Daily Times

The 1998 marked a watershed year in security and foreign policy of India. India decided to become nuclear in order to gain nuclear weapons as currency of national power in international system. Institutionalization of security policy making and development of nuclear doctrine started in India with its first draft doctrine of 1999. This doctrine was later transformed into “Indian Army Doctrine” 2004 popularly known as cold start doctrine.

India established national command authority (NCA) in 1999 to steer nuclear security stewardship. Cold Start Doctrine (CSD) has remained focused toward threats emanating from its neighbours and endorsed limited war as war possibility within the fold of conventional war despite knowing nuclear power of Pakistan and China. Limited war doctrine explains that war cans be “limited in terms of duration, the range of weapon systems employed, scope, objectives and its ultimate outcome. Given the prohibitive costs in terms of human lives and material, as well as the rising lethality of modern weapons, conventional war may be of short duration”. The doctrine manifested Indian consciousness toward evolving paradigm of changing security threats and need of swift warfare capability development written as “the Indian Army has been considerably influenced by the Revolution in Military Affairs and the great strides being made in technology development”.

It illustrates that under the crest of cold start doctrine, India aims to recourse for limited war with punitive actions by employing sophisticated weapons, inflict maximum damage both human and material to the enemy in short time and conclude the war on its term.  This is the strategic gamble of India knowing that war initiated by one party cannot be concluded on its own terms.

The main target of this Indian military strategy remained Pakistan as later was cited as top priority in threat calculus of India during these years. 2000-01 onwards Indian ministry of defence (MoD) annual reports cited Pakistan as main threat in regional environment and this conception still persists in MoD annual report 2017-18. India has repeatedly alleged Pakistan for cross border terrorism in IoK while Indian allegations are strictly negated by Pakistan. India lacked credible evidence to substantiate its claims therefore it restored to violent skirmishes on Line of Control (LoC) by violating 2003 ceasefire agreement. Loc is operational border area in Jammu and Kashmir between Pakistan and India. Indian ambition was to instigate Pakistan for violent response to create a reason for aggression.

Cold Start is an aggressive military doctrine directed against Pakistan. Under the Cold Start Doctrine, India seeks to launch swift and short duration limited military strikes against Pakistan to achieve shallow territorial gains

Cold Start is an aggressive military doctrine directed against Pakistan. Under the Cold Start Doctrine, India seeks to launch swift and short duration limited military strikes against Pakistan to achieve shallow territorial gains. This punitive exercise aims to demoralize Pakistan’s armed forces and destroy command and control structure of Pakistan army chiefly responsible for defence of Kashmir region and Pakistan’s international borders. Restructuring of Indian army strike followed this doctrine to operational it. India has restructured three large strike corps into eight smaller division-sized ‘integrated battle groups’ (IBG’s) supported by mechanized infantry, artillery and armour to launch offensive.

India build massive infrastructure along Pakistan-India border and developed military stations near this bordering region to ensure speedy mobilization of Indian armed forces in hue of crisis. India has carried out 10 exercises from 2004 to 2010 to operationalise Cold Start Doctrine. Indian latest defence acquisitions will cross 200-billion-dollar mark in next 12 years. Combined with this India has also brought pre-emption as a component of its war fighting campaign. India has added an additional command in 2005 named South-Western command (with its Headquarters at Jaipur) along with five existing commands to monitor critical bordering areas adjacent to Pakistan especially LoC.

The target area of South-Western command includes Jammu and Kashmir bordering area of Line of control, working boundary and International border of Punjab and Sind region of Pakistan. Indian concentration of its military installations, development of military logistic mobilization infrastructure networks including rail-road links and presence of these strikes corps after reorganization as IBG’s poses direct security challenges to Pakistan.

This bordering region has vital national security significance for Pakistan. Pakistan’s major and populous cities are located in this region. Kashmir is a jugular vein of Pakistan. More than half million population of Kashmir lives in three kilometre range of LoC area in Azad Kashmir region of Pakistan directly exposed to Indian aggression. India carried out military modernization of its conventional armed forces and strategic forces in order to materialize cold start doctrine. Interdependence among conventional forces (army, air force, navy) and unconventional forces (cyber security force, information warfare force, satellite or space modernization community) all constitute this spectrum.

IAF practices its capabilities to carry out combined operations with the Indian Army. It can be assessed that IAF and Army may have developed synergy to some extent for joint operations as they are continuously conducting exercises since 2006 onwards. Such a development is essential for any offensive operations against Pakistan under the ambit of CSD. Indian army has introduced (F-INAS) future infantry soldier as a system based on advanced technology, enabled with light but sophisticated arms having night vision goggles and information superior army in its cadres for swift military offensive.

Indian offensive war fighting capability building continues against Pakistan. Alone, from 2004 to 2014, India has carried out ten military exercises along with Pakistan-India border to test and project these capabilities as a coercive message to Pakistan. During 2015-18 skirmishes have increased along line of control which is operational border area between Pakistan and India. India has made controversial claims of surgical strikes in September 2016 and 2018 against Pakistan. Acquisition of AWACS technology makes effective monitoring of military operations through satellites carried out by Indian army.

Pakistan’s foreign office, political leadership of political parties and armed forces all have expressed their concerns on such jingoistic Indian claims. DG ISPR, the official spokesperson of Pakistan’s armed forces, arranged visit of international and Pakistani Journalists to the site of Indian claim in 2016 which substantively dismissed Indian surgical strike claims. Similarly, DG ISPR has again reiterated that India will face masculine response from Pakistan if it tries to conduct surgical strikes against Pakistan in his recent media talk in London on October12, 2018. Such offensive Indian claims are catastrophic for Pakistan’s security and regional peace. The current claims of India reveals that limited war military strategy is still guiding Indian military manoeuvres against Pakistan which needs strategic response.

The author holds M Phil in International Relations from Quaid-i-Azam University. He is an independent political analyst. His areas of interest are Geopolitics, Politics of South Asia, Analysis of India-Pakistan Defence and Foreign policy

Published in Daily Times, October 15^th 2018.