SKY IS THE LIMIT

WHY READ THIS BOOK?

This book tells you why the Americans are in trouble in Iraq? What makes the terrorists and terrorism click? Are there any answers to suicide bombers? Who taught the Al Qaida, Hamas, ULFA, Naxalites and the LTTE the tricks? And above all, “whither, indeed what state, the intelligence agencies and their smug ways in the face of memetic and cyber terror tactics?” This book provides you what you need to know about asymmetric warfare. It is cool and hard-hitting.

It is time to redefine the idiom of war. It is neither art of war, nor science of war. It is hard-nosed pragmatism and perception to counter self-created Arjun-like paranoia. There is a new beat in Shiva Tandava; a new wave bobbing through bits and bytes; a new symphony. It is an apt expression of the times – let us define it the era of uncertainty or what the “jihadi” terrorists would call the Management of Savagery.

It is not merely that we are in the midst of a worldwide sea-change (today they appropriately re-term the proverb as climatic change) in balance of power, with which we are unfamiliar and unprepared; unprecedented as it is with emergence of non-state actors. What's equally significant is that almost all principles of war, as taught, and many assumptions about the so-called manoeuvre age, as touted, are suspect and discredited. We once thought we understood war, its casus belli and its patterns. For decades, we classified the latter as attack, defence, with advance and withdrawal in addenda, and followed rather “appreciated” the “courses open” and worked out the “plan” in lock-step. Information communication technology and globalisation of terror have shattered this model, this “factorial” mindset. Only principle that abides is Bighe Gidao Ye, meaning warfare is all deception, more appropriately, “nothing but deception”. It survives; yet it never found a place in the textbooks. Playing with frequencies and use and abuse of codes and ciphers to hide information are acme of signal tactics, meant to fool the enemy. Intercepting and “breaking” them is “to see through” with the eyetap of a poker player. Yet, we leave it to those who are innocent of even the glossary and phraseology, what to talk of “elusiveness” of the likes of Prabhakaran.

So the answer lies in chucking out the textbooks and the manuals; instead learning from the experiences of those who themselves gained “illumination” the hard way – the only way, in the thick of the battle. The change will be resisted by the rusty barrels; that is law of the nature, nay law of the vested interests.

EXCERPTS AND QUOTES FROM THE BOOK

On History

I quote Michel Eyquem, “The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write;” rest is hearsay. Four writers that I know of, who command this respect are: J N Dixit, Depinder Singh, Sardeshpande and Kaarthikeyan. Their perspectives are valid and convincing, but in their respective spheres. The Web is dismally suffused by the LTTE propaganda, and most writers and analysers in their hang-up for make-believe objectivity have been victims of making “a pillow of the mind”.

Regretting indifference to military history, K Subrahmanyam recounts incidents where the bureaucracy and political leadership prevented publication of historical records, thereby showing utter disregard to drawing lessons and learning from history…. Operation Pawan is no exception, in fact its conception and conduct has invited so much flak and controversy that the facts are ignobly clouded. So the next generation of army officers will remain blissfully ignorant of the lessons that should be drawn from this venture. This is particularly true of the art of deception, and the game of realpolitik and dubiety, which friends and foes play alike. Such indifference to history also comes in the way of the development of correct understanding and appreciation of the adversary’s mindset.

Besides motivation of the generations to come, the purpose of writing military history is to cash on its repetitive nuances, create databases, disseminate information and imbibe lessons, more to predict events and psycho-analyse the foe. I quote the Epilogue and the Post Script from Col. Neeraj Bali’s excellent account, “Ambush” at Sonamarg in J&K, “By way of lessons, I offer you two. Never disregard any information, no matter how general it is. Listen aggressively – learn to listen rather than talk to the locals --- And when you set your mind to analysing it, do not allow cliché to be the scriptwriter. Or you will arrive at solutions that have ‘more of the same’ stamped all over them. You would end up festooning militants with super human abilities that they simply do not possess.” (I hope those who are fighting al Qaida and Taliban in Afghanistan are listening)

On Lessons

There are plenty of other lessons, the major being that opportunities cannot be sacrificed just because the tasks that they entail are not mission-specific, resources not adequate and errands politically not popular. The Signals must team up with the Infantry and make a formidable combine, if we have to win the war against terror. Let every ambush that we lay, every raid that we conduct and every offensive mission we undertake have a communication-electronics-codebreaker-cum-language expert accompany it, giving a running commentary of what is happening on “other side of the bush.” If a twelve year old hacker can take on this “all-in-one archetype entity”, then why not we?

