My intent in writing this account is not to whitewash any atrocities committed by the armed forces or to engage in a round of whataboutism. It is only to provide a bit of the context for the gruesome war that was, and still is, being fought on the ground.

To do that, we need to backtrack a bit and set the stage. The period was the late eighties/early nineties. India was in a very weak position, both economically and strategically. The economy was in a shambles; the Reserve Bank was mortgaging gold — literally flying it to England — for cash to buy fuel. The country’s staunchest and most powerful ally, the Soviet Union, was no more. On the other side of the border, Pakistan was flush with cash from the United States and the Middle East; bristling with advanced weaponry (all provided free of cost by the sole superpower); and had at its disposal thousands of well-trained, battle-hardened, religiously indoctrinated young veterans of the Afghan War who were just waiting to be pushed into another conflict. It was under these conditions that the Kashmir insurgency erupted. The Indian government’s rigging of the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly elections in 1987 provided the perfect spark for an uprising. It also handed Zia ul Haq a convenient casus belli to launch what would become a decades-long hybrid war in Kashmir.

The first salvo was fired when a hundred thousand Kashmiri Pandits were uprooted from their homes and driven out of the state within a span of a few weeks with the government looking on helplessly. Local support for the fighters, spurred by effective propaganda and enforced through a savage campaign of terror, was at an all-time high. At that point, India had come closer than ever to losing control of J&K, and the possibility of the state successfully breaking off from India and joining Pakistan looked very real.

To stem the violence, the government exercised the only option at its disposal; it deployed the one organisation capable of responding to this formidable threat — the military — to the Valley. It was not an easy decision, embroiling the armed forces and innocent civilians in what was sure to be a decades-long war, but there were no good options available. In situations such as these, there seldom are.

Now there are two things to note here: one, the condition of the Army in general and the troops on the ground in particular; two, the nature of