have been drafted back into service to fly Mi-17 helicopters which lift troops to and from forward locations. I am here for the love of flying this machine, said a retired major of 6 Aviation Squadron who flew us to Chakoti near Aman Setu. Most posts in the hills are maintained by air, said Major-General Abbas, in a different context. We need more helicopters and more communication equipment.
The third worry, by far the biggest, is about the ordinary soldiers prolonged exposure to combat. Since the start of militancy, the army has undertaken 879 operations, 284 of them major ones. Indeed, most of the badlands have been sanitised, except parts of North Waziristan, Orakzai and Khurram. But the average tenure of the Pak soldier in combat zone is now stretching to 26 months, whereas a German soldier, just across the Durand Line in Afghanistan and doing the same job, goes home and to his girlfriend after six months, and an American soldier after one year. This is affecting morale, as also training, since the drills for conventional war are entirely different from the drills for counter-insurgency war. The price is very heavy, said General Abbas. We have lost 2,795 brave soldiers since 2001. Another 8,671 have been injured.
Worse still, the rate of officer casualty is high. As Syed Manzur Abbas Zaidi wrote in RUSI Journal, The average officer-to-soldier ratio in combat fatalities is around 1:17 in most armies, while in Swat operations it has been 1:5 to 1:6. This is higher than the usual Pakistani average of 1:10. The figures speak well of a dedicated officer cadre, but also indicate a current shortage of middle-level commanders (majors to colonels) and future shortage of higher command (brigadiers and above) officers. The army has already lost one lieutenant-general, two major-generals and five brigadiers in the war on terror.
There are two related worries on this count. One, the soldier, whose essential training has been to fight a full-scale conventional war against India, is losing his killer instinct doing lowly guard duties. Several battalions have been taken out from battle formations to man the Pak-Afghan border posts crossed every ?day by thousands of natives and ?scores of murder-minded al Qaeda men. The border in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa has 128 routes. An average of 1,290 vehicles and 6,800 people cross back and forth every day, said Brigadier Syed Aznat Ali. The Baluch border with Afghanistan has 234 routes, which are used by 12,000 vehicles and 31,000 people every day.
Pak generals claim that they are doing more than the coalition forces across the Durand Line to check al Qaeda men from crossing. We have 821 posts on the border whereas on the other side they [the coalition forces from 42 countries] have just 112, pointed out General Abbas. In addition is the task of protecting the NATO supply trucks moving through Pakistan into Afghanistan. About 56,000 trucks and tankers passed through Pakistan last year alone, among which only 110 were damaged in militant attacks, claimed Brig. Ali.
All this is fine, but Kayanis problem is that these men were not trained to be sentries, but warriors. Even those engaged in combat are fighting a battle different from the conventional plains warfare they have been trained to fight. Unlike the Indian Army, which has been fighting insurgencies since Independence in the northeast and later in the Kashmir Valley, the Pak army has never been committed to counter-insurgency, which requires training methods, systems and even combat philosophies that are radically different.
The inadequacy has been far too evident in the conduct of operations, too. Unlike the Indian Army, which has been fighting insurgency doing combing ops, selective search-and-hunt and graduated use of force, the Pak army has been unleashing immense firepower on their internal enemy, as if against a conventional army. First they depopulate the entire area of operation, and then rain fire and brimstone on the target area. More than 2.8 lakh of South Waziristans 4 lakh people were cleared out before operations began.
The onset of the war necessitated setting up three counter-insurgency training schools. Every battalion undergoes three months training before being committed to battle, said General Abbas. We train them in all methods and tactics that suit our environmentcounter-ID ops, guarding oneself and posts against suicide bombers... which are not part of a regular soldiers training syllabus. There is a three-star general, designated inspector-general in charge of training and evaluation, who can claim credit for bringing down the number of suicide attacks on military posts.
The other training, to fight the mountain rats, is tougher. The terrain is completely unknown. No army, not even that of the British empire which sent three expeditions, has snatched and held territory among the frontier tribes. Even the Pak constitution guarantees tribal autonomy and the writ of the Pakistani state never ran among them. This is the first time in history that any army has entered this region and held territory, said Brig. Ali. But it is no easy job. The army still doesnt know the terrain, and the enemy knows it like the back of his palm.
