Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's talk of using terrorists to neutralise a terrorist sounds very appealing, but in fact is a fantasy. Worse, any warrior from India's armed forces or intelligence services will tell you that it is something not to be spoken of in public, and certainly not by the defence minister, whose earthy “kaante se kaante nikalna” will no doubt be quoted repeatedly by foreign governments and multilateral institutions. It will hopefully not become an embarrassment for India, ironically coming from a minister who was seen as a sober element (along with Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu) of the Modi Cabinet.
It is a fantasy because saying that we should use terrorists against terrorists is easier said than done. Of course there is a precedent in Jammu and Kashmir – since Parrikar spoke of foreign-inspired terrorism – and that is the counter-insurgency movement of Kuka Parray and his Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon in Baramullah, one of the J&K districts heaviest-afflicted by terrorism. Kuka Parray was a folk singer turned separatist who was recruited by the army's Rashtriya Rifles in 1995; his group comprised surrendered militants and other renegades, and was given army protection for its attacks on militant groups. It also helped the army in targeted anti-terrorist operations.
(When Kuka Parray was killed by terrorists in 2003, the National Democratic Alliance Defence Minister, George Fernandes, happened to be in Kashmir at the time but did not think it appropriate to attend Kuka Parray's funeral, to the consternation of some in the security establishment. Ironically another NDA defence minister is uninhibited in trying to take ownership of the idea.)
Changed circumstances
The Kuka Parray precedent, however, was contingent upon circumstances that no longer exist. By the mid-1990s, terrorism had become a mess. There was inter-group warfare: the nationalist J&K Liberation Front had long been eclipsed by the pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen, and the Hizb was now being eclipsed by Islamist groups like the Harkat-ul Ansar (whose module Al Faran kidnapped five foreigners in south Kashmir in 1995) and Maulana Masood Azhar's Jaish-e-Mohammed. Also, some terrorists were using the movement for their own personal ends, which inevitably meant harassment of Kashmiris.
It was as a reaction to this that Kuka Parray was born – he was a local from one of the most militancy-affected areas in north Kashmir and he did not have a terrorist background. J&K was under Governor's rule at the time, and state government officials tended to give Kuka Parray's counter-insurgency much credit for setting the conditions for the 1996 elections.
Militancy in J&K today has undergone a sea-change. Firstly, the militants themselves are different. In the early 1990s, the separatist movement identified with militancy and thousands of boys from all walks of life – but especially the working class – took up the gun. Everyone knew which of their neighbours was a militant, and which was not. In such an atmosphere the violence was of a general nature, with random acts of terrorism and lots of collateral damage among the locals.
Today, militants belong to the middle-class or the upper middle-class, are Islamist rather than nationalist, and keep their identities a secret. It has often been the case that it is only when a terrorist is killed that his own family comes to realise that he had taken up violence. This is linked to the fact that the separatist movement doesn't necessarily identify with Islamist violence; intifadas and other street protests are seen as more effective. And today's militants undertake extremely focussed operations with well-defined targets – the violence is not of a general nature, and the militant's identity remains secret.
If no one knows who a terrorist is before he dies, then the army can hardly recruit counter-insurgents. The militants from the 1990s are now too old to take up the gun, even if they were persuaded to, which is unlikely. And even if the army were to find someone to undertake this “dirty war”, they would not know whom to move against, given the secrecy of today's Islamists.
No lessons learnt
This is why the “kaante se kaante nikalte hain” will remain a pipe-dream, even if this type of anti-terrorism is favoured by many in the government, like National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. It was during Doval's tenure as Intelligence Bureau chief that the anti-Maoist force Salwa Judum – a kind of counter-insurgency force – was born in Chattisgarh's Dantewada in 2005. The Salwa Judum created more problems than it solved, and even the Supreme Court had to tell the Chattisgarh government not to outsource the law to private hands. Despite that, the current government appears to have decided to outsource counter-insurgency to private hands – be it the talk of a Salwa Judum II, this time in Bastar, or the talk of terrorists taking on terrorists.
