Strategic Depth - 1 : Wakhan

History is written by winners – Napoleon

What is meaning of the strategic depth that we say we lack? What has been our policy towards achieving it? I will illustrate just one example and try and tell how we are still stuck in the one track mindset that has plagued India since its re-independence from the British in 1947.

Our military policy towards Pakistan has been plagued by the thought that if we achieve military success in west Punjab/Sindh, what is it that we are supposed to do after we have achieved that? My answer is simple take your eyes off the easiest solution. Work out the most radical solution as that might be initially the most difficult but it could offer us the most stable solution. Let us think like the brilliant General K.S. Thimmaiah did 60 years ago and carried tanks into Ladakh. What he did was radical and that too 60 years ago, when we neither had the machinery nor the infrastructure to do the same. Lets us take a look at what Pervez mushraf did during Kargil. He started a war against India not from Kashmir or Jammu (where we had expected and had done some sort of preparation) but he started it from Kargil/Dras areas facing Skardu – Gilgit / Baltistan (all Shia dominated places). The Shia’s in Kargil/Dras have traditionally not supported Pakistan and the Shia’s in Gilgit have traditionally hated Pakistan and so that was a place where our policy makers just thought that pakistani's would never attack. They left those icy heights for gods to secure for us. The reality proved to be totally different; the general started a localised war and that too from these minority dominated areas. For Pakistan, the option is very simple – make Indian bleed with a 1000 cuts. They know that they would be defeated in all forms of warfare but they know that their limited success lies in adopting the most unconventional form of war doctrine. Their policy is to make the initial 2 weeks of blitzkrieg (like shock and awe) as their domain and by the time the Indian’s gather their forces, they would go pleading to their friends in China and the U.S state department to stop the war otherwise they always threaten that they would go nuclear.

What can our response be for such an enemy? Well first and foremost, change the complete focus of our attack policy on the western front. We know the fact that we can dominate the conventional war in Rural Sindh all the way up to balochistan, crossing through the Indus and its vast canals system. The problem is that the entire world knows the same and it is very easy for your opponent to devise a plan (nuclear or conventional) against that. It would also not serve any purpose if we divide Pakistan into different countries. So the realty is that we cannot leave it in a mess as we retreat, we cannot hold on to the land (as it belongs to a sovereign nation and we would be termed as aggressors), we cannot appoint a puppet regime and take out all gas from sui fields for our use and pay for the war. The longer we stay, more the chances that we would loose all goodwill that we have in rural Sindh and balochistan. It really seems like a catch 22 for our nation. But there is a solution, slightly difficult but there is a solution.

Let me first give the objective for the new policy - In any future conflict, reach the Wakhan corridor of Afghanistan from Kargil/Dras area. Take back the Gilgit/Baltistan Area from Pakistani control and re merge it into the Jammu and Kashmir state (just for the people who do not know, J&K assembly leaves vacant seats for the Pakistan occupied areas of the state).

What is so important about the Wakhan Corridor that I am asking my country to devise a policy that helps us reach the corridor at any cost?

First let me briefly inform about the history and geography of the Wakhan corridor and its adjoining area.

If any region of the country stands apart, it's the remote, sparsely populated Wakhan Corridor. Carved by the Wakhan and Panj rivers, the 200-mile-long valley, much of it above 10,000 feet, separates the Pamir Mountains to the north from the Hindu Kush (seat of the Hindus) to the south. For centuries it has been a natural conduit between Central Asia and China, and one of the most forbidding sections of the Silk Road, the 4,000-mile trade route linking Europe to the Far East. It also has the distinction of being the place where the sharpest change of clock takes place from Afghanistan’s +4.30 GMT to China’s +8GMT.

The borders of the Wakhan were set in an 1895 treaty between Russia and Britain, which had been wrestling over the control of Central Asia for nearly a century. In what was dubbed the "Great Game" both countries had sent intrepid expeditions into the region. Eventually Britain and Russia agreed to use the entire country (Afghanistan) as a buffer zone, with the Wakhan extension ensuring that the borders of the Russian empire would never touch the borders of the British Raj.

The Persians ruled the region in the sixth century B.C., and then came Alexander the Great 200 years later. The White Huns ruled it in the 4^th century A.D, Islamic armies in the 7^th Century, Genghis Khan and the Mongols in the 13^th Century. It wasn't until the 18^th century that a united Afghan empire emerged and after that came the British, in 1979, the Russians and now the Americans and their allies.