Kayani worries that such deep involvement of more than a third of his army is blunting his capability to fend off India. His army traditionally had been trained to fight in the plains of Punjab and around the sand dunes of Sind, but Pervez Musharraf, following his 2004 accord with A.B. Vajpayee, changed all that. Against Musharrafs promise not to allow Pak-held territory for anti-India terror, Vajpayee allowed him to move three (some say four) divisions from the Indian frontier. He called a corps commanders conference immediately after the 2004 accord and declared that his army was no longer India-centric.
Kayani wants to reverse this, but finds he cannot. While the Pakistan army is alert to and fighting the threat posed by militancy, it remains an India-centric institution and that reality will not change in any significant way until the Kashmir issue and water disputes are resolved, he declared early last year.
The media interpreted it as a political statement, said a brigadier. He meant that it should be trained and equipped to deter India, as it always has been. The problem is that Kayani cannot deter India, with more than a third of his army committed to fight militancy.
Initially he tried quick-fixeskillem quick and get back to the Indian frontier. Soon after he took over, Kayani sent 9,000 troops, gunships and fighter planes to Bajaur which killed a thousand militants in one month. If they lose here, theyd have lost everything, said General Tariq Khan, who commanded the Frontier Corps deployed in Bajaur then. F-16 supersonics bombed South Waziristan even before ground troop movement commenced. The successes were short-lived; the enemy simply shifted base. Bajaur had to be retaken thrice, said a brigade commander. It will take another two or three years to have a reasonable level of order in the [frontier] region, added Brig. Ali.
Will Manmohan and General V.K. Singh wait? Or, would they put their enigmatic Cold Start doctrine to test? Cold Start is a doctrine evolved by the Indian Army after it found it was too slow in mobilising in Operation Parakram, ordered following the attack on Parliament. While the pivot corps were ready for battle in 72 to 96 hours from the word go, the three strike corpsI Corps (Mathura), II Corps (Ambala) and XXI Corps (Bhopal)took three weeks to reach their wartime locations. The new doctrine, perfected after Parakram, envisages rapid deployment of smaller-than-corps formations which would make quick thrusts into Pak territory, salami-slice it, and take over Pakistans nuclear and other command-and-control centres. As the then Indian Army chief, Gen. Deepak Kapoor, said in January 2010, it involved quick, salami-slicing thrusts into Pakistan under a nuclear overhang.
Pakistan armys old doctrine of Riposte presumed that any large-scale Indian thrust could be countered by unleashing firepower and manoeuvrings to counter-attack into Indian territory. However, Indias reliance on Cold Start has made Kayani realise that he would not have the latitude for manoeuvre. Kapoors and a few other statements last year also rattled Kayani. Pak generals say Kayanis India-centric statement was in response to Kapoors. That is why he is now doing some Hatf-rattling.
Gen. V.K. Singh has got the message. Apparently it was to reassure Kayani that he could pursue his war in the west without worrying about Indias intentions that V.K. Singh recently denied even the existence of Cold Start. Kayani, however, is not resting on the Indian denials and assurances. Especially after India announced it was going ahead with the month-long Exercise Vijayee Bhava (Be Victorious) which ended mid-May, involving the strike corps in Ambala and the Delhi-based Western Air Command. The exercise validated the strike corps rapid mobilisation plans involving mechanised manoeuvres in a fluid battlefield where the operational plans [were] based on real time situational awareness, an official Army note said. As many as 300 paratroopers and 50 despatchers were air-dropped from one Il-76 and six An-32 transport aircraft in stealthy night operations. The IAF pressed in Mi-17 IV utility helicopters for special heliborne operations (SHBO), including dropping of special forces behind simulated enemy lines.
