Operation Pathanblot

TT: The Telegraph reproduces the accounts by the Union government on the Pathankot air station attack over the past two days and holds them up against information gleaned from the ground and from conversations with defence sources. SUJAN DUTTA IN NEW DELHI AND IMRAN AHMED SIDDIQUI IN PATHANKOT.

Manohar Parrikar, defence minister: I can see some gaps but I do not think there is any compromise on security. Everything will be clear after investigation.

On the ground: Never before has a military installation had a full day's advance notice and failed to prevent attackers from entering the facility.

The infiltration of Air Force Station Pathankot- with or without the alert - is probably the most glaring of the "gaps" in the security grid that Parrikar referred to this afternoon at the base.

The defence minister said in the same breath: "But I do not think there is any compromise on security."

Civilians and the uninitiated will wonder what to call six armed intruders - at the last count - entering an airbase near the border other than "compromise on security".

The minister himself said the attackers were armed with "AK-47s, under-barrel grenade launchers (modified to fire mortars), knives and at least 40kg to 50kg of bullets and three to four dozens of magazines".

Try walking into Fort William in Calcutta uninvited on any given day. You don't need to lug AK-47s and the rest of the aforesaid baggage to feel unwelcome in the largely peaceful eastern base.

Parrikar: The technical area - housing aircraft, helicopters and possibly unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) - is safe.

Arun Jaitley, information and broadcasting and finance minister: The intelligence inputs helped, that is why the attack was contained and the terrorists were contained far from the assets.

On the ground: By all accounts so far, the attackers could not reach the technical area and seemed to have brushed past it.

But the terrorists did enter the base. Air Force Station Pathankot is a frontline airbase, co-located with army infantry, armoured, artillery and special forces units. The wall around it is 10 feet high, with two feet of concertina coil at the top.

The airbase is one of the largest anywhere in the country and one of the most strategically located. Pathankot was among the first targets of the Pakistani air force in the last full-fledged war in 1971 and was targeted even before that.

Yet, six terrorists managed to enter the base and keep the forces engaged for days. The government is yet to answer how it arrived at the smug initial assessment that security had not been compromised.

Parrikar: The army cannot perform civil duty to set up check posts on the passages (asked how the terrorists entered the base despite advance information).

On the ground: A forward base like Pathankot should be prepared round the clock against infiltration, irrespective of whether there is an alert.

The air force station is roughly shaped like a teardrop. The National Highway 1A to Jammu and Kashmir passes by it. At one end, the Barphani Nullah - a canal really - cuts an arc outside the perimeter wall before entering the compound and then flowing out in another smaller arc. It flows below the wall through iron grilles.

The militants - or at least one team of them - are suspected to have cut through the grille. Another team is suspected to have cut through barbed wire fencing on a short stretch of the wall that was partly damaged in floods last year.

The militants were heavily armed. Six healthy men can easily share a load of 50kg-plus between them and not raise an eyebrow in many places. But when that load turns out to be rifles with under-barrel grenade launchers, especially in the sensitive Pathankot area, they should normally have been spotted easily.

Airbases have not been attacked before - all the more reason why they should be on their toes. In October 2001 - about two months before Parliament was attacked on December 13 - militants had tried to break into the base in Srinagar. An army quick reaction team shot and killed them on the wall before they could enter.

Parrikar conceded on Tuesday that "my worry is how they managed to enter".

Jaitley: Five personnel died in flash action, when the terrorists attacked first. Only one person was killed in the encounter that went on for two days. The lieutenant colonel (E.K. Niranjan of the NSG) was killed in an accident.

On the ground: In judging a military encounter, the body count matters: which side lost how many? In this instance, seven Indian soldiers were killed by six militants in a military installation. Militarily, it is ignominy.

Jaitley: Such operations continue for a long time... the operations in Mumbai (26/11) also continued for a long time.

On the ground: The parallel with Mumbai is contentious. One does exist: both groups hijacked civilian vehicles (boat in Mumbai, an SUV before stopping a police vehicle in Pathankot).

But that is about where the parallels between 26/11 and Pathankot end.

Most glaringly, the targets in Mumbai were civilian and commercial institutions: a railway station, two five-star hotels, a hospital, a cinema, a café and a Jewish community centre.

None of these was or is expected to be guarded in the manner of a military installation. Certainly not one like Air Force Station Pathankot.

Parrikar: I have told them not to take any risk. We have lost one person in a booby trap, so no more losses....

On the ground: The actual encounter lasted 38 hours. In a military installation that is way too long. One reason for the prolonged operation is that superiors told juniors to minimise casualties after the initial fatalities.

The militants who attacked the Pathankot base most definitely had military-level training to continue fighting in the way they had for three days.

Their first victims were from the air force commando and the Defence Security Corps (DCS). The air force commando, Garud, was guarding one entrance to the technical area. Four DSC men - all retired soldiers - were killed in the guardroom before one killed an attacker and was shot himself.

Despite their commitment, the DSC is not equipped to take on fighting-fit terrorists.

