Kashmir: It is Time to Act Tough

Desperate situations call for desperate measures…

      Kashmir has been in the news for some time now and for all the wrong reasons especially after Burhan Wani, the local commander of Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) was killed by the security forces. Syed Salahuddin, the chief of HM who himself stays in the safe havens of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) has threatened to flood Kashmir with suicide bombers and turn it into a “Graveyard for Armed Forces”. Interestingly, his family continues to stay in India and in fact, one of his five sons is a government doctor.

      It has been some time but this situation brings to mind the LTTE problem that Sri Lanka was faced till a few years back. I remember, in one of our professional discussions in 2007 or 2008, the issue came up. I had been following the topic closely and having read extensively about it, saw a very surprising pattern. Every time the SL forces would be on the up and have the LTTE with their back to the wall, LTTE would announce ceasefire and agree to talks with the SL government. They would then utilize this time to regroup, rearm and rebuild their defences only to dump the talks and restart the business of killing people. I mentioned this in the gathering and stated that if the SL government does not allow this to happen again and go for the kill when the LTTE chips were down, they would be able to crush the menace once and for all. It appears that my advice was heard by the people who mattered in the SL top brass and they did exactly that. The result was the obliteration of LTTE with the brutal killing of Velupillai Prabhakaran in May 2009.

      A similar situation is faced by India in Kashmir and they would do well to realize that “Desperate situations call for desperate measures.” The situation has been handled with kid gloves for far too long and that, in my opinion, is the main reason for it having gone out of hand. We have been too soft on terror in the past and the present government too seem to be headed in the same direction. A major reason has been the hawkish stance of Human rights groups over violations by security forces. But the funny part is that we never see them protest when terrorists kill us. Their tears are solely reserved for the people who play the game of terror and cry victim the moment a gun is aimed at them. I see a sinister underbelly to this approach of theirs. I think the government would do well to throw their arguments out of the window and tell them to shut up unless they applied the same yardstick to both the sides.

      We have seen the people of Kashmir being rescued out of the devastating floods by Indian Army in 2014 and the same people throwing stones at them at the next available opportunity. Some people argue that only a few people are the terrorists while others are peace loving but the fact remains that the ultras have the tacit support of the majority of population. Otherwise, they would not have been able to survive and wage this war against the State for so long. I have no doubts that the people of Kashmir, by not denouncing terrorists and terrorism, have in a way given a tacit approval to their methods. Not only this, the way thousands of Kashmiris have been out on the streets pelting stones on the security personnel on duty in the troubled areas, prove that they are indeed on the other side of law. Therefore, they do not deserve any sympathy and the earlier we understood this, the better it would be for us and the faster we would be able to restore normalcy in Kashmir.

      That brings us to the question, “What do we need to do?” The answer is very simple; surround the enemy from all sides, cut their supply lines, ban the media and human rights people from the valley and start combing operations against the terrorists. Find them and facilitate their early meeting with the 72 virgins who have been desperately waiting for them.

      Unfortunately, the Modi government has been very soft on separatists and terrorists and their perpetrators. Mr Modi himself shied away from naming Pakistan as the mother of all terrorism in South Asia at the recent G20 Summit. It was a big let-down after his utterances on PoK and Baluchistan last month. Then yesterday I read that the government has left the doors open for talks with the separatists. WTH! With this kind of attitude, we will never be able to defeat the agenda of

these people who want to take away Kashmir from us. It is historically proven that Kashmir has been a part of India since ancient times and should remain so much to the chagrin of many who want to see India broken into pieces.

      I will reiterate: these are tough times for India and “Desperate Situations call for Desperate Measures”.

Amen…

Scorpene Leak: A Serious Threat to India's National Security

At a time when Indian Navy’s Submarine Arm is beleaguered by delays in replacement of its ageing submarine fleet, Scorpene leak could be a source of serious stress for our operational planners...

 The Importance of Scorpene Program: The news of leak of more than 22,000 pages of classified data about India’s Scorpene submarine program has shook the defence establishments in both India and France. To make matters worse, it has come at a time when India is down to a force level of only 9 Russian 877-KM Sindhughosh Class and 4 German HDW Type-209 Shishumar Class boats. All these, barring INS Sindhushastra, are between 22 to 30 years old and will soon be in the twilight of their service so they need to be replaced with newer, technologically advanced boats sooner than later. Towards the end of the last century, the submarine arm had made a very ambitious 30-year perspective (acquisition) plan which envisaged a force level of 24 next-generation conventional boats by the year 2030. Unfortunately, it took the government itself close to 5 years to approve the plan and then, as is common with defence programs in our country, inordinate delays have hit the plan at regular intervals. The first boat as per this plan should have got commissioned by 2005 but here we are in the second half of 2016 and the boat has just about started its sea trials. We have seen in the past that these kinds of scandals (Bofors, HDW etc) more often than not derail or shake our weapon procurement plans and set our defence preparedness back by many years.