On Asymmetric Warfare

Asymmetric warfare is emerging a norm even a model, rather than a deviation. It stems from a virtually weak adversary taking on the might of a powerful well-established one. The weakness of the “weak one” is in mass, firepower, infrastructure and high-tech, his strength in intelligence, memetics, motivation, propaganda, publicity and innovation, all this stemming from the cells and knuckles of information-communication technology. This truism is a casualty with us, more so with the Americans and the British in Iraq; herein looms the tragedy of each. Today information warfare plumes many variants, e.g. cyber warfare, intelligence warfare, electronic warfare, net warfare, memetic warfare, frequency warfare, crypto warfare and propaganda warfare; more are up-and-appearing. We call these forms unconventional; the terrorists call them conventional. These are unusual in our perception, usual in theirs. These challenge principles of war, as we understand and teach them, but they measure up to their concepts, howsoever brazen-out. There is a wide gap between our capabilities and doctrines but in their case the two eminently jell. Waging or blunting these are not staff specialities, least their birthrights. These are combat functions, operations and manoeuvres, logically related to the “cerebrum”, in stark contrast to the “boast” of the muscle. They require specialised training, part technological, part psychological; the latter to tune in the brain, making it analytical and responsive to fresh ideas. More than that, they require a “feel” of fighting of an exacting kind, a rigour of what appears frightening at the outset, and an experience of the unforeseen; all that is woefully absent in our case. These are newer and tradition-defiant forms of fighting.

Strategy and tactics are not static; they are changeable. Even doctrine obeys the laws of relativity; it is time-dependent, questionable and answerable too. If not reviewed and made responsive, it tends to be dogmatic a la Marxism in the shape of Eelam, Naxalism, or Jathiya Vimukthi Parmukha-ism.

A Poignant Thought

Let me conclude this Chapter (Chapter 7) with my views that Jain Commission so records, “Major General Yashwant Deva of the Indian Army – a communication expert – while deposing before the Commission held the view that had surveillance been mounted on the wireless network, wireless bases located, and wireless intercepts decoded, the assassination (of Rajiv Gandhi) could have been, perhaps, averted.”

In retrospect, I would change “perhaps” in the above statement to “of certain”.

Should We Have Intervened?

Let history answer that question. But of one thing I am certain that counter-insurgency operations and counter-terrorism operations cannot be fought in another country. As I said earlier, the question, which every Jaffnite asked us then and for which we have no answer even now, is, “Are you going to stay here permanently?” My later discussions with N Ram of The Hindu, highly perceptive as he is, revealed similarity of views held by the intelligentsia of his kind with those of Lt Gen Depinder Singh. The latter writes, “Was there an option? I feel there was and this should have been the crucial card India has always held of moral and material sustenance the LTTE has drawn from Tamil Nadu. Playing this card would certainly have required political sagacity and maturity of a very high order as it would have meant a formal recognition of a de facto situation, which every one knew about but constantly denied.” This undoubtedly reflects synchronicity of opinion.

Should We Have Withdrawn Prematurely as We Did?

As regards withdrawal, I go by the assessment of J N Dixit and Lt Gen Kalkat. In his book Assignment Colombo, the former writes, “The criticism that the agreement did not fulfill its objectives and the IPKF’s withdrawal without completion of its tasks was a foreign policy failure is valid.” Elsewhere, in an interview, he listed the achievements of the IPKF to unequivocally suggest their continued relevance to bring about peace; “Jaffna was pacified; it was under a civilian government. Trincomalee was pacified. Batticaloa and Amparai were pacified. LTTE cadres were pushed out of north-central Sri Lanka. They were all concentrated in a small place north of Vavuniya jungles. Had we continued our military containment operations we could have persuaded them to surrender and give up.”

In my talks on Operation Pawan, terrorism and future warfare, I have been ever emphasising the single most important achievement of the IPKF that it kept the LTTE on the run; during its stay in Sri Lanka, not a single human bomb attack was attempted. The LTTE’s track record of successes earlier and later is telling. Let the detractors of the IPKF mull over this verity.

