Handwara killings: Why is Army acting like it's the police?
We were talking Kashmir.
"Strategic stalemate" is how someone in the defence ministry put it. "With an unprecedented number of 26 terrorists killed this year and achievements before, we’ve hit the armed insurgency hard. If the political act does not take off now, things will go downhill. Conversely, if it takes off, the insurgency will be history."
Nearly 96 hours have lapsed since Handwara shot into international limelight. In this time, a policeman has been suspended, the Army has "regretted" the incident twice apart from assuring "action" against guilty, the political class has made the right sounding noise and the Valley remains on the boil.
All of this has happened, oddly, despite the victim’s denial about the Army’s involvement.
A different reason rattles me. Does the Army necessarily have to be in isolated, middle-of-town pickets/bunkers, facing mobs, as in Handwara? Should it not be the local police or the Central Armed Police Force’s (CRPF) job?
Why do I ask? Unlike the police/CRPF which deal with the maintenance of public order, the Army is a different breed. Trained to wage war, maim the adversary if not kill, the Army finds itself out of depth when made to deal with something which is not in its DNA.
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| In Handwara, an entrenched Army, facing a mob, asked the police and CRPF to come and handle the situation. |
To think that this is not known to those who instigate mobs would be living in fool’s paradise.
If the Army is unable to move out of these duties, there is growing chorus for it to be equipped with non-lethal, riot police-like gear to deal with mobs without causing deaths.
Is that agreeable to the Army? No. Will it make sense for the Army posts to be co-manned by the police or CRPF to tackle mobs? No.
And in saying "no", the Army is only trying to keep its operational effectiveness "undiluted". In Handwara, an entrenched Army, facing a mob, asked the police and CRPF to come and handle the situation. And it was in the execution of this plan that things went wrong.
Truth be told, the Army does feel it should not have been in that bunker. "We had nearly vacated Handwara town but the police sought our presence and thus we occupied the ill-fated bunker," said an officer. It isn’t something the police agreed with.
Since Handwara overlooks the main arterial highway which connects Kupwara and the Valley, there is the need to ensure that terrorists do not stage attacks, said another informed voice. "Given that Handwara is at the confluence of many infiltration routes, the Army has to remain there," added another voice.
The fact is, for reasons best known to them, the Army has allowed itself to get into "police-like" roles. Barring Srinagar, the Army across the Valley sits in roles and places it need not be.
Every town has a Rashtriya Rifles (RR) company (thumb rule: one company has 100 men) which stages itself in these posts. Headed by a young officer holding the rank of captain, he is called "Town Commander" and works, among other things, as an extension of the local police.
Is there a problem of numbers or is it a trust issue or something else that is stalling the delegation of what is "doable" for police or the CRPF?
The Army has to reorganise, reduce its footprint and focus on the bigger game. Since the last two years, the Army says it is working on just that. It now needs to speed up.
When asked, a home ministry official explained it this way, "The issue isn’t that there is no one else to do the job. The issue is that while everyone else wants to, the Army doesn’t want to go home.”
The Army’s situation is perhaps better explained in the words of American musician Eddie Vedder, who wrote in his song "Guaranteed", the following:
On bended knee is no way to be free
Lifting up an empty cup, I ask silently that all my destinations will accept the one that’s me
So I can breathe