Instead of merely providing air support in the conventional manner, the IAF assets were employed in an integrated manner, with the western Army commander Lt-Gen. S.R. Ghosh even flying in a Jaguar deep-penetration bomber over the 2,400sq.km exercise area. Offensive air defence was integral in the exercise that included interception in enemy territory. Nearly 100 fighter sorties, decimation of advancing armour, round-the-clock readiness for fighters and attack helicopters, mobilisation of several ground and airborne air defence assets were undertaken by the IAF.
Kayani, too, is learnt to be sharpening his doctrine, and tightening its nuts and bolts. His strategic doctrine had allowed use of nuclear weapon against a conventional strike by India, but as a last resort. This was officially spelt out by the then strategic plans division chief Lt-Gen Khalid Kidwai three years ago. He said nuclear weapons would be weapons of last resort, and could be used against India in the event of space losses, severe force destruction or economic losses.
Kayani is also lowering the nuclear threshold or the nuclear overhang. In fact, a few months ago, President Zardari had openly talked of a no-first-use policy for Pakistan. Kayani bitterly opposed this, as was revealed by WikiLeaks recently, and the then US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, wrote: Although he has remained silent on the subject, Kayani does not support Zardaris statement... that Pakistan would adopt a no first use policy on nuclear weapons.... We believe that the military is proceeding with an expansion of both its growing strategic weapons and missile programs.
So Kayani is testing and re-testing his short-range Hatf-9 missiles, essentially to warn India that the nuclear option can be exercised not at the last moment or as a last resort, but when Indian tank columns have entered less than 100km. To India, this means we will have to strike, with conventional force, at Pakistans Hatf missile bases first, and destroy them, simultaneously or even before our strike corps move in, said a general officer involved in Vijayee Bhava. No wonder, India insisted on discussing nuclear confidence-building measures at the meeting between the two foreign secretaries last week.
Kayanis third insurance policy is with the Chinese. Indian security brass believe that Kayani has been drawing the Chinese into strategic gaming on the Indian frontier, mainly to warn India. We believe that Pakistan deliberately leaked the news about the Chinese troops in Gilgit-Baltistan late last year, said an IAF officer. There were also highly publicised joint exercises between Chinese and Pakistani troops, one in Abbottabad. There have been too many high-profile visits by Pakistani military and civilian leaders to Beijing. During Yousuf Geelanis visit in May, China agreed to sell him 50 fighter-jets. All these were signals sent out about the strong strategic ties and aimed at warning us.
This is especially obvious because the Chinese, who were otherwise needling India in Arunachal and the eastern sector have been getting deliberately active, as a general staff officer put it, in the western sector in the recent months. In fact, while Exercise Vijayee Bhava was progressing, the three Indian chiefs took note of not only Indias capabilities against Pakistan, but also the distinct possibility of strategic support that Pakistan could get from China in Ladakh. They are learnt to have taken note of the possibility of a diversionary move in Siachen or Kargil while the Chinese would mobilise through the Gilgit axis, thus holding Indias XIV Corps in a pincer.
For the Indian military, it means something elsethat a two-front war is still in the realm of the possible.
Battling odds: Pak army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani during a military exercise in Bhawalpur
Pakistan pulls back troops from Indian border, leaving deterrence to nuclear missiles
It is a war, full scale, in Pakistan.
The enemy is entrenched on the mountain tops and in the valleys to the west of the Indus. The states army, or the army that owns the state of Pakistan, is fighting a full-scale war. Unleashing awesome firepower on the enemy are supersonic F-16 jet-fighters, squadrons of helicopter gunships, several score batteries of beyond-the-horizon artillery guns that once pounded Indias Kargil-Leh road and, of course, lakhs of hardy Pakistani infantrymen. The only missing elements are armour (tanks) and the navy.
India and the world may scoff at Pakistan that it is fighting an army of Frankensteins monsters it had spawned in the eighties through an illicit liaison with the US. Such historical prudery has no relevance in General Ashfaq Parvez Kayanis war room in the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi. It is war and he has to win it. Already he has cleared large swathes of territory from the enemy [see maps].
