Civil wars are drawn-out conflicts, often lasting up to a decade or even longer before a political settlement is reached. Pakistan's military campaign against Pashtun militants, variously allied to the Afghan Taliban, the al-Qaeda, and often fighting for localised interests has stretched into its 12th year.
Analysis
Civil wars are drawn-out conflicts, often lasting up to a decade or even longer before a political settlement is reached. Pakistan’s military campaign against Pashtun militants, variously allied to the Afghan Taliban, the al-Qaeda, and often fighting for localised interests has stretched into its 12th year. Even though Government’s stated policy against the principal insurgent conglomeration — the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan — is based on the Three D’s, Development, Dialogue, and Deterrence, its decade-long counter-insurgency strategy hinges on the use of military force against rebel held territories.
So far, the Government has launched episodic operations in each of the seven units of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), besides three large scale offensives in Swat valley. While each military campaign has been shaped by both local and domestic, and not to speak of international, contexts, several generalisations can be drawn out. Pakistan’s latest anti-militancy efforts are in the form of the Zarb-e-Azb operation being carried out in North Waziristan region against foreign and local terrorists.
First, most operations have been preceded by large-scale, albeit localised, migration. In the case of Zarb-e-Azb, which was launched in June 2014, over 900,000 displaced civilians were registered by mid-July. Second, unlike other conflicts like Kashmir, Punjab, and Balochistan, where State intervention occurred during the incipient stages of the insurgency, Pakistan tends to engage militarily after the insurgent movement has built a strong organisation and also established a kind of ’sovereign control’ over its region of influence.
International interference
Third, much of counter-insurgency, especially its initial phase, resembles conventional war. Air strikes, area-weapons like artillery are generously used and large division-level operations conducted. These have produced significant civilian casualties even though the true extent of it remains disputed owing to the difficulties of independent verification. Fourth, insurgency in the tribal areas has also been the site of international interference, both by trans-national non-State terrorist organisations like the al-Qaeda, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), and also by the US.
Al-Qaeda has been responsible for unprecedented civilian deaths throughout Pakistan. The US, on the other hand, has carried out a hardly-covert program of drones, pilotless aircrafts that operate from bases in Afghanistan that constantly fly over insurgent controlled areas and fire missiles without Pakistan’s authorisation or knowledge, often killing civilians simply by virtue of their proximity to suspected insurgents.
Until 2013, 369 drone strikes were carried out by the US in Pakistan. It is hardly surprising that Pakistan’s state and society has been reluctant to take ownership of counterinsurgency; public support wanes in crucial periods, perception of the threat posed by the TTP continues to be disputed, and when the threat is realised, the contours of state response is hotly debated.
Civilian casualties
The sharp differences notwithstanding, public opinion seems to be constant over one particular aspect of counte-rinsurgency. Civilian casualties caused by US controlled drones are detested by the military, the civilian government, civil society, and the affected population alike, and understandably so.
Large-scale violence produced by the Pakistani military, paramilitaries, and police, on the other hand, is routinely pushed aside as ’collateral damage’, the inevitable damage that occurs as a result of the fog of war in civil conflicts. The strategy of turning against rebels allied to Afghan rebels routinely eulogised as resistance fighters is contested, but the manner in which such military operations are conducted hardly elicits public debate. Why?
Rhetoric and sentiments
Several factors account for this apparent anomaly in public perception of wartime civilian deaths. First, while public opinion is generally averse to civilian casualties, its salience is sharpened when it violates Pakistan’s sovereignty. In the process, several criticisms are congealed into a single narrative – that the war is imposed on the country, the Taliban are misguided youth whose terror is a reaction against State violence, Pakistan is fighting a war that it does not need and is hurting its economy, and that Pakistan’s foreign policy is no longer autonomous but is rather dictated by the US.
Drone-strikes accentuate such arguments and consolidate them into a singular discourse. In other words, criticism against civilian deaths caused by drones masks the entire gamut of issues plaguing US-Pakistan relations, and particularly the counter-terrorism cooperation.
Within the rhetoric and sentiments of nationalism, micro-dynamics play a part too. Turning to the technology of war, the threat of violence posed by drones is markedly different from the conventional assaults launched by the Pakistan military from time to time. Military operations generally mark the beginning of state response and succeed in driving most of the insurgents away even if their stated objective is to kill them.
