New Delhi, Jan. 13: The Indian Army is preparing for larger deployments in counter-insurgency operations.
Army headquarters has now adopted a theoretical doctrine in preparation for such deployments.
The first operations after the adoption of the doctrine are currently on in Assam and the man in charge is the officer who has given the document its final shape — Lt General K.S. Jamwal, currently the eastern army commander headquartered in Fort William, Calcutta.
The “Doctrine for Sub Conventional Operations” — an outcome of an exercise initiated by the army chief, General Joginder Jaswant Singh, when he headed the Army Training Command (ARTRAC) in Shimla — lays down dos and don’ts in counter-insurgency operations and is a tool to guide field commanders.
The exercise was completed and the doctrine promulgated by Lt General Jamwal who was the ARTRAC chief before moving to Fort William.
“This document encapsulates our collective wisdom and philosophy that we have acquired over almost five decades in fighting such warfare,” General JJ writes in the preface.
He said here on Friday that militaries of other countries were tapping into the Indian Army’s experience in counter-insurgency operations. In the last four years, counter-insurgency units of the Indian Army have been training jointly in exercises with US forces that are currently operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The doctrine is an unclassified document and was made public last evening.
General JJ writes that sub conventional wars are fought “in the lower end of the ‘spectrum of conflict’ and entail application of combat power to enhance ‘civil control’ rather than cause ‘destruction’, which generally is the motive of conventional warfare”.
Applied to the Assam case, this would mean that the current objective of the army is to wreck the damage potential of the ULFA to the point that its leadership is forced to the talks table. But political compulsions have in the past led to the army changing course in the middle of an operation.
General JJ writes that the army’s policy in counter-insurgency is “Iron Fist with Velvet Glove”. Use of overwhelming force should be reserved for foreign terrorists operating in India.
