Colonel Harinder Singh is Research Fellow at Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. <a href="/profile/hsingh">Click here for detail profile</a>.
There are no shortcuts to overcoming the grave Naxal threat to our democratic way of life. Broadening the mandate by handing over the problem to the army is neither fair nor efficacious.
The Grid-Guard-Govern strategy would do away with the sequential application of socio-economic solutions by undertaking security-led governance cum development action.
Inside Defense: Understanding the US Military in the 21st Century by Derek S. Reveron and Judith Hicks Stiehm (eds)
Palgrave and Macmillan, 2008, pp. 292, $95, ISBN 978-0230602601
Since safeguarding the public space such as mass transportation networks, financial and industrial hubs from sporadic acts of terror is increasingly becoming difficult, socialising citizenry in democratic societies to the needs of counterterrorism assumes salience.
The hard lesson of Chintalnar is that the police are simply not investing enough in their frontline leadership and training to tackle the situation. Even when attempts have been made to bring in competence, the efforts to acquire required counterinsurgency skills have been marginal.
That the ISI patron is now becoming the victim of jehadi terrorism does not bode well for Pakistan, which now has to recast the agency’s role and organizational ethos to contain the Taliban.
Ideally, ISAF and NATO should concentrate on urban population centres along with the ANA, and the ANA should also deploy outside the towns and cities to dominate the hinterland and crack down on Taliban controlled areas.
The effectiveness of the procurement process needs to be viewed in context of the operational and structural readiness of the armed forces. If the existing framework proves to be weak and unable to deliver required levels of military preparedness, the framework may have to be re-laid for its effectiveness and deliverability.
History is replete with examples of radical, modest and even failed transformations, thus revealing the fact that the armed forces are intrinsically not flexible enough to accept transformational changes. The prime drivers for change have been the emerging nature of conflict, and the development of cutting edge technologies for war fighting. It is a well known fact that introduction of new ideas and technologies usher in new dynamics and constraints, thus necessitating complementary changes in structures, policies, procedures and practices.
America’s new strategy in Afghanistan needs to be based on the concept of `connect–hold–build’, where the ground troops surely and silently `connect’ with the local population.
Always in the Line of Fire
There are no shortcuts to overcoming the grave Naxal threat to our democratic way of life. Broadening the mandate by handing over the problem to the army is neither fair nor efficacious.