Here is something that I have stated above. Comparing Indian COIN experience with Pakistan's recent campaign is like comparing apples with oranges..read on:
insight: Different sides of a different COIN —Ejaz Haider
When the army goes into an area where the insurgents are in control, it has to actually capture territory against an adversary that is both entrenched and flexible. It is not a matter of a few fire-fights
Some Indian analysts at a recent conference pointed out that the Indian Army relied on ground troops for COIN (counter-insurgency) operations while the Pakistan Army was using helicopter gunships, heavy artillery, armour and fighter jets. Because some of them were former military officers, this argument surprised me.
Interestingly, I have also got many emails from Indian readers using the same argument. It is grounded, mostly, in a sense of pique: our boys are more professional and they can do it, and did it, better than you have fared.
There are two issues here: one deals with professionalism, the other with the question of whether the COIN operations Pakistan Army is dealing with have the same magnitude, extent and severity as those conducted by the Indian Army.
As for professionalism, it would be plain bad faith and, worse, poor analysis, if I were to cast doubts on the quality of officers and men of the Indian Army. The Indian military, all services included, is a tremendous fighting outfit and has retained its fine traditions. For the most part, it also has a much-longer and consistent experience of COIN operations than the Pakistan Army (the sub-text here implies the degree of difficulty of dealing with insurgencies). So that is that.
Having set this aside, let us move to the issue of the difference between what the Indian Army faced and what the Pakistan Army is facing.
At no point, not even in Kashmir at the height of the freedom struggle, did the Indian army face insurgents at the scale, both in terms of numbers and the area under their control, which the Pakistan Army is confronted with. The only slightly close parallel is the IPKF’s (Indian Peace Keeping Force) operations against the LTTE and we know that that was not a success story.
In Kashmir, even as the population was alienated from the Indian state, three factors favoured India’s COIN operations:
One, there was full deployment of the Indian Army along the Line of Control as an essential part of India’s Pakistan-specific military strategy. Active deployment along the LoC, constant patrolling and fencing of the Line ensured that crossing east-west and west-east was never easy. When trouble in Kashmir started, the Indian Army beefed up its presence by inducting additional battalions of paramilitary and police. Soon after the Kargil conflict, the Indian Army raised another full corps for the area.
COIN operations inside Kashmir could, therefore, be easily plugged into the existing ORBAT (order of battle) which was based on the Indian Army’s threat perception from Pakistan.
Two, at no point could insurgents hold ground in any area. They only relied on classic hit-and-run tactics. While the Indian Army at places was operating in a hostile environment, so were the insurgents. They did not, for the most part, have any real asymmetric advantage over the Indian Army. Even when they found succour through an alienated population, that did not translate into any sustained advantage in terms of internal lines of communication.
The local population, despite being alienated, never could really offer cadres in numbers that could help them control any areas or create viable operational bases. The effort was given a fillip with “guest militants” but those cadres never had the same advantage that large numbers of insurgents from within the population can enjoy.
Given this, and given the fact that additional induction of troops had turned J&K into a large prison, the ability of insurgents to trouble Indian security forces remained very limited beyond mounting raids and ambushes before either getting killed or melting away.
Finally, specifically in Kashmir, the Indian Army was not operating against co-religionists. If anything, because Kashmir is Muslim and because the threat was linked up with the traditional enemy (i.e., Pakistan), the Indian Army did not need to “motivate” troops to fight.
Operating against Sikhs in East Punjab was difficult enough; operating against insurgent cadres of the Hindu rightwing, hypothetically speaking, would be a nightmare for the Indian Army.
Yet, and this is a matter of record, Indian soldiers committed suicides; deserted; ran amok and killed officers and comrades-in-arms; all of this being the upshot of the extreme stress that COIN operations, LICs (low-intensity conflicts) and IS (internal security) duties can extract from an army over a longer trajectory.
Also, it should be clear that at no point did the Indian Army require conducting any operation on the scale at which the Pakistan Army is operating. When it did, even so not to that extent, in the north of Sri Lanka, it ultimately cut its losses and got out, leaving the Sri Lankans holding the baby. Similarly, Maoist insurgencies in several parts remain a running sore.
In Pakistan’s case, a number of factors are different.
There is trouble in Afghanistan and groups operating on both sides have the advantage of internal lines of communication, kinship bonds, terrain, sympathetic populations, entrenched gun culture, a long history of warfare in the area, the same religion, a porous border, etc. This allows them to not only create operational bases in the mountain redoubts but actually control areas further afield.
That strategy is combined with flexible insurgent and terrorist tactics. Internal lines of communication, language, kinship and tribal bonds and loyalties allow them the advantage of operating in a friendly environment while turning the same environment to the disadvantage of the adversary. The strategy relies on a combination of territorial control and flexible guerrilla tactics. In other words, the groups can hold territory and also operate beyond it.
Finally, the ideological motivation runs beyond ethnic and tribal lines. That is the upshot of decades of state motivation, strategies and the long years of the Afghan jihad that created the Islamist International in this area.
So yes, when the army goes into an area where the insurgents are in control, it has to actually capture territory against an adversary that is both entrenched and flexible. It is not a matter of a few fire-fights. The operations involve recapturing territory and that cannot happen only through small arms-to-small arms gun battles. It has to involve mortars, direct fire from tanks, artillery, gunships and, because we don’t have too many attack helicopters, fighter jets as well.
It calls for difficult decisions. What do you do when insurgents are entrenched within the population in a built-up area: fight every inch of the way in and lose men or use artillery and air? The Israelis should be able to answer because they have taken out Hamas leaders in Gaza.
Both courses of action have their downside. One requires losing men; the other runs the risk of collateral damage. The latter course also puts pressure on the exchequer.
But the main issue has to do with scale, gravity and magnitude. And that is where the Pakistan Army is facing a threat the Indian Army has never had to. Even so, insurgencies in India, despite decades of efforts, have, at best, become simmering confrontations, diabetic cases that the polity has learnt to live with.
Lastly, the Indian Army has had the advantage of operating under the overhang of a majority consensus. The Pakistan Army, for various reasons, is still grappling with the problem of buy-in.
Ejaz Haider is Consulting Editor of The Friday Times and Op-Ed Editor of Daily Times. He can be reached at
sapper@dailytimes.com.pk
You probably have mixed the militants with the civilians. i wonder what a 'non-combatant' is doing on a mountain peak when other like him has already fled the area.
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