Indian experience in SL
IPKF: Valuable war lessons from the Sri Lankan experience
Sri Lanka experience provided a baptism in fire for the Indian Army
The image is a bit incongruous. Unlike the usual starched soldier standing stiffly to attention, this sentry outside Lt-General Amar Singh Kalkat's headquarters is on the prowl, alert, his finger ever on the trigger.
But the trigger is not of the usual Indian Army issue, the 7.62 Ishapore Self Loading Rifle (SLR). The curved magazine, the short barrel, the foldable butt: the ubiquitous Kalashnikov silhouette. The sentry himself, as his red beret and flashes indicate, is a para commando.
The first IPKF unit to suffer casualties in September 1987, the para commandos have been the first to learn. "It took just two bash-ups to show the major problem. Our rifle was lousy, too big, packing too much range and too slow a rate of fire for close combat," says an officer.
"In Sri Lanka, we had to learn to fight in a situation where your adversary need not be your enemy."
Major-General Ashok Mehta
Subsequently, the commandos started using Kalashnikovs captured from the LTTE. The army has ordered a sizeable number of rifles in the Kalashnikov genre.
It has given up its earlier insistence on not giving the Ishapore SLR burst-fire capability. The aim had been to conserve ammunition. But in close quarter battles, the Indian jawan found his one-shot-at-a-time SLR hopelessly inadequate.
"Here we need to bring in an effective volume of fire," says Major-General R.N. Bhalla, commanding the 54 Infantry Division at Palaly near Jaffna. So planners have now allowed a burst-fire position on a certain percentage of SL
"The rethinking on small arms is the first fallout of the Sri Lankan adventure," says a senior general.
Two years of low-intensity conflict has changed much else. Many lessons have been learnt, many new theories tested, many demolished. The results are already visible. Others are being debated and stored on paper and videotape and punched into the army's vast institutional memory bank. "Sri Lanka will make a long-term difference to our army," says Lt-General Kalkat, the affable, bespectacled soldier who was himself baptised in Chhamb in 1971.
"We have had great battle training. Our boys are no longer afraid of the bullet."
Major-General R.N. Bhalla
A team of experts from the College of Combat at Mhow has been recreating the major IPKF battles on video film. Where actual footage is not available, battles are being simulated either on the ground or on computers. "We are rewriting our infantry combat manuals," says an expert from Mhow.
The Indian Army, despite its three decades of counter-insurgency experience, had many lessons brought home to it. The foremost: that the modern soldier needs to be motivated to fight in a foreign land. Says a general: "Today's jawan is literate, he listens to the BBC and asks questions. You have to tell him what he is doing here, something We did not do earlier on and paid the price."
So, soldiers had existentialist doubts or tended to treat the Sri Lanka operations like any other war, liberally using firepower and destroying houses as if they were operating in enemy territory. Says Major-General Ashok Mehta, commander of the 54 Mountain Division based in Batticaloa:' 'We had to learn to fight in a situation where your adversary need not be your enemy."
The army, incidentally, realised too late that the old convention of shipping home the ashes and not the bodies of jawans from the lower ranks (officers' bodies are sent back) was hopelessly outdated today when jawans and their families are more demanding.
Sri Lanka also underlined the inadequacy of a conventional force in an unusual situation. Two major operations recently undertaken by the 54 Mountain Division deserve mention.
To the south and south-west of Batticaloa lie large expanses of impenetrable jungles where the LTTE has several major camps. By snooping electronically on the LTTE's radio communications, broad locations of two camps were identified, Mawila near Verugal river and Topimalai in the thick Kanjikudiaru jungles.
Mawila was assigned to the 1/11 Gurkhas in Operation Kiranti and 4 Bihar was to seek out Topimalai (Operation Angelfire). While the Gurkhas took four days of hard trekking through tropical forest to approach their target, the Biharis had to literally sniff theirs out. After wandering around clueless, an adivasi jawan caught the scent of human excreta and, following it, the raiding party climbed a hillock where the camp was perched.
But a company of infantrymen climbing through shrubbery makes a lot of racket. So, by the time the Biharis got there the Tigers had vanished leaving behind maps, wireless sets and other equipment, documents and freshly cooked food for over 150 men. The Gurkhas too swooped down on Topimalai only after its occupants had fled.
Both operations are now the subject of intense debate. Each camp was a major LTTE hide-out and, if the army had been reached before the Tigers fled, a large body of rebel manpower would have been trapped. But you can't surprise with a 100-odd infantrymen rummaging through the forest.
Surprise might have been possible if the IPKF had heli-landed commandos. Yet again, the problem is you cannot land troops unless you know the exact location of the camp. Experts say that requires modern - but easily available - infra-red imaging equipment mounted on aircraft if not satellites. At night, human habitations in a damp jungle radiate heat waves that infra-red sensors can pick up.
This is how the US has been picking out cocaine units hidden in the Colombian forests. Experts feel Indian forces need to acquire such equipment - in the post-Sri Lanka phase it could be invaluable in the jungles of the Indian northeast, or even Punjab's Mand swamps covered with elephant grass.
The problem, however, does not end with infrared sensors. "Even when you know the location of the camps you can't land troops since the jungles provide no opening for the helicopters. What do you do? Defoliate?" asks an officer. That left army planners inevitably looking the Agent Orange syndrome in the eye.
Many feel that the most important outcome of the Sri Lanka experience has been that it provided a baptism in fire for an army in which, to use soldiers' lexicon, subalterns had grown into colonels without ever hearing a shot fired in anger. "We've had great training. My boys are no longer afraid of the bullet," says Major-General Bhalla. Whether a thousand dead and 3,000 wounded was an affordable price for that or not is another matter altogether.
Sri Lanka experience provided a baptism in fire for the Indian Army : NEIGHBOURS - India Today
KPS Gill on Khalistan and NE experience ----
Army should never have been used in Punjab insurgency: KPS Gill
Army should not have been used in anti-insurgency operations in Punjab and Assam as it created mistrust between security forces and civil society, former Director General of Police K P S Gill today said.
“Operation Blue Star in Punjab and Operation Bajrang in Assam were not necessary,” Gill said.
“The operations were hijacked from the police administration creating a mistrust between the police, security forces and civil society. As a result, many innocent people lost their lives,” he added.
The former Punjab Police chief said that police should have been given a chance to deal with the problem.
“The police could have dealt with it, if more power was given to them and if they had cooperation from all concerned, including the government and the society,” Gill said during his visit here as the Chief Patron of North East Sports Foundation.
Operation Blue Star was carried out by the army to clear the Golden temple complex in Amritsar of Sikh militants in 1984.
Gill, who had served in Assam, claimed Bangladeshi infiltration has always been a major concern in the region and was the main cause of the different agitations.
“There is an urgent need to check Bangladeshi infiltration as extremists from the North East have taken advantage of this situation using Bangladesh as a major hideout over the years to make the region a trouble torn area,” he added.
“When I was Superintendent of Police in Nowgong district, during 1961 to 1964, I detected about one lakh suspected Bangladeshi nationals,” the former police official said.
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