Special Forces have a major role to play in coping with asymmetric and non-traditional threats. We need to integrate our Special Forces and optimise their potential to face the 21st century challenges in requisite manner. Initiatives in this regard need to be taken both by the government and the military.

Indian Special Forces are over three decades old. however, their transborder employment awaits outbreak of a conventional war. This is an archaic concept, ill suited to present-day nontraditional challenges especially when both China and Pakistan are subjecting us to serious asymmetric threats. We have a large number of Special Forces that need to be integrated and their combat potential optimally utilised by using them proactively. This will also require defining a national policy for employing Special Forces and providing them the highest command and control framework for strategic tasking.

Nature of Conflict

Recent years have witnessed a paradigm shift in the nature of conflict, irregular and asymmetric forces having emerged with greater strategic value over conventional and even nuclear forces, with geographical boundaries rendered irrelevant. Sub-conventional conflicts characterised by intrastate strife, have gained ascendency over traditional conflicts, which used to be mostly conventional inter-state wars. The transnational nature of these threats and the increasing involvement of state actors in using sub-conventional conflicts have increased their complexity. non-state actors have added a new dimension to low intensity conflicts and they are increasingly acquiring conventional capabilities that were earlier exclusive preserve of nation states. Technology empowers the terrorist to cause severe damage through cyber, financial and kinetic attacks. Likelihood of them acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is a major concern. The spectrum of conflict could, therefore, range from conflicts between states to conflict with non-state actors and proxies. Conventional conflict could either be preceded in conjunction or succeeded by a period of irregular conflict, which would require low intensity conflict and stabilisation operations.

Threats & Challenges

India borders the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in the seat of global terror where ideological fuel and wholly religious motivating platform for extremism is centred. There is increasing evidence of radicalisation in Pakistan. Circumstances of assassinations of Governor Salman Taseer, Minister Shahbaz Bhatti and the aftermath provide further proof. Feeble calls within Pakistan to strengthen democracy indicate the stranglehold of the ISI-Military combine in governing Pakistan, which is unlikely to loosen. Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) being the covert arm of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), its nexus with Al-Qaeda is significant. Wikileaks reinforce Pakistan’s duplicity and unwillingness to act against Pakistani terrorist organisations operating into Afghanistan and India. Focus of the US, EU, nATO and the world in general on Al-Qaeda, Taliban and not on Pakistan per se encourages Pakistan to continue a devious policy including covert support to Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Erstwhile Afghan refugee camps along the international highway have been converted to terror havens hitting NATO supply lines. Future US thinning out in Afghanistan embolden Pakistan more. A stronger Taliban will look further into Afghanistan, CIS countries and India.

Having advised Pakistan more than half a century back to raise a militia force to fight India, China now provides tacit support to Pakistan in its jihadi strategy including direct protection at Un as part of her own strategic ambitions to keep India in check. Chinese strategic footprints in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK), support, training and arming of insurgent groups in India’s north-east (ULFA and NSCN(IM) in particular), claims to Arunachal Pradesh and increased belligerence coupled with the unholy China-Pakistan nuclear nexus bodes more evil. Their increasingly discernable efforts to establish links with the Maoist insurgency in India through Maoists of Nepal, insurgents in north-east and radicals in Kerala are a cause for worry. Nepal’s Maoist insurgency having been spawned by China, what future turn it takes requires monitoring. Nepal and Myanmar have taken a turn for the better in recent months but continue to be unpredictable. Assumption of power by Maoists in Nepal can have direct bearing on the Maoist insurgency in India. Bangladesh is clamping down on terror but the JeI, the JMB and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh, currently dormant, need watching. The LTTE in Sri Lanka may be defeated but is not dead. Within India, there are some 30-odd terrorist organisations, the Maoist insurgency having developed into the largest fault line with our adversaries’ intent on exploiting all of them.

Faced with multifarious threats and challenges related to terrorism, border management and maritime security, demographic assault from failed/failing states aside from conventional and nuclear threats, India is already amidst asymmetric wars waged by our adversaries. There is an urgent need to address these non-traditional challenges. The scope of these scenarios is large with limitless employment possibilities for Special Forces. In our case, conventional wars will overlap ongoing asymmetric wars. Though windows of conventional conflict remain under the nuclear backdrop, conventional wars will be subject to intense global pressure for early termination fearing nuclear breakout. Both the attack on the Indian Parliament and 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks indicated that India is at distinct disadvantage, relying merely on conventional response coupled with politico-diplomatic manoeuverings rather than creating requisite deterrence to asymmetric threats.