Last weeks announcement by US President Barack Obama that the Americans would begin pulling out of Afghanistan has added an urgency to Kayanis efforts to finish the war. Even prior to that, he has been taking the riskiest gamble ever taken by a Pakistani army chief. He has left the Indian border thinly defended. Kayani has drawn entire divisions and brigades from the Indian border and sent them to fight militants in the west, leaving his 2,240-km Indian border thinly defended. In the process, he has put blind faith in three thingshis less-than-100km range Hatf nuclear missiles to scare Indias three strike corps, a strategic insurance policy taken with the Chinese and the good sense of a 78-year-old man sitting in Delhis South Block.
The offices of both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and General Kayani have denied any contact between the two. However, it is clear that there has been an unspoken understanding between the civilian leaders of the two countries that Singh wont create trouble as long as Kayani is immersed, helmet to boots, in pursuing his civil war seriously. What they would now like to know is: would Singh continue to cooperate, even after the Americans get out of Afghanistan?
The generals and brigadiers at GHQ say Kayani has been serious. Look at the order of battle (orbat). Traditionally seven of Pakistans nine corps were poised against India; the exceptions were the Peshawar (XI) Corps and the Quetta (XII) Corps. Now the entire Peshawar Corps, complete with 7 and 9 Divisions, is committed to operations; the Quetta Corps has lent two full brigades.
The big news for Indian commanders is the orbat in the eastern theatre. A few months ago, US RAND Corporations Seth Jones and Christine Fair had estimated that troops drawn from two division headquarters, eight infantry headquarters, 20 full battalions, eight engineer battalions, one special battalion, two signals battalions and 38 Frontier Corps wings have been pressed into battle at various stages in Operation Al Mizan in South Waziristan. In the subsequent Operation Zalzala, the entire 14 Division, drawn from the India-centric Multan (II) Corps, was put to battle. In Operation Sherdil in Bajaur, a brigade headquarters, four battalions and seven Frontier Corps wings were pressed into action under the command of a three-star general.
The entire 19 Division, attached to the Rawalpindi (X) Corps and earlier stationed in Mangla on the Indian frontier, is still fighting in Operation Rah-e-Rast in Swat. Operation Rah-e-Nijat in South Waziristan involved 7 Division and 9 Division from the Peshawar Corps, plus two Special Services Group battalions and two infantry brigades taken off from the Indian border. Some 30,000 troops were inducted into battle, along with several artillery regiments, against 10,000 die-hard Pak Taliban in this operation.
Now THE WEEK learns that Kayani has drawn more from the east, including from the two strike corpsMangla (I) Corps and Multan (II) Corps. The strike corps are the sword-arms of Pakistan which would blitzkrieg into Indian Punjab and Rajasthan in the event of a war. The Mangla Corps has lent 17 Division and the Multan Corps 14 Division to the war in the west. The five defensive (pivot) corps, the shield arms that have to fend off Indian armoured thrusts, have lost more. The Rawalpindi Corps, charged with defending the entire capital region and reinforcing the Mangla strike corps, has been deprived of its prized 19 Division. It is left with just 12 Division (HQ Murree), 23 Division (Jhelum) minus a couple of brigades, Force Command Northern Areas (Gilgit), one infantry brigade, one armoured brigade and one artillery brigade.
The Gujranwala (XXX) Corps and the Bahawalpur (XXXI) Corps have lent one brigade each. In all, four full infantry divisions, 17 brigades (three in North Waziristan alone), 54 battalions, one Special Services Group battalion, one task force and 58 Frontier Corps wings are still battling the militants. The remaining line-up left in the east may appear utterly butterly to the knives of Indian generals.
Pakistani sources would not comment on the formations. Yet, we have committed 1,47,400 troops into the war on terror, said Brigadier Syed Aznat Ali, a director at the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Rawalpindi. Add to them the thousands who are manning, patrolling and doing sentry duties on the Durand Line. One-third of our force is in the west, said Major-General Athar Abbas, ISPR director-general.
