Remember the Ikhwan? Parrikar's 'kanta se kanta nikalna' approach to terror is a terrible idea

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar is known to speak freely on most issues but on Friday had to quickly clarify on what seemed to be an endorsement of using terrorists to fight terror.

Speaking at the Manthan conclave organised by Aaj Tak, the defence minister said that he was in favour of “kante se kanta nikalna” (removing a thorn with a thorn) approach to tackle terrorism. His response came to a question asking how the government would react if a repeat of Mumbai attacks or a Parliament attack takes place.

“We have to neutralise terrorists through terrorists only. Why can’t we do it? We should do it. Why does my soldier have to do it?” he said.

Wisely expecting outrage, he later sought to tone down the statement in an interview with the Times of India saying that he was in favour of targeted strikes based on intelligence and not covert operations undertaken by civilians or militia.

“Every case is handled firmly with clear-cut intelligence for targeted kills, ensuring minimal if any collateral damage,” Parrikar said in the interview.

While the normally outspoken Defence Minister may have performed a quick u-turn, one can only hope that it isn’t purely rhetorical. Past experiences of using a ‘kanta se kanta nikalta approach’  on the ground may have yielded returns but at a very high cost and the past lessons come from none other than Kashmir itself.

Security forces in the past deployed surrendered terrorists in the 1990s who were called Ikhwans locally. A Human Rights Watch report in 1996 r evealed that these armed groups were allowed to operate with almost complete impunity. The results were disastrous, as the report noted:

“The extrajudicial killings, abductions and assaults committed by these groups against suspected militants are instead described as resulting from ‘intergroup rivalries.’  But civilians have also been their victims, and the militia groups have singled out journalists, human rights activists and medical workers for attack.”

The report also pointed to how it had also sparked disputes between different security forces, and the various parallel operations resulted in ‘disappearances’ and sparked widespread outrage across the state which was already angry about security forces excesses.

Even the security establishment were reportedly not averse to using the militia as a force to settle personal scores. Like this report in Asia Times in which an army official admitted to using the Ikhwan to intimidate people who had filed ‘baseless complaints and cases’ against his men.

“This is a dirty war. The enemy is not fighting according to civilized rules of armed conflict. The surrendered militants were willing and able to give as dirtily as they got from their erstwhile comrades,” he was quoted as saying.

A Frontline piece noted how these state-sponsored ’terrorists’ even entered politics as political turmoil persisted in the state:

“Intelligence assets overnight became political leaders. But, there was a serious problem. The absence of a clear structure of control over the Ikhwan, and the fitful financial support for its operations, meant that indiscipline and corruption were rife.”

Many of them later reportedly continued to work with the state police even after official sanction for the militia was revoked.

There’s also the problem of reprisals from militants. Top Ikhwan leaders were targeted by terror groups years after they had left operations. As this report in the National  documented in 2010, former members of the militias were often targeted by terror groups for their role in aiding security forces and at the time as per official figures about 3,000 of them had been killed either in action or assassinated by former comrades.

Other such movements in which civilians were used to take on insurgency movements like Salwa Judum to tackle Naxals have also had similar results.

Despite meeting with operational success for some time, such tactics often alienate the local population and inflict far more collateral damage than was ever planned or claimed. The use-and-throw of such milita by security forces often does avoid the loss of security personnel’s lives, but the long-term effects are much worse than ever intended.

Parrikar for now has thankfully publicly backtracked on the use of covert operations using civilians or other terror groups. But it remains to be seen as to whether the u-turn was genuine or whether his original words are a better reflection of the government’s thinking. Let’s hope it is not the latter.