On the western front

Chief of army staff, general Deepak Kapoor’s comments some time back —  right now he is in the limelight for other reasons — on the possibility of a limited war under a nuclear overhang; and the need for India to be prepared for a two-front war have created a stir in Pakistan and they have raised eyebrows in several quarters in the country.

These routine statements contained twin messages: one for the Indian government that it fast-track modernisation of the Army; and the more obvious, for the adversaries.

The Pakistani media has gone to town saying “Indian General Threatens Pakistan with Nuclear War’. While Pakistan army chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani threatened India with nuclear retaliation, Joint chief of staff, general Tariq Majeed, called the concept a ‘strategic mistake’.

Foreign minister Shah Mahmood Quereshi referred to it as an absurd statement from a responsible person and the irrepressible PML-Q Secretary general Mushahid Hussain demanded that the Indian government sack general Kapoor and clarify his ‘irresponsible war-mongering’ was not the official position.

Another Pakistani, senator Shehzad Choudhary compared general Kapoor to a Pakistani general, reasoning that most army chiefs in India are traditionally quiet.

How right. The offensive Defence Doctrine underlining that the next war would be fought on Indian soil was enunciated by former Pakistan army chief, general Aslam Beg in 1990.

Historically, Pakistani politicians and generals have vowed to destroy India, bleeding it through a thousand cuts. Only recently, president Zardari revisited his father in law’s threat of waging a thousand-year war on Kashmir, unaccompanied by the Bhutto boast that one Pakistani equaled a thousand Indians. Pakistani threats are in multiples of one thousand.

The concept of limited war under a nuclear overhang was unveiled soon after general  Musharraf invaded Kargil. The limited in space, time and objectives doctrine was designed towards deterring Cross Border Terrorism (CBT) — preventing Kargil-type salami slicing.

It is another matter the doctrine was bereft of appropriate skills and capabilities, most importantly the political will to call Pakistan’s bluff of lowering the nuclear threshold. It was Pakistan which called India’s bluff through the terrorist attack on Parliament in December 2001 which led to the full-scale deployment of the armed forces in Operation Parakram.

Even a second terrorist strike in May 2002 at Jammu which made a punitive response obligatory was given a go-by. Yet by doing nothing, India extolled the virtue of strategic restraint. This convinced the Pakistan military establishment that India’s tolerance level was exploitable.

Seven years later, the Mumbai carnage with irrefutable evidence of state sponsorship went unchallenged. The Limited War doctrine refined with Cold Start is a non-starter. Instead the Pakistanis have attached impunity to their doctrine of CBT under  nuclear overhang.

The two-front doctrine is as old as the history of India-Pakistan wars. In the 1960s, young officers initiated to strategy and doctrine, were informed that while Pakistan was the immediate threat, China was the long term challenge.

That they would collude in the event of war was demonstrated in 1965 and 1971. The aim of Sino-Pakistan nexus is to diminish India. The military assets in the east are called dual-use forces with inherent capability switching from Eastern to Western Front.

Defence minister AK Antony clarified that general Kapoor’s comments were not aimed at antagonising neighbouring countries and that India had no extraterritorial ambitions.

The reason for the supercharged reaction from Pakistan on the two doctrines is to sharpen the focus on the existential Indian threat which gives the Pakistan army the perfect excuse not to expand and intensify the war in the west.

The Americans have been goading them to go for the Taliban, including the Afghan Taliban whom the ISI sees as a valuable asset to gain strategic depth in Afghanistan.

Ironically, it is the Taliban which has secured strategic depth in Pakistan, opening last month a new front of suicide attacks in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. US senator Evan Bayh believes that Pakistan is close to paranoid about India and lacks the willingness to back terror.

General Kapoor is monitoring the march of the Taliban eastwards. It has reached Lahore and Muzaffarbad. There is no question of political or professional impropriety on the part of Kapoor who is merely doing his job.

Otherwise, he would be negligent in updating doctrines for all vulnerable fronts, especially against the Western neighbour which many are calling ‘Paranoidstan’.

The writer, a former major-general, is a commenator on  military affairs