Mayanmar Ops lend voice to bring Special Forces under one command

Coinciding with the Army's 21 Para (Special Forces)'s successful surgical strike against the insurgents inside Mayanmar, signalling a new security doctrine, strategic community in the country is now rooting for dusting out of the Naresh Chandra panel recommendations, to synergise application, better equipment and setting up a unified command and control structure. There are nearly a dozen Special Forces in India working under different ministries such as defence, home and cabinet secretariat.

The panel under the former Cabinet Secretary Chandra was setup by former prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2011 to review national security system first time after Kargil Review Committee (KRC) did so in 1999. Though, many recommendations of the panel have found way, but many of them including those related to special forces seem to have been shelved by the Prime Ministers Office (PMO).

According to Lieutenant General (retired) PC Katoch, India's foremost commando, who led his crack team into Golden Temple in 1984, the India's special forces may outnumber their counterparts in other countries like the United States, but has not even one-tenth of their capabilities. "Apprehension of loss of turf is a major impediment in bringing all the special forces under one umbrella. The Services are also faced with needless fear of loss of control if employment is centrally controlled," he said. India is also only country whose Special Forces have no centralised command structure, which experts say, was one of factors responsible for the lackadaisical response to the hijacking of the Indian Airlines aircraft to Kandahar in 1999 and the muddled response by the NSG during the 26/11 attack on Mumbai.

The high-powered Naresh Chandra Committee report, which is still a highly-classified document lying at the PMO had asked for enhancing unconventional and special warfare capabilities to execute politico-military and connected operations to meet unconventional challenges. According to the report the full potential of the Special Forces is not being utilised, therefore the need for bringing them together and employing them for effective covert operations including counter-terror tasks. "The prime minister continues his silence and there is now view from the defence ministry either on the unified command of elite forces," said a senior official in the security establishment.

Since the Special Force operations worldwide have been also associated with the career and standing of political leadership, they have at times dithered to take decisions. The US President Jimmy Carter suffered loss of credibility and lost elections when his Operation Eagle Claw failed to rescue American hostages in Iran in April 1980. But decades later President Barack Obama reclaimed seat at White House when the Navy Seals smoked out Osama bin Laden from Pakistani garrison township of Abbottabad in May 2011. "Any fallout of the decision has to be borne solely by the political executive, thus deterring him from making such decision. There is need to have a sound policy of Special Force deployment abroad to enable the political executive to make a decision which flows out of such a document based on credible intelligence assessment," says Amit Kumar, Research Assistant with the Military Affairs Centre at Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA). But he also reminds that a sketchy intelligence could prove disastrous for any Special Force operation, keeping in view the experience of Operation Pawan. The unsubstantiated information about the LTTE cadres in Jaffna had taken a heavy took on Indian troops. Lt General Katoch explains that the task of Special Forces is the proxy application of force at low and precisely calculated levels, to achieve some political effect, not a battlefield victory. "In India in sharp contrast, we have been simply looking at battlefield victory," he adds. He also calls for establishing an Integrated Special Forces Command with both publicised overt capabilities to serve as deterrence and deniable covert capabilities to create the necessary deterrence against irregular/asymmetric and fourth generation warfare launched by adversaries.