Fighting against Women and Children

How does one fight when pitted against women and children, that too when you cannot distinguish them? How does a bullet know? I address these questions to the detractors of the profession of soldiering. It hurts that Malathi, Kathuri, Thaya, Ranji (as described by Adele Ann) and Dhano are remembered, even honoured and my son (the Signalman, for that matter jawan of any hue, or any country), who laid down his life for the cause that he was told to fight for, forgotten, even denigrated. This then is the burden of this book.

On Intelligence

The bane of this country, as that of the US is, that intelligence is guided and controlled by “nine-to-five operatives”. Nine-eleven was a consequence of nine-to-five mindset. In America they call it “chair-jockeying intelligence”. Intelligence is where enemy is and enemy is upfront. During Operation Pawan, it was a walkie-talkie that revealed worthwhile intelligence. Signal intelligence has to be within walkie-talkie range. With a power output of three watts or lesser, and a frequency range of 140 to 150 MHz, it implies that the interceptor must be within 200 metres to one km of radius of action. In chapters “Battle of Jaffna” and “Sparrows Amongst Tigers,” I have quoted intercepts without salad dressing to suggest that this information was mostly in clear and that we were deployed at a hugging distance of the enemy.

The tragedy of Operation Pawan was not the absence of intelligence, but the nasty fact that it was not shared. Equally repugnant were cross-purposes and contrarieties in the conduct of intelligence operations vis-à-vis military operations and want of counter-intelligence from the soil of Tamil Nadu within our own borders. The LTTE had penetrated all echelons of the intelligence gathering, and decision-making, be they in Colombo, Delhi or Madras.

The Intelligence is a function of the brain and there is a symbiotic relationship between the digital hacking of the brain and its cultural lacerating. That explains the mindset and the psyche that we were victim of. India’s endemic illogic and paradox or for that matter, that of the US and the UK too, stems from the fact that whereas the information communication technology war is waged by the Signals, the intelligence war is the preserve of the “agencies”. The twain has never met.

Fighting Tamsik Guna

Let us face unpleasant, if not hideous, reality. India lost out to the LTTE on the info, memetic, political and diplomatic fronts, as the IPKF decisively gained control over the population and instilled order. The IPKF brought stability and security to the common man if not peace in its all-encompassing sense and substance. The IPKF presence led to a visible return to democratic ways in what had been a lawless, strife-torn, gun-tolerant polity.

Growing number and deleterious influence of religiously and racially motivated groups within the army is undoubtedly a curse, and yet tradition, religion and ethics are our strength and shubh karman and Karmanya va adhikaraste our cause. In this, the Signals and the Infantry have a lot to learn from each other. Whereas the Infantry has long back shed the Raj in them and are truly Indian, the Signals still suffer the old hang-ups. On the other hand class composition, a distinctiveness of the Infantry, though eminently desirable for a tradition bound society, can be exploited to subvert loyalties. Signals’ pluralism is a bulwark against such inroads. It is this theme that I emphasised during my daily interactions with the jawans. Of certain, this helped in dampening the cause, which had lent “legitimacy” and “bravado” to militants, and promoted ours, which I then identified and ever since promenaded as shubh karman.

If fight we must, then let us fight wars

“That are short,

That are popular,

That are winnable.”

On Technology

The civilisation was and continues to be in the throes of ill-defined, never-ending technological revolutions. Electrotechnology, infotechnology, biotechnology, and lately nanotechnology have each heralded a societal metamorphosis with neither a beginning, nor middle, nor an end. What were yesterday a series of industrial, electronic or digital ages ever striving for the pinnacle, are today the onset of a widely speculated and convoluted “Bioinformatic” and “Genome” age; tomorrow we may well graduate from “mini-age” to as yet nascent “microage;” and thence to coveted “nanoage”.

A frontier technology is Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS), which may well herald a second semiconductor revolution, with a magnitude equaling if not surpassing, the “first”. It explores domains of which sensors and scanners are so small that they are imperceptible to human eye; and so envisions possibilities galore. “Smart dust” devices are tiny wireless microelectromechanical sensors that can detect everything from light to vibrations. Popularly called “motes”, these could eventually be the size of a grain of sand, “though each would contain sensors, computing circuits, bidirectional wireless communication technology and a power supply.”

Time was when robots, or for that matter any artificial life form, began to be universally seen as malignant creatures, which would ultimately try to destroy mankind. That such indigence of knowledge prevailed, was a pity since this suspicion influenced scientific work on a man-machine interface so essential for the development of, both, genetics and cybernetics.

