The Hindu : When an army moves

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Oct 27, 2002

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Opinion - News Analysis

When an army moves

The redeployment strategy will ensure that the guard is not lowered. Pranab Dhal Samanta on the military planners' tactics.

FROM THE traditional requirement of waging a campaign to the present need of credible military posturing, an important paradigm shift has taken place in synchronising military means with political ends. This change is best reflected in the way the Army seems to be planning what it calls the "re-deployment strategy".

The conference of Army Commanders that began early this week has decided in principle to maintain the defensive stance while withdrawing additional troops.

Thus, officials say, key defensive formations will continue to remain deployed on the border while the three strike corps will be pulled out in the days to come.

The top brass has also decided to prioritise the pullout of formations that had moved in from the eastern sector as arranging logistics for their return is more difficult. Two formations from the eastern sector deployed in the deserts of Rajasthan and the semi-arid area between Rajasthan and Punjab are expected to be withdrawn.

This, official sources say, will be followed by a possible pullout of the 3 Corps headquarters which is usually tasked with coordinate offensive action in the Kashmir Valley in case hostilities break out.

This Dimapur-based corps will return to its original location to bolster the counter-insurgency operations in the Northeast which apparently have suffered due to the exigencies of Operation Parakram.

Subsequently, the strike corps positioned on the Punjab plains is expected to be withdrawn first among the three principal strike elements. This would be followed by the withdrawal of other two strike corps deployed in northern and southern Rajasthan. This first phase of pullout is expected to begin in the next couple of days.

However, the defensive formations along the western border would continue to remain deployed. Thus, of the five-and-a-half lakh troops which were deployed, there is expected to be a 25 per cent reduction within a month. Since these months coincide with the routine exercises usually carried out by defensive formations on the western border, sources say, their pullout does not have to be immediate.

Officials emphasise that each of these defensive formations has adequate reserves to carry out a "limited offensive" apart from repelling an attack. Thus, their deployment is meant to convey that while the posturing might be defensive, it in no way undermines the Army's offensive capabilities.

In Jammu and Kashmir, there would be no change for the moment. While the 3 Corps Headquarters is expected to be pulled out, the additional troops brought in to bolster the heavy military presence in the area would continue to remain. This would include the Army Headquarters reserves which too had been moved into the State.

The re-deployment strategy, military officials say, would ensure that the guard is not lowered. Further decisions, they add, would be taken on the basis of fortnightly assessments of the situation along the border and the Line of Control. A lot would also depend on the way Pakistan would react to Indian moves, they added.

Sophisticated and nuanced as the re-deployment strategy might sound, many experts say the Army should return to its barracks lock, stock and barrel. As the former Director-General (Artillery), Lt. Gen. Vinay Shankar, puts it: "We mobilised to carry out a campaign which is no longer imminent. So, let us revert all our troops to their original locations.

What is the point in keeping them dislocated for protracted periods and I, for one, do not see any point in intermediate posturing."

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