Given a total active strength of 5,50,000, Abbass one-third would work out to more than 1,83,000 troops committed to the west-of-the-Indus theatre, compared with just about 1 lakh manning the precarious Line of Control in Kashmir against India. (Another 10,000 are on UN duties.) That leaves just about 3.5 lakh troops to defend Pakistan against an Indian Army that has three full armoured strike corps to thrust into West Punjab and Sind.
More than the crippled orbat, Kayanis worry is about the shortage of experienced commanders. A full two-star officer [major-general] has been sent to Miranshah just to supervise the Waziristan operations, said a brigadier. Field formations in the east have been left to be commanded by officers qualified to command lower formations. The 12 Division (Murree), reporting to the Rawalpindi Corps, has been robbed of several decorated brigade commanders who have been sent to the west. The Jhelum Valley Brigade, part of 12 Division and poised near Aman Setu on the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad highway, is commanded by Colonel Khalid Khan. Asked how a battalion commander (colonel) is commanding a brigade, a staff officer replied evasively that lieutenant-colonels command battalions in the Pak army. Probably. But do colonels command brigades? It happens, Colonel Khalid Khan said evasively.
Retired majors and lieutenant colonels have been drafted back into service to fly Mi-17 helicopters which lift troops to and from forward locations. I am here for the love of flying this machine, said a retired major of 6 Aviation Squadron who flew us to Chakoti near Aman Setu. Most posts in the hills are maintained by air, said Major-General Abbas, in a different context. We need more helicopters and more communication equipment.
The third worry, by far the biggest, is about the ordinary soldiers prolonged exposure to combat. Since the start of militancy, the army has undertaken 879 operations, 284 of them major ones. Indeed, most of the badlands have been sanitised, except parts of North Waziristan, Orakzai and Khurram. But the average tenure of the Pak soldier in combat zone is now stretching to 26 months, whereas a German soldier, just across the Durand Line in Afghanistan and doing the same job, goes home and to his girlfriend after six months, and an American soldier after one year. This is affecting morale, as also training, since the drills for conventional war are entirely different from the drills for counter-insurgency war. The price is very heavy, said General Abbas. We have lost 2,795 brave soldiers since 2001. Another 8,671 have been injured.
Worse still, the rate of officer casualty is high. As Syed Manzur Abbas Zaidi wrote in RUSI Journal, The average officer-to-soldier ratio in combat fatalities is around 1:17 in most armies, while in Swat operations it has been 1:5 to 1:6. This is higher than the usual Pakistani average of 1:10. The figures speak well of a dedicated officer cadre, but also indicate a current shortage of middle-level commanders (majors to colonels) and future shortage of higher command (brigadiers and above) officers. The army has already lost one lieutenant-general, two major-generals and five brigadiers in the war on terror.
There are two related worries on this count. One, the soldier, whose essential training has been to fight a full-scale conventional war against India, is losing his killer instinct doing lowly guard duties. Several battalions have been taken out from battle formations to man the Pak-Afghan border posts crossed every ?day by thousands of natives and ?scores of murder-minded al Qaeda men. The border in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa has 128 routes. An average of 1,290 vehicles and 6,800 people cross back and forth every day, said Brigadier Syed Aznat Ali. The Baluch border with Afghanistan has 234 routes, which are used by 12,000 vehicles and 31,000 people every day.
Pak generals claim that they are doing more than the coalition forces across the Durand Line to check al Qaeda men from crossing. We have 821 posts on the border whereas on the other side they [the coalition forces from 42 countries] have just 112, pointed out General Abbas. In addition is the task of protecting the NATO supply trucks moving through Pakistan into Afghanistan. About 56,000 trucks and tankers passed through Pakistan last year alone, among which only 110 were damaged in militant attacks, claimed Brig. Ali.
All this is fine, but Kayanis problem is that these men were not trained to be sentries, but warriors. Even those engaged in combat are fighting a battle different from the conventional plains warfare they have been trained to fight. Unlike the Indian Army, which has been fighting insurgencies since Independence in the northeast and later in the Kashmir Valley, the Pak army has never been committed to counter-insurgency, which requires training methods, systems and even combat philosophies that are radically different.
