War within: Army-CRPF fight over ‘kills’ in Kashmir hurts India
The Pampore gunfight for bodies and weapons exposes the turf wars between India’s security agencies.
The ugly fight between the Army and the CRPF to claim credit for neutralising the two militants who ambushed a convoy that killed eight jawans is a dangerous reminder of the stark fact that security agencies are competing with each other for ‘kills.’
‘Kills’ is a word that has for long been used by the Army and paramilitary battalions to measure success in the counter-insurgency battle in Kashmir over the last few decades. Battalions, in fact, have been judged on the number of militants killed, the number of weapons recovered and the number of surrenders secured.
I am reminded of the time when security agencies deployed in Jammu and Kashmir competed with each other to add numbers to their monthly reports to claim praise from commanding officers and secure medals for their battalions.
READ: Army says it killed Pampore militants, deletes tweet after CRPF objects
In the late nineties, a large batch of Pakistan-trained militants had given themselves up in the hope of returning to a normal life. Those who surrendered along with a weapon were considered prize catches. In long interviews with some of these surrendered militants, I’d asked them various questions: what was the motive for their surrender? Was their disillusionment with Pakistan the main reason behind their surrender?
The concerns expressed by them left me gobsmacked. “We thought we’d return to our families and restart life,” they said but were now regretting their decision. Why, I asked? “We have become pawns in the hands of the agencies. The Army is holding us up as prizes and if we go to the market to buy essentials, the BSF catches us and says, ‘why did you give yourselves up to the army, why not to us. We regret surrendering’,” many rued.
The BSF was then a critical part of the counter-agency operations and has now been replaced by the CRPF. The boots on the ground may have changed but as the Pampore fight for bodies and weapons shows, the turf wars between India’s security agencies have not ended.
On my return to Delhi from the Kashmir Valley, I spoke with a senior bureaucrat in the home ministry about the race between the agencies that was blunting their fight counter-terrorism fight and worse, adding to the alienation that already existed. He pondered over it and said, “Don’t report it, it would be anti-national.” The riposte of course was: what the Army and BSF are doing is anti-national.
Little appears to have changed. “The fight between the Army and the CRPF when dead bodies of their colleagues are still lying on the ground is despairing. This is not how uniformed men should behave especially when militant violence is escalating in Kashmir,” said a senior army officer who did not want to be identified.
The open spat between the two important players comes at a time when Kashmir is witnessing a disturbing new reality: violence is escalating, infiltration numbers are on the rise and young, educated local Kashmiri boys are openly brandishing weapons, preferring the battle ground to their cosy classrooms.
“The fight between agencies weakens the battle against militancy. The senior leadership should step in and ensure their men fight against the militants and not against each other,” says Ved Marwah, who has served in Kashmir .
What is more worrying is the fact that Pampore--where the eight jawans were killed--is part of chief minister Mehbooba Mufti’s stronghold. The ruling party’s main domain of south Kashmir is the new hotbed of militancy and that in large measure is due to the unpopular alliance between the PDP and the BJP.
Kashmir is at a crossroad once again. With no sensitive political engagement in sight, the last thing it needs is an insensitive security approach with ‘kills’ as its centerpiece.