Only a handful of Westerners are known to have travelled through the Wakhan Corridor since Marco Polo did it, in 1271. There had been sporadic European expeditions throughout the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. In 1949, when Mao Zedong completed the Communist takeover of China, the borders were permanently closed, sealing off the 2,000-year-old caravan route and turning the corridor into a cul-de-sac. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, they occupied the Wakhan and started construction of a tank track halfway into the corridor. Today, the Wakhan has reverted to what it's been for much of its history; a primitive pastoral hinterland, home to about 7,000 Wakhi and Kirghiz people, scattered throughout some 40 small villages and camps. The only commerce is by Opium smugglers who sometimes use the Wakhan, traveling at night for their own objectives. Some of the areas are so poor and malnourished that something as small as iodine deficiency has contributed to multiple villages being full of people having mental deficiencies.

The Wakhi’s are a wiry tribe who have ancient persian roots and have lived in the Wakhan for at least a thousand years. They speak Wakhi, an old Persian dialect, and adhere to the Ismaeli sect of Islam. Their current borders are shared by Tajikistan, China and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.

So what is there for India?

• We take back the Gilgit/Baltistan region which is rightfully ours.
• We would offer hope to the extremely poor and deprived people of Gilgit/Baltistan region. They have after 60 years of Pakistani occupation; fraud Judiciary, fraud infrastructure, a fraud council, etc (they could not expect much out a country which their founder Jinnah had termed as an experiment).
• We cut off the only land link between Pakistan and China.
• We have direct access to Afghanistan and also Central Asia which would help serve our strategic interests.
• It aids our strategic policy of encirclement of Pakistan that has been re enforced by the setting up of Ayni base in Tajikistan.
• It would help reverse the current policy of encirclement of India by Pakistan and China.
• We can strengthen our energy security by creating a pipeline which would carry the central Asian oil and gas thru Tajikistan-Wakhan-Gilgit/Baltistan (North Kashmir)-Kargil/Dras/Ladakh-Jammu-Rest of India.
• We block China's ambitious plan to construct a Beijing-Kabul rail link.
  

If and when we are in a war, start a front in Kargil – Dras – Ladakh region and that too not from a defensive corps/division but a strike corps formation. This strike corps should be well formed and even better equipped with at its fountain head being the special forces/Scouts/strike corps engineers, they being followed by mechanised divisions of regular infantry (High Altitude/Mountain) Troops and then these should be followed by regular forces and regular engineers. As this terrain is harsh and unforgiving, new and unconventional methods of forging ahead need to adopted. These methods maybe creating a supply chain through the frozen rivers in the area (as there are very few roads and this area is a watershed for many glaciers), maybe blocking or even diverting a river to create a dry river bed for our troops to move ahead on it, effective use of force multipliers like UAV, High Altitude-Long Range Guns, Mountain observation posts. The more radical one thinks, the faster our movements would be in such a terrain.

As the places from where the attack can be initiated are limited, we would need to start with the “Fountain head” approach – start from a narrow corridor and then move far and wide by occupying the heights. This way we can effectively control a large area from the mountain tops and block off any future attacks from the Pakistan’s (I hope the nation remembers the strategy adopted by Pakistan in Kargil).

The strength and effectiveness of the campaign will lie in the swiftness of our attack and our ability to reach our objective. This would virtually mean a dash for the Special Forces (path finders) units with a swift follow up by the regular forces. The entire operation has to be operated through the integrated defence headquarters (IDH) and not the DGMO. This is because we would need a completely integrated use of all your strategic assets at the time of his operation. The effective use of our Air Force would be the biggest strength this operation could gain by making the IDH rather than the DGMO handle the entire operation. The faster the path finder forces reach the wakhan, the faster the back up forces and the engineers would need to strengthen the Karakoram highway between shazin to bara khun. They would need to start a branch road to Wakhan from points like Sost or Passu on the Karakoram highway.

The civil departments would also need to be involved by starting immediately hospitals, post offices, Courts, telephones, paying government salaries, adding more jobs; in short getting the life back to normal. Employ as many people as we can (educated or uneducated), have no criteria for selection; just pay each and everyone a small monthly amount. It is always cheaper to have civilians control the area rather than the security forces. The faster normalcy comes on the ground the better our chances would be to have a stable and secure Gilgit/Baltistan under our belt.

History is written by winners – Napoleon