18 JUNE 2015: Kurdish fighter gives a blow to the IS

Ø  The capture of the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad by Kurdish fighters from Islamic State this week deals a significant blow to the radical Sunni Salafi terrorist group. The action not only cut off a vital supply line for IS to its self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa, but also marked a stunning reversal of fortunes for the group which just last month captured Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria. The People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party that controls the Kurdish-populated areas on the Syrian side, was on the front lines against IS in Tal Abyad. Over the year, the YPG has been proved to be resilient in terms of its tactics and resolve in the fight against IS. It played a key role in rescuing thousands of Yazidis in Iraq from IS last year, and defeated the radical Islamists in Kobane near the Turkish border in January. With the capture of Tal Abyad, the YPG has emerged as a very potent anti-IS force. The YPG challenges the group both politically and militarily, which makes it a progressive alternative to the perverse world view of IS. Kurdish fighters of the YPG are social liberals whose commitment towards gender equality and secularism stand in sharp contrast with IS’s barbarism and misogyny. Ideally they should have been in the forefront of a united anti-IS campaign. But in reality the Syrian/Turkish Kurds are not getting the support they need in the battle. This is mainly because of the Turkish approach towards the Kurds. The YPG is affiliated to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), considered a terror group by Turkey and the U.S. Ties between the YPG and the PKK have deepened since the start of the Syrian civil war, and Turkey fears any direct help to the YPG would eventually strengthen the hands of the PKK. But this approach has several flaws. First, IS is a bigger threat to Turkey than the secular PKK, which has been in a peace process with the government in Ankara for two years now. Second, a defeat of Kurdish militias by IS would trigger a humanitarian catastrophe, which would not only enhance the flow of refugees into Turkey but also make its borders strategically vulnerable. So it is in its best interest to move ahead with the peace process with the PKK and effect a rapprochement with the Kurds. The recent parliamentary elections in Turkey, in which the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party crossed the 10 per cent threshold to enter Parliament for the first time, set the political stage for such cordiality. Ankara has to seize the momentum to overhaul its approach to the Kurds. Such a move would not just help it end a three-decade-old civil war that featured the brutal persecution of the Kurds, but also infuse fresh energy into the Kurdish resistance to IS along the Syrian-Turkish border.

Ø  Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and U.S. Defence Secretary Ashton Carter signed the 10-year Defence Trade and Technology Initiative in early June, to extend defence cooperation between the two countries. The move has been hailed as “path-breaking”, but in reality the agreements on joint technology development are far below expectations. In fact, to expect any country to share cutting-edge defence technology would be gross naivety. As the Narendra Modi government enters its second year, it’s time to map the challenges facing it in the defence sector. There is no choice for India but to go Indian. Results will only flow if cogent policies drive decision-making, even as field work continues. With 250 million people on either side of the poverty line, the defence budget has rarely crossed 2 per cent of the GDP, and it is doubtful if it ever will. To make optimal use of the scarce money, the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) task is cut out along two avenues: operational and administrative. Operationally, two basic issues require immediate consideration. First, the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) has to be urgently revamped, to address the “hollowness” of the forces (as one Chief put it). Second, the Defence Offsets Management Wing (DOMW) must be strengthened immediately. Even as the security environment has palpably deteriorated, the defence acquisition process has failed to get India out of the arms import trap. The Defence Research and Development Organisation’s efforts have been embarrassingly poor. The reality is that India will continue to import for the next two decades. These frightfully expensive acquisitions need leveraging through the DPP and DOMW to ramp up Research and Development and manufacturing capabilities. The phrase ‘in war there is no prize for runner-up’ might be a clich? but unfortunately never truer, as ‘victory’ and ‘defeat’ have acquired new definitions. Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that these terms have a contextual hue, and considering that India’s future wars will be short and sharp, time and intensity are also keyfactors. Our defence procurements need to address these complexities, and if a confrontation drags on, the nation must have the ‘strategic depth’ of a continuous supply chain, which only an indigenous arms industry can ensure. So, India’s acquisition process must become the enabler of an indigenous defence manufacturing base that delivers on quality, timeliness and capacity. India’s acquisition hierarchy, however, has an Achilles heel in the absence of a structure that ‘owns’ the acquisition process. Thus, targets, responsibility and accountability cannot be fixed. The Department of Defence Production, Director-General (Acquisition), and the MoD are amorphous behemoths; no responsibility can be pinned on any one of them. What happens elsewhere? The U.S. set up a Defence Acquisition Corps when it realised that its acquisition system had been “managed and over-reformed into impotence with volumes of oversight regulations,” as a defence historian put it. Doesn’t that sound familiar? The U.K. ensures continuity, and hence accountability, through an integral civil services permanent cadre in its MoD. India has deputationists and part-timers who come and go from any Ministry, with no attachment to the ‘spirit of indigenisation’. Any reform of the DPP has to start with the creation of an entity that ‘owns’ the acquisition process. This entity should have officers of all departments influencing defence indigenisation and must work under one head, who will oversee the process of drafting policy and implementation. The careers of personnel in this organisation should swim or sink with the progress of defence indigenisation. Naysayers just need to look at the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to understand that creating such an entity is possible. The immediate reform of the DOMW is the second major requirement. With offsets still a norm, the nation has paid at least 10 to 15 per cent more in each contract as a cost of offsets. The 36 Rafales that are coming from France have a $4 billion offset estimate, while the total estimate in the next decade could reach $100 billion! To manage such massive amounts, there are only 10 people manning the DOMW today. The staff needs to be immediately expanded and must be given a fixed tenure of at least five years. In parallel, training in defence acquisition needs to be institutionalised through the upcoming National Defence University. Pride in uniform is the mantra that gives the armed forces josh. It’s time this lost sheen was restored to them. In its second year in office, the government must work on the administrative aspects of defence building. The nation expects the armed forces to deliver everywhere. Surely, the government can respond with correct pay, housing and ‘one rank one pension’ policies?