FEB 14 VALENTINE OR PULWAMA

Frankly speaking I was neither concerned about Valentine's day or Pulwama because of the thought of the impending exam that I was about to face that day. But the urge to go through my phone during my morning routines (wink, wink) was too strong to resist. And once I did that, first I was overwhelmed with the usual Valentine's day sh*tshow of lovestruck cupids (on hindsight it was pretty ironic when you consider where I was, if you get the gist) and then came the sober reminder of Pulwama attack from the patriotic bunch. Some morons even shared a fake video claiming to be that of Pulwama attack. (sigh !!!). So I thought it was high time that I actually said something, since there was a hiatus from my part in writing articles.

So without further ado I will get right into the thick of it. I for one was very angry when I first heard about the Pulwama attack in 2019 and I was seriously thinking how the hell had the terrorist become so audacious to undertake a SVBIED (Suicide Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive) attack which is only seen in areas with very high insurgent activities like the Middle East. The second thing I noticed is how the casualties were almost entirely made up of constables. (Is the life of an officer who is better protected more precious than an ordinary soldier ?).

As the details started trickling in through the news channels, I couldn't help but gasp at the level of incompetence and foolishness from the part of CRPF. I was appalled to know that the soldiers were travelling in an unarmoured bus through an active insurgent zone and to top it off there were no road opening parties (which the very same CRPF do in Maoist affected areas), no prior surveillance of the route (which is very much the Standard Operating Procedure) and last but not the least the convoy consisted of 78 vehicles which is way too high (usually small number of vehicles are preferred for faster operations). All this produced ideal conditions for the terrorists and presented themselves a very juicy target which they couldn't otherwise dream of. But this same type of mistakes were committed by US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq with their supply convoys and I thought our forces would have learned from the well documented mistakes of the Americans... boy I was in for a rude awakening, we are stupidly stubborn and I forgot that we won't learn from even our own mistakes. The saying " Experience is the best teacher" went right out the window. After-all if no one survives, there is no experience gained from the incident, right?

The above video is a recording made by terrorists in Syria, it is a similar attack on a Russian Turkish joint patrol convoy. The similarities are striking but the one thing that stands out is the use of armoured vehicles - MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambushed Protected) by Turkey and APC (Armoured Personnel Carriers) by Russia. The vehicle that bore the brunt of the attack was a Russian APC BTR-82a.

For those of you who worship at the altar of western engineering brilliance, this vehicle was conceived in Soviet Union and is considered well below the standards of a modern day APC or MRAP yet it stood strong just like any other Russian piece of equipment, it fulfilled it's purpose of protecting it's occupants. Though lacking in many aspects, this is way better than an unarmoured bus that the CRPF used. I am saddened to say that we Indians have a lot to learn about 'Force Protection'. But we were offered the learning opportunity and we gleefully neglected it. India is a country that enjoys warm relations between both western countries, the Russians and the Israelis and we at different points of time were given the chance to send either our military or military observers to different conflict zones by the above mentioned countries but we were afraid of diplomatic backlashes and chose not to. A grave mistake. Why, because the insurgency that we have experienced in Kashmir is less capable and advanced than what we see in Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq. The insurgents in these countries use superior tactics as well as equipment (even night vision, which our soldiers are lacking, sends a chill down your spine doesn't it? ). The countries that operate in these type of conditions have adapted and evolved to undertake multi-domain operations to hunt these insurgents down. And frankly we could have got a taste of how it is to operate in a contested environment where each country follows and pursues it's own agendas.

We could have learned from the best but we didn't and our soldiers (mind you not the officers) are paying for it dearly. So it doesn't matter whether you put a post about valentine's day or Pulwama attack since we are blissfully ignorant.