The Threat: Coming to the bigger issue at hand, which is the leak of sensitive data about the boat, it is like your trade secrets getting into your competitors’ hands which would sound a death knell for your products.  In case of a submarine, the death knell would be for the personnel manning it. Of the 20,000 plus pages that it has, The Australian has made public only 18 pages on its website but these 18 pages have enough explosive material to give the would-be Scorpene crew sleepless nights. It has data on the sub’s sonar operating parameters and radiated noise data. The other (not revealed) pages contain just about everything that you would want to know about the Scorpene. Thankfully, the paper blacked out the figures before publishing them but the fact remains that the figures are there with whom they should not have been and may reach our adversaries sooner or later (God save us if they already have them). It would give away the advantage Scorpene would have over enemy ships and subs as it would allow them to devise and utilize their tactics and countermeasures more effectively should they come up against her in combat. Stealth is a submarine’s biggest weapon; without it, she is no good as a tool of sea control and sea denial which is what she is meant for.

Some of us would suggest changing these parameters altogether but it is not as simple as it may sound. A military equipment undergoes rigorous trials, first on the test bed followed by the field before it is cleared for production and induction into service. Doing this in the present case would mean the program setting back by few more years which, in my opinion, Indian Navy could ill afford.
Therefore, if the leaked information is indeed authentic, I would stick my neck out and say that the program is as good as sunk.

Timing of the Leak: It is believed that these papers were leaked way back in 2011; so the question is, why the leaks now? Well, I can think of few reasons:

First, the person who had these papers could not find a buyer for whatever reasons: either there were doubts on the authenticity of the documents or they could not agree on the price.

Secondly, recently, Australia awarded its Collins Class (submarine) replacement contract to DCNS (the French firm which incidentally is also the manufacturer of Scorpene) to develop the Shortfin Barracuda Class submarines (diesel electric subs with an option to have nuclear propulsion in future) after a hard fought battle with German HDW Type 216 and Japanese Soryu Class boats (diesel-electric boats). It is possible that someone did not like the $50 billion deal going the DCNS way and wanted to show it in bad light so the leak was engineered after obtaining the papers.

Thirdly, I also have information that apart from showing interest in leasing another nuclear attack submarine (SSN) from Russia, India was keen to collaborate with DCNS in developing its indigenised SSNs (the French firm is also helping Brazil develop its own SSN) much to the chagrin of the USA which was keen to sell their hardware to us. Under these circumstance, it could be anybody’s guess as to who would benefit from this ‘timely’ leak.

Conclusion: Notwithstanding the reasons for the leak, it has serious repercussions for Indian Navy’s Submarine Arm. It poses serious threat to our submarine’s safety in the hostile environment that she would have to operate during war or ‘preparation for war’. Indian Navy needs to find the source of the leak as soon as possible and seek to contain the damage caused by it. If the leak has happened from DCNS side, they must be made to pay for it; whichever way the Indian Navy feels it would suit the best interests of our country and National Security. 

Rustom: The Case of an Intriguing Story Gone Awry

Director Tinu Suresh Desai’s attempt at cashing on KM Nanavati case and the charisma of Akshay Kumar as a Naval Officer falters at the first step and is never really able to recover thereafter

Rustom 

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Ileana D’Cruz, Arjan Bajwa, Esha Gupta

Director: Tinu Suresh Desai

Rating: ***

      Circa 1959, Indian Naval Ship Mysore receives a coded message at sea. On seeing it, the Captain summons his Second-in-Command and enters our much-decorated hero Commander Rustom Pavri (Akshay Kumar) wearing medals for participating in Op Vijay (1999) and Op Parakram (2002); that’s what I would call some ‘long-term vision’. From here, the movie goes from one faux-pas to the other. Director Tinu Suresh Desai’s attempt at cashing on the charisma of Akshay Kumar as a Naval Officer falters at the first step and is never really able to recover thereafter.

     Rustom is madly in love with his wife Cynthia (Ileana D’Cruz), but he has to go on a long sailing which is terminated prematurely and he returns to find that she is having an affair with his rich businessman friend Vikram Makhija (Arjan Bajwa). Our hero thinks out everything and kills Makhija in cold blood. A courtroom drama follows where the hero pleads ‘not guilty’ and decides to defend himself against a bright prosecution lawyer. With some help from a tabloid, is able to sway the public opinion and the jury to deliver a verdict in his favour.

     Vipul K Rawal’s script woven around the infamous Commander KM Nanavati case (which was responsible for the end of jury system in Indian courts) fails to captivate the viewers. First, it has been in the public domain for a long time and secondly, there have been two other Hindi movies on this subject in the past. Probably realising this, he has brought in another track of corruption in high value defence deals (which unfortunately is a reality) but the side track distracts the viewers from the main tracks which could have been very captivating given the circumstances in which the events took place. To make things worse, he uses this side track to try to justify Cynthia’s indiscretion and Rustom’s murder of his friend which was not only unnecessary but also muddle things up further needlessly lengthening the movie. In the end what we get is a mish-mash of a love-triangle, a murder mystery and corruption in high offices which everyone knows where it is heading.

    This being a period film, the director has taken great care to ensure that the characters are in the right getup. Alas, he did not do so for Naval uniforms, the way naval personnel interact with each other or the way operations are conducted. There are moments where the film appears to be dragging and in my opinion, it could have been wound up within 2 hours if not less. The saving grace are the cinematography, music and of course Akshay Kumar who looks dapper in the white uniform and carries it off with utmost grace.

My Verdict: Watch it only for Akshay Kumar or the glamour of Indian Navy.