The inadequacy has been far too evident in the conduct of operations, too. Unlike the Indian Army, which has been fighting insurgency doing combing ops, selective search-and-hunt and graduated use of force, the Pak army has been unleashing immense firepower on their internal enemy, as if against a conventional army. First they depopulate the entire area of operation, and then rain fire and brimstone on the target area. More than 2.8 lakh of South Waziristans 4 lakh people were cleared out before operations began.
The onset of the war necessitated setting up three counter-insurgency training schools. Every battalion undergoes three months training before being committed to battle, said General Abbas. We train them in all methods and tactics that suit our environmentcounter-ID ops, guarding oneself and posts against suicide bombers... which are not part of a regular soldiers training syllabus. There is a three-star general, designated inspector-general in charge of training and evaluation, who can claim credit for bringing down the number of suicide attacks on military posts.
The other training, to fight the mountain rats, is tougher. The terrain is completely unknown. No army, not even that of the British empire which sent three expeditions, has snatched and held territory among the frontier tribes. Even the Pak constitution guarantees tribal autonomy and the writ of the Pakistani state never ran among them. This is the first time in history that any army has entered this region and held territory, said Brig. Ali. But it is no easy job. The army still doesnt know the terrain, and the enemy knows it like the back of his palm.
Kayani worries that such deep involvement of more than a third of his army is blunting his capability to fend off India. His army traditionally had been trained to fight in the plains of Punjab and around the sand dunes of Sind, but Pervez Musharraf, following his 2004 accord with A.B. Vajpayee, changed all that. Against Musharrafs promise not to allow Pak-held territory for anti-India terror, Vajpayee allowed him to move three (some say four) divisions from the Indian frontier. He called a corps commanders conference immediately after the 2004 accord and declared that his army was no longer India-centric.
Kayani wants to reverse this, but finds he cannot. While the Pakistan army is alert to and fighting the threat posed by militancy, it remains an India-centric institution and that reality will not change in any significant way until the Kashmir issue and water disputes are resolved, he declared early last year.
The media interpreted it as a political statement, said a brigadier. He meant that it should be trained and equipped to deter India, as it always has been. The problem is that Kayani cannot deter India, with more than a third of his army committed to fight militancy.
Initially he tried quick-fixeskillem quick and get back to the Indian frontier. Soon after he took over, Kayani sent 9,000 troops, gunships and fighter planes to Bajaur which killed a thousand militants in one month. If they lose here, theyd have lost everything, said General Tariq Khan, who commanded the Frontier Corps deployed in Bajaur then. F-16 supersonics bombed South Waziristan even before ground troop movement commenced. The successes were short-lived; the enemy simply shifted base. Bajaur had to be retaken thrice, said a brigade commander. It will take another two or three years to have a reasonable level of order in the [frontier] region, added Brig. Ali.
Will Manmohan and General V.K. Singh wait? Or, would they put their enigmatic Cold Start doctrine to test? Cold Start is a doctrine evolved by the Indian Army after it found it was too slow in mobilising in Operation Parakram, ordered following the attack on Parliament. While the pivot corps were ready for battle in 72 to 96 hours from the word go, the three strike corpsI Corps (Mathura), II Corps (Ambala) and XXI Corps (Bhopal)took three weeks to reach their wartime locations. The new doctrine, perfected after Parakram, envisages rapid deployment of smaller-than-corps formations which would make quick thrusts into Pak territory, salami-slice it, and take over Pakistans nuclear and other command-and-control centres. As the then Indian Army chief, Gen. Deepak Kapoor, said in January 2010, it involved quick, salami-slicing thrusts into Pakistan under a nuclear overhang.
Pakistan armys old doctrine of Riposte presumed that any large-scale Indian thrust could be countered by unleashing firepower and manoeuvrings to counter-attack into Indian territory. However, Indias reliance on Cold Start has made Kayani realise that he would not have the latitude for manoeuvre. Kapoors and a few other statements last year also rattled Kayani. Pak generals say Kayanis India-centric statement was in response to Kapoors. That is why he is now doing some Hatf-rattling.