Subsequent phases of counterinsurgency involve continuous deployment of troops and occasional raids and arrests, but the bulk of the actual violence is concentrated in the initial phase of counterinsurgency. Indeed, this template is noticed in all counterinsurgencies conducted by armies steeped in training for conventional war. Drones on the other hand, fly continuous, around the clock, over regions of Taliban control.
The constant sight and sound of armed drones flying overhead have caused untold stress and mental anxiety among the tribes people, forcing an otherwise stoic community to seek psychological therapy to cope with the constant fear of death. In a telling testimony last year, fourteen year old Zubair Ur Rehman told the US Congress, "I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I like gray skies; the drones cannot fly when the skies are gray."
Collective cost
While drones are usually viewed as intelligence-gathering and precision-strike weapons, their utility in imposing a collective cost on villages who either harbour insurgents and do not rise against them out of legitimate security concerns has evaded the scrutiny of analysts so far. Under such harsh circumstances, stronger resentment against drones when compared to harsh but time-bound military operations conducted by the army is entirely understandable.
Writing on an entirely different conflict, Ashutosh Varshney had remarked evocatively, "Human beings both think and feel…an average citizen knows only one truth, the felt truth, the emotional truth". Whether seen from the national or the rational perspective, differentiated public response against wartime civilian deaths at both the local and the national levels does not posed a discrepancy after all.
(The writer is an Associate Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi)
Sri Lanka: Deep-sea fishing the only way-out to end TN row?
N Sathiya Moorthy
With Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa ordering freedom for five Tamil Nadu fishers, sentenced to death in a drug-smuggling case, it’s time that the concerned governments in India looked at ways — and the means — to avoid the recurrence of such unsavoury episodes. ’Deep-sea fishing’ for southern Tamil Nadu fishers affected by constant arrests at the hands of Sri Lanka Navy personnel in the latter’s waters (and acknowledged as such by the exclusively-competent Government at the Centre in India) seems to be the only way out.
Without having to go into the merits of the present case, the arrest, et al, it is time alternative sources of fishing for TN fishers in the impacted region(s) need to be pursued with greater vigour than already. That way, deep-sea fishing’ as the alternative has start-up advantages. One, since Budget-2011, the Tamil Nadu Government has acknowledged it as either an alternative, or additional source of fishing – without clarifying which and what. Since granting a 25 percent subsidy for conversion of existing bottom-trawlers to deep-sea vessels at the time, the State Government’s Budget-2014 has doubled the figure to 50 percent, since.
Then State Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, in her detailed memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi at their first meeting, on the State’s various demands, sought Rs 2000-crore (approx) from the Centre, for ’vessel conversion’ and attendant on-shore facilitation. This, as also subsequent letters to PM Modi from Chief Ministers Jayalalithaa and succesor O Panneerselvam, have underscored the pending ’deep-sea’ demand of the State Government, at every turn.
Two, fishers along the southern Tamil Nadu coastline across the Palk Strait in particular acknowledge the absence of fish resources in the near-waters. It’s also a well understood fact that TN fishers crossing into waters acknowledged by the Government of India as belonging to Sri Lanka, do not stop with fishing in the ’shared’ Palk Strait.
Going after shallow-water shrimp for the export market, they could be seen fishing closer to the Sri Lankan coastline in the Tamil-exclusive Northern Province, with the naked eye. Their bottom-trawlers and other gears banned in Sri Lanka – and the ban enforced effectively for all fishers, too — has put paid to the revival of the post-war Tamil fishers in that country.
Mandated duty and more
Three, without harassment and wanton killing, if proved, the arrest of Tamil Nadu fishers in Sri Lankan waters also falls within their Navy’s mandated call of duty. The Centre, as the competent authority, having repeatedly acknowledged the IMBL, drawn up under the ’Katchchativu Accords’ of 1974 and 1976, both in Parliament and courts nearer home, there can be no justification under the international law for the TN fishers to continue with their habit of decades, possibly not centuries. In those centuries, more than Indian fishers in their small vessels, it might be coastal TN mariners working on the merchantman, who might have settled down on the Sri Lankan coast temporarily – or, permanently. If nothing else, there was no shortage of fish at the time in what has now been demarcated as ’Indian waters’ at the time, for Indian fishers to get closer to what was still Sri Lankan coast.