Today, the British pride in having a robot air force. In the US, an association of nearly 300 scientists and engineers spread across 45 project teams and coordinated by the Office of Naval Research have embarked on a “Multimedia Intelligent Network of Unattended Mobile Agents or Minutemen”. This is a network of air vehicles, called the Golden Hawk, which requires a wireless Internet in the sky, which would connect and inter-work thousands of air vehicles that carry weapon systems, reconnaissance and communication equipment. Data Fusion is a high-end technology, which aims at derivation of a cognitive intelligent picture from scrambled data collected by a multi-sensor system. An example is Nemesis Fusion System of UK, which produces a fused and blended RAP an acronym for Recognised Air Picture in real-time, culling inputs from a wide variety of combat systems.

The over arching mega trend that it (CIA study On Mapping the Future) talks of is borne of “growing interconnectedness reflected in the expanded flows of information, technology, capital, goods, services, and people throughout the world”. It is so “ubiquitous that it will substantially shape all the other major trends,” strategies, and politics. The power will flow not from the barrel of the gun but bits and bytes of the Web, more so memes of the human mind.

“Information” in this century cannot afford to travel at the pace at which files do between North and South blocks in New Delhi. It will be to our peril if we continue to give short shrift to science and technology, as we have often been guilty of in the past. It is the writing on the wall; a grim reminder, be that of Tsunami, be that of the proverbial “time and tide”. Technology is shifting paradigms, defying complexes and memeplexes, countering tide-set or mindset and, often even making time-honoured archetypes stand on their heads. For instance there have been many more discoveries made and more information and data produced in just the last decade alone than all the previous 10,000 years put together. The future is not only accelerating closer to us faster with each passing day, but also becoming history almost at the instant that it does.

The future challenge lies in developing information into combat power, or what some writers have forecast, “of a world where technology would virtually disappear by becoming embedded in our bodies.” The key technologies are remote sensing, networking, computing, algorithmic codes, artificial intelligence and robotics. Key information weapons include malignant frequencies, viruses, worms, Trojans, electromagnetic pulses, high power microwave, even malicious “genes” and “memes”. The shape of warfare is destined to change.

The Future

The future challenge lies in developing information into combat power, or what some writers have forecast, “of a world where technology would virtually disappear by becoming embedded in our bodies.” The key technologies are remote sensing, networking, computing, algorithmic codes, artificial intelligence and robotics. Key information weapons include malignant frequencies, viruses, worms, Trojans, electromagnetic pulses, high power microwave, even malicious “genes” and “memes”. .The shape of warfare is destined to change. .

A favourable military balance without a favourable information balance is a drag. We will not benefit from mass and firepower advantage even over non-state adversaries, in view of the fact that laptop, cellular, mobile gadgetry, commercial satellites, digital broadband, and the public Internet all give them new capabilities at a relatively low cost. We should not expect our opponents to fight with industrial-age tools, worse with “industrial age” mindset that we ourselves are afflicted with. Our advantage must come from balance of information, balance of knowledge and balance of wisdom to achieve superior effectiveness.

War Clouds in Sri Lanka

As the book goes to print, two significant events have happened: first, the LTTE has owned the responsibility of killing Rajiv Gandhi and expressed some sort of “regret”; and second, the country is in the grip of escalating violence. It is highly encouraging to see that the Government of India has adopted a prudent and pragmatic policy; this is precisely the viewpoint, and thrust of this book. The tenets of this policy have been explicitly spelt by the National Security Adviser, M K Narayanan. These are as under:

• “No direct intervention in the Sri Lanka crisis.”

• “No reconsideration regarding the ban imposed on the LTTE.”

• “India would remain in the loop by using all persuasion possible to find an early solution to the ethnic crisis.”

COMMENTS

Genweal JJ Singh after reading the book, describes it as an “outstanding work” and Lt Gen Harbhajan Singh as “unique”, further elaborating, “No Signal officer in the World has so far written such a book on Communications in any operation and nor any one will write.” Lt Gen Depinder Singh on my copy of the book writes “With deep gratitude” for vindicating performance of the IPKF and showing courage of conviction calling a spade a spade. Lt Gen Sree Kumar expresses appreciation that the book, “showcases the Corps”. Lt Gen Mohanty writes that the book is being given a pride of place in the library of the War College and a review is being published in the War College Journal”.

BACK