Gen. V.K. Singh has got the message. Apparently it was to reassure Kayani that he could pursue his war in the west without worrying about Indias intentions that V.K. Singh recently denied even the existence of Cold Start. Kayani, however, is not resting on the Indian denials and assurances. Especially after India announced it was going ahead with the month-long Exercise Vijayee Bhava (Be Victorious) which ended mid-May, involving the strike corps in Ambala and the Delhi-based Western Air Command. The exercise validated the strike corps rapid mobilisation plans involving mechanised manoeuvres in a fluid battlefield where the operational plans [were] based on real time situational awareness, an official Army note said. As many as 300 paratroopers and 50 despatchers were air-dropped from one Il-76 and six An-32 transport aircraft in stealthy night operations. The IAF pressed in Mi-17 IV utility helicopters for special heliborne operations (SHBO), including dropping of special forces behind simulated enemy lines.
Instead of merely providing air support in the conventional manner, the IAF assets were employed in an integrated manner, with the western Army commander Lt-Gen. S.R. Ghosh even flying in a Jaguar deep-penetration bomber over the 2,400sq.km exercise area. Offensive air defence was integral in the exercise that included interception in enemy territory. Nearly 100 fighter sorties, decimation of advancing armour, round-the-clock readiness for fighters and attack helicopters, mobilisation of several ground and airborne air defence assets were undertaken by the IAF.
Kayani, too, is learnt to be sharpening his doctrine, and tightening its nuts and bolts. His strategic doctrine had allowed use of nuclear weapon against a conventional strike by India, but as a last resort. This was officially spelt out by the then strategic plans division chief Lt-Gen Khalid Kidwai three years ago. He said nuclear weapons would be weapons of last resort, and could be used against India in the event of space losses, severe force destruction or economic losses.
Kayani is also lowering the nuclear threshold or the nuclear overhang. In fact, a few months ago, President Zardari had openly talked of a no-first-use policy for Pakistan. Kayani bitterly opposed this, as was revealed by WikiLeaks recently, and the then US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, wrote: Although he has remained silent on the subject, Kayani does not support Zardaris statement... that Pakistan would adopt a no first use policy on nuclear weapons.... We believe that the military is proceeding with an expansion of both its growing strategic weapons and missile programs.
So Kayani is testing and re-testing his short-range Hatf-9 missiles, essentially to warn India that the nuclear option can be exercised not at the last moment or as a last resort, but when Indian tank columns have entered less than 100km. To India, this means we will have to strike, with conventional force, at Pakistans Hatf missile bases first, and destroy them, simultaneously or even before our strike corps move in, said a general officer involved in Vijayee Bhava. No wonder, India insisted on discussing nuclear confidence-building measures at the meeting between the two foreign secretaries last week.
Kayanis third insurance policy is with the Chinese. Indian security brass believe that Kayani has been drawing the Chinese into strategic gaming on the Indian frontier, mainly to warn India. We believe that Pakistan deliberately leaked the news about the Chinese troops in Gilgit-Baltistan late last year, said an IAF officer. There were also highly publicised joint exercises between Chinese and Pakistani troops, one in Abbottabad. There have been too many high-profile visits by Pakistani military and civilian leaders to Beijing. During Yousuf Geelanis visit in May, China agreed to sell him 50 fighter-jets. All these were signals sent out about the strong strategic ties and aimed at warning us.
This is especially obvious because the Chinese, who were otherwise needling India in Arunachal and the eastern sector have been getting deliberately active, as a general staff officer put it, in the western sector in the recent months. In fact, while Exercise Vijayee Bhava was progressing, the three Indian chiefs took note of not only Indias capabilities against Pakistan, but also the distinct possibility of strategic support that Pakistan could get from China in Ladakh. They are learnt to have taken note of the possibility of a diversionary move in Siachen or Kargil while the Chinese would mobilise through the Gilgit axis, thus holding Indias XIV Corps in a pincer.
For the Indian military, it means something elsethat a two-front war is still in the realm of the possible.