Whether there was any demarcated IMBL at the time did/does not matter to the submisison. Nor were any cold-storage and other preservation methods known in those distant times, for now claiming rights over ’historic waters’ and ’traditional fishing’. Whether such claims would stand the test of international law needs to be ascertained in a full measure.
Equally important, even with a favourable order, if at all, could Indian fishers fish in safety in somebody else’s waters remains a question. Should they come in physical contact with their Sri Lankan Tamil counterparts (more than the SLN initially), then what should law-enforcement agencies in that country, do about it? Needless to recall that both during earlier rounds of ’Eelam Wars’ and also the early part of the famed but failed cease-fire period (2002-2006), the LTTE had ’arrested’ Tamil Nadu fishers for ’poaching’ in the waters under their control. The sentiments remain.
It was all a product of bottom-trawling introduced (only) in the Sixties with Norwegian assistance, for Government of India to increase export-earnings from every sector in a big way, without the purponents nearer home studying the long-term consequences. The Government of India that had funded bottom-trawling then would have to now finance deep-sea fishing too, and not just in the shared and troubled waters of the Palk Strait. It’s more so, considering that that the 12-crore strong fishing community (both inland and coastal), accounting for 10 percent of the nation’s population, has remained neglected and mostly un-suppported by successive governments and their political leaderships and partners alike, and at all levels.
Concurrent List
’Fisheries’ comes under the Concurrent List of the Constitution. Despite having a 7000-long coastline (the longest of them falling under PM Modi’s Gujarat State), his leadership belieed pre-poll hopes of his creating a separate Fisheries Ministry, to mend to the maritime interests of the nation, going beyond strategic and internal security concerns. Traditionally, ’Fisheries’ has remained an addended department of the Union Agriculture Ministry, with no Cabinet Minister holding the post ever expressing any views or concerns about the pllight of any section of fishers, inland or coastline, anywere in the country.
The Tamil Nadu Government’s proposition for encouraging deep-sea fishing in the troubled waters with Sri Lanka, and demand for Central funding throws up both an opportunity and challenge for the Centre. They also have to be construed as the State Government’s acknowledgement of an identified solution. They also imply that the State Government would work with the Centre in implementing/enforcing the decision on the ground, in consultation and cooperation with the fishers in the affected areas.
What is required then is for the Centre to study the State Government’s proposal, seek clarifications and come up with a detailed implementation process, if the former is found agreeable. The implementation paper will naturally have to include such elements as financing conversion/purchase of deep-sea vessels and the required gears, training in deep-sea fishing and knowledge of deep-sea fishes that have overseas marketability in particular, cold-storage facilities, marketing techniques, etc.
Needless to point out, various agencies of the Union Fisheries Department and also the Fisheries Ministry in the State(s) may have the required data and also the niche-area experts and resources to undertake further and specific studies, if and if only found required. What will then be required is the political will and persuasive skills of the Centre – which has been found lacking all along in the past decade and more – for taking the State Government along, convincingly and through constant and continuous engagement at all levels, if required at the highest levels, too.
Convinced of ’innocence’
Such a need arises out a visible lack of comprehensive knowledge of issues involved in the fishing row, all across Tamil Nadu and at various strata of polity and policy-making, policy-research, etc. Nowhere else was this ignorance more visible than the political discourse and media debates on the fate of the five condemned fishermen. Not only was there no appreciation of the continuing success of India’s quiet diplomacy ever since the fishers’ problem hit the roof years ago, there were even condemnation and insinuations against incumbent Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as was against the predecessor Manmohan Singh dispensation.
Indian diplomats, both in Delhi and Colombo, seemed to have clearly understood the gravity of the situation almost from the day the five fishers were arrested on drug-smuggling charge in 2011. They had also obviously studied the Sri Lankan law in the matter, the way forward and the way out. Throughout the period, until the freedom for five was granted by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on his birthday on 19 November, India also seemed aware when to take up the matter, how and where. If they have waited until now, it has paid off. Even while freeing the five Indian fishers, officials in Colombo have clarified that the same facility would not be available to their three Sri Lankan Tamil counterparts, condemned to death along with them.
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