On July 26, India observed the 24th anniversary of Kargil Vijay Diwas, in which Indian forces successfully pushed back intruders belonging to Pakistan’s Northern Light Infantry regiment. But this victory came at a very high cost as we lost 500 brave warriors in this three-month long battle.
Although a lot of water has flown down the icy peaks of Kargil in the last 24 years, it is always prudent to do an honest introspection of incidents like these, to prevent its recurrence in the future.
While India claimed military and political success after Kargil, serious deficiencies in its defence and intelligence capabilities were exposed. The Kargil Review Committee (KRC), established by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government, believed that India’s intelligence apparatus had failed.
However, despite adopting selective recommendations from KRC — like the creation of the National Technical Research Organisation and the Defence Intelligence Agency to help process disparate intelligence collection and analysis — India continues to suffer from poor strategic assessment.
Despite having a plethora of intelligence agencies, the entire establishment has been caught napping repeatedly. One area where the Indian security establishment could have done better is in the Intelligence domain.
But we have seen repeated intelligence failure in providing credible and actionable inputs regarding the attacks on our Parliament, Akshardham temple, Pathankot Sir Force base, Uri army camp, Pampore, Baramulla and Nagrota.
According to reports there were at least 11 intelligence inputs between January 2, 2019, and February 13, 2019, pointing to possible terror attacks, which eventually happened on a CRPF convoy in Pulwama. But the government was deaf to all these.
Reliable and actionable intelligence is a pillar of any effective counter-terrorism apparatus. Following the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, it was discovered that there was a failure of intelligence and a lack of ability to communicate information to the relevant stakeholders.
In June 2020, soldiers from India and China engaged in a violent skirmish along the two countries’ unmarked border in the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh. At least 20 Indian soldiers were killed, along with an unspecified number of their Chinese counterparts. This was also an outcome of gross intelligence failure on India’s part.
A disjointed Indian intelligence system appears to have permitted China the crucial time window to initially move forces into the contested areas of Ladakh. India in fact holds a military advantage against China in its border areas, leaving Beijing with only one pathway to create a localized force advantage: through deception.
China’s army began a major military exercise near Indian border areas from January as a distraction, later diverting forces to Ladakh to begin its occupation. Such significant Chinese activities should have merited exceptionally close monitoring and interagency evaluation by Indian intelligence services.
Now more recently, a Pakistani woman Seema Haider sneaked into India via Nepal with her four children in May to be with her Indian lover, whom she met while playing the online battlefield game PUBG.
It is clearly another case of gross intelligence failure and oversight by security forces guarding the border areas. If Haider could sneak into India with four kids undetected, there must be many more persons entering illegally into India, with or without the intention to harm India.
Apart from intelligence networks, preparedness is another critical area that plays a vital role in deciding the outcome of a conflict. Following the 1999 Kargil War, the Army introduced the concept of Minimum Acceptable Risk Level (MARL), a bottom-line requirement of ammunition for 20 days of intense war fighting.
A stock level lower than 10 days is ‘critical’. Critical shortages in ammunition were publicly highlighted by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report. In its report presented before the Parliament in 2017, it pointed out that around 40% of the Indian Army’s ammunition will not last more than 10 days in a war.
The introduction of Agniveer scheme and tinkering with the well-established Regiment system of Indian Army is going to only add to our cup full of security woes.
There is a shortage of 405 pilots in the Indian Air Force (IAF). The number of pilots is 3,834 as against the sanctioned strength of 4,239. The IAF currently has 31 fighter squadrons and with the impending retirement of three squadrons of vintage Mig-21 by 2025, IAF will be left with less than 30 squadrons.
The Navy currently faces a shortage of almost 1,600 and 1,11,000 officers and sailors respectively. A major proportion of the Indian Navy’s frontline warships lack advanced weapon systems, rendering them equally vulnerable to hostile submarines.
In short, the situation on our hands doesn’t seem to be rosy at all. There is still a lot of catching up that needs to be done, in terms of coming at par with the various kinds of security threats that are confronting the country. How long will it take to set our house right, is a question to which nobody seems to have any ready answers.