It is more likely that the defence minister's words were in line with what has become an Army ritual – to cry wolf about terrorism in Kashmir every four months or so. Government statistics show that militancy in J&K has come down by 85% from when it burst onto the scene in 1990, something that can be managed by the state police and the Central Reserve Police force. Yet the army has to justify why it continues to treat the entire Kashmir Valley like a cantonment, why the army should not be confined to just guarding the border, and why the Armed Forces Special Powers Act needs to remain in force there.
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It is a fantasy because saying that we should use terrorists against terrorists is easier said than done. Of course there is a precedent in Jammu and Kashmir – since Parrikar spoke of foreign-inspired terrorism – and that is the counter-insurgency movement of Kuka Parray and his Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon in Baramullah, one of the J&K districts heaviest-afflicted by terrorism. Kuka Parray was a folk singer turned separatist who was recruited by the army's Rashtriya Rifles in 1995; his group comprised surrendered militants and other renegades, and was given army protection for its attacks on militant groups. It also helped the army in targeted anti-terrorist operations.
(When Kuka Parray was killed by terrorists in 2003, the National Democratic Alliance Defence Minister, George Fernandes, happened to be in Kashmir at the time but did not think it appropriate to attend Kuka Parray's funeral, to the consternation of some in the security establishment. Ironically another NDA defence minister is uninhibited in trying to take ownership of the idea.)
Changed circumstances
The Kuka Parray precedent, however, was contingent upon circumstances that no longer exist. By the mid-1990s, terrorism had become a mess. There was inter-group warfare: the nationalist J&K Liberation Front had long been eclipsed by the pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen, and the Hizb was now being eclipsed by Islamist groups like the Harkat-ul Ansar (whose module Al Faran kidnapped five foreigners in south Kashmir in 1995) and Maulana Masood Azhar's Jaish-e-Mohammed. Also, some terrorists were using the movement for their own personal ends, which inevitably meant harassment of Kashmiris.
It was as a reaction to this that Kuka Parray was born – he was a local from one of the most militancy-affected areas in north Kashmir and he did not have a terrorist background. J&K was under Governor's rule at the time, and state government officials tended to give Kuka Parray's counter-insurgency much credit for setting the conditions for the 1996 elections.
Militancy in J&K today has undergone a sea-change. Firstly, the militants themselves are different. In the early 1990s, the separatist movement identified with militancy and thousands of boys from all walks of life – but especially the working class – took up the gun. Everyone knew which of their neighbours was a militant, and which was not. In such an atmosphere the violence was of a general nature, with random acts of terrorism and lots of collateral damage among the locals.
Today, militants belong to the middle-class or the upper middle-class, are Islamist rather than nationalist, and keep their identities a secret. It has often been the case that it is only when a terrorist is killed that his own family comes to realise that he had taken up violence. This is linked to the fact that the separatist movement doesn't necessarily identify with Islamist violence; intifadas and other street protests are seen as more effective. And today's militants undertake extremely focussed operations with well-defined targets – the violence is not of a general nature, and the militant's identity remains secret.
If no one knows who a terrorist is before he dies, then the army can hardly recruit counter-insurgents. The militants from the 1990s are now too old to take up the gun, even if they were persuaded to, which is unlikely. And even if the army were to find someone to undertake this “dirty war”, they would not know whom to move against, given the secrecy of today's Islamists.
No lessons learnt
This is why the “kaante se kaante nikalte hain” will remain a pipe-dream, even if this type of anti-terrorism is favoured by many in the government, like National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. It was during Doval's tenure as Intelligence Bureau chief that the anti-Maoist force Salwa Judum – a kind of counter-insurgency force – was born in Chattisgarh's Dantewada in 2005. The Salwa Judum created more problems than it solved, and even the Supreme Court had to tell the Chattisgarh government not to outsource the law to private hands. Despite that, the current government appears to have decided to outsource counter-insurgency to private hands – be it the talk of a Salwa Judum II, this time in Bastar, or the talk of terrorists taking on terrorists.
It is more likely that the defence minister's words were in line with what has become an Army ritual – to cry wolf about terrorism in Kashmir every four months or so. Government statistics show that militancy in J&K has come down by 85% from when it burst onto the scene in 1990, something that can be managed by the state police and the Central Reserve Police force. Yet the army has to justify why it continues to treat the entire Kashmir Valley like a cantonment, why the army should not be confined to just guarding the border, and why the Armed Forces Special Powers Act needs to remain in force there.