In the Robert Frost poem the narrator's neighbour tells him "good fences make good neighbours," but he asks, "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know/What I was walling in or walling out." However, in the case of the barbed wire fence that has been constructed on the Line of Control (LoC) by the Indian army, no one appears to have asked this question.
Now that the first summer after the fencing was constructed is over and high altitude mountain passes leading to the Kashmir Valley have closed, it is time to evaluate the efficacy of the fence on the LoC and assess its further utility. Designed to keep bad neighbours out and our own misguided youth in, it appears to be fulfilling neither function successfully.
It has been reported that approximately two-thirds of the 740-km LoC has been fenced. The fencing comprises double strands of barbed wire and is electrified at night. It is axiomatic that for a military obstacle system to be effective, it must be "covered" by small arms fire. This means that overlapping arcs of rifle or machine gun fire must deny the intruders the ability to approach the obstacle and breach it at leisure. In conventional warfare, wire fencing is used as an obstacle in conjunction with systematically planted landmines to prevent the enemy from reaching the bunkers and pill boxes comprising the first line of defence in a single rush. Both types of obstacles are invariably covered by small arms as well as artillery fir, without which they serve to merely impose caution and delay the enemy marginally.
A small group of well-trained mercenary terrorists equipped with suitable expedients like folding ladders and blankets is unlikely to take more than a few minutes to cross the fence safely if not challenged in the process. The fencing on the LoC has been mostly constructed at some distance from the LoC. These areas have virtually no troops; hence, it must be patrolled very frequently throughout the day and night. It is difficult to find additional troops for such a venture as almost all the available infantry battalions are already deployed for counter-insurgency operations. Even if it could be done, the risk of infiltrators waiting quietly for a patrol to pass before breaking through the fence will still remain. Static obstacle systems have never stopped determined intruders throughout military history. Even the Maginot Line and the Bar Lev line were breached.
Lighting is another grey area. It is well known that Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is woefully short of electric power. The voltage of the electric power supplied in J&K is so low that there is a barrack room joke that you have to light a candle to see if a bulb is on. Hence, the fence has been electrified with diesel-electric generator power. This is not only expensive but also can be supplied only intermittently as the generators often breakdown at high altitudes and even otherwise remain out of action periodically for routine maintenance. Also, as the terrain is rugged and numerous ravines and nullahs with steep slopes criss-cross the LoC, there are many gaps that cannot be fenced.
By all accounts there has been only a marginal decline in infiltration levels this year despite the clean chit given to General Musharraf by several ministers and officials. Encounters between infiltrating groups and army battalions and Rashtriya Rifles units deployed in the second tier are still taking place at distances that are as much as 10 to 15 km from the LoC. If the ratio of success in intercepting infiltrators who have crossed the LoC has been relatively better, it is because of the hand-held thermal imaging devices for night vision and some other surveillance systems with which the troops are now equipped. The only deduction that can be drawn is that the fence has failed to stop infiltration or even reduce it considerably.
It has been estimated that the fencing has cost the exchequer between Rs 25 to 30 lakhs per km, which means an overall expenditure of over Rs 200 crores. A fairly large portion of the fence will not survive the first winter as in the upper reaches it will be buried under eight to 10 feet of snow, the barbed wire will become brittle and crack and electrical short circuits will burn many patches. Since about 30 to 40 per cent of the fence will need to be replaced, it will mean a recurring expenditure of Rs 70 to 80 crores every summer - a major drain on the army's already stretched budget.
The only possible gain that may have been considered worthwhile by the planners is that such a fence would eventually give a semblance of strategic finality to the LoC as an international border. If this was the real motivation for undertaking this gargantuan exercise, the fence should have been built on or fairly close to the LoC and not at a distance of 3 to 5 km or more away from it. Hence, it clearly emerges that the fence has no military utility and its construction is bad strategy and poor tactics.
Surely battalion and brigade commanders are not so gullible that they could not have visualised this scenario before the fence was constructed. Why then did they acquiesce in the ill-conceived construction of an almost useless obstacle at considerable effort and expense that has further divided the lands of villagers harried by 15 years of daily curfew?
The reports from the field are that local commanders had no say in the matter as the orders came from the very top in Army headquarters. It would be in the national interest to find out who gave these orders. It would also be in the national interest to find out whose men got the contracts. Parliament must inquire whether another scam has been perpetrated on the nation.
The author is Senior Fellow, Institute of Security Studies, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.
Courtesy: Indian Express, December 27, 2004 * Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.
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