All of which brings up these questions: why was the NSG called in? What happened to the Indian defence forces? Isn't the army, tasked with protecting the country, capable of defending itself?

COMMAND CONFUSION

The answers, based on the accounts of multiple sources, paint a picture of confusion and a chain of command weighed down by too many generals.

Authorities in Delhi effected three changes of command during the operation in Pathankot in moves that left the field operatives wondering who was actually in charge.

The confusion at the top resulting from the presence of multiple agencies - the air force, army, NSG, BSF and Punjab police - was evident in the dribs and drabs of mixed-messaging from the battlefield, usually through sources from different agencies, some reporting to the defence ministry and some to the home ministry.

Union home secretary Rajeev Mehrishi said in his media briefing on Sunday that the decision on the operation was taken at a meeting chaired by the national security adviser, Ajit Doval, with the service chiefs and the heads of the intelligence agencies on the afternoon of January 1.

The changes were actually effected on the evening and the night of January 1-2, more than 12 hours after New Delhi had received intelligence on the infiltration from Pakistan with inputs that they could attack a high-value target in the Pathankot area.

The area, often called a "chicken's neck" because it is between the border and the Himalaya, is thick with military installations: apart from the air force station itself there are two divisional headquarters of the army, along with their infantry, armoured and artillery brigades.

It is likely that by the afternoon of January 1, one or more of the militants had actually sneaked into the airbase.

The first officer to be put in command of the operations against the killers was Brig. Anupinder Singh Belvi, commander of the Mamoon (51) Brigade, co-located with the Pathankot airbase, under the army's 29 Division.

The brigadier reached the air force station with troops for a recce on the evening of January 1.

Later in the night, about 90 minutes before the first exchange of fire in which the air force commando, Garud Gursewak Singh, was killed, the inspector-general (operations) of the NSG, Maj. Gen. Dushyant Singh, landed in Pathankot with about 160 of his men. They had been despatched from Manesar near Delhi.

NSG AND ARMY

The NSG officer wanted to take command. The brigadier replied he had received no orders to hand over command. Under the rules of business of government, the army almost never operates under a police force.

The NSG describes itself as a federal contingency force. It reports to the Union home ministry. The army reports to the defence ministry.

The confusion was sorted out after the brigadier was told that the NSG would lead the operations and the army was to support it with two columns and a squad of special forces. Accordingly, the brigadier asked for two columns of the 11 Jammu & Kashmir Rifles under their commanding officer and teams of the 1 Para (special forces) to be deployed at the Pathankot airbase.

Special forces are an offensive tactical wing, not expected to be put in charge of defences such as perimeter security. The army was aghast that that was the brief being given to them.

This was about an hour before "first contact", the first sighting of a team of the militants by an air force unmanned aerial vehicle. The army columns were told to take charge of the technical area. That is the area the militants were seeking to enter and could not.

The NSG went scouring the grounds in the less sensitive domestic area for the militants.

The NSG is made up of two wings: the Special Action Group (SAG) and the Special Rangers Group (SRG). The SAG mostly has army personnel seconded to the Union home ministry who are usually deputed for two years. The SRG has mostly select personnel from the central police forces.

Unlike an army special force unit - where soldiers serve in all counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist environments - the NSG is usually not used as a first responder. Its training is mostly oriented to operations in urban built-up areas.

The army brigadier, the first responder in Pathankot, had to hand over command not only on orders from above but also to an officer who was superior in rank to him, the major general with the NSG. Maj. Gen. Dushyant Singh is himself quite familiar with the zone. He was the commander of the 26 division in Jammu before his current assignment.

Around 10 in the morning of January 2, by when the air force commando, Gursewak, had been killed while trying to defend an entrance into the technical area, the senior-most air force officer in the region reached the air force station: Air Marshal S.B. Deo, the chief of the Western Air Command, headquartered in New Delhi. An air marshal is the equivalent of a lieutenant general, senior to a major general. Also, Pathankot was in his area of responsibility.

The immediate responsibility for the air station vests with Air Commodore Jagmeet Singh Dhamoon, the air officer commanding.

The air marshal is a distinguished fighter pilot who was director-general (air operations) before taking over as the air officer commanding-in-chief of the Western Air Command. The securitisation of the Pathankot air force station, however, was a ground operation. In effect, both the brigadier and the major general were junior to him.

Not to be outdone, also on the afternoon of January 2, the director-general of the NSG - the major general's immediate boss - R.C. Tayal, landed in Pathankot. The officers who were immediately in Pathankot or in the vicinity of the air force station, the brigadier and the air commodore, had more than one senior watching them on the field.

The Border Security Force (BSF), under the Union home ministry, did not want to be left out of the action. It also despatched a deputy inspector-general (border range) to the air force station.

The confusion created by the presence of so many uniformed luminaries in the field of battle - too many generals - was reflected at the political level, unsurprisingly.

On the evening of January 2, Union home minister Rajnath Singh tweeted, after being fed information from the wings under his ministry, that he was extending his congratulations to the forces because they had successfully neutralised five attackers. Later, the home minister had to delete his tweet.

In the event, the encounter continued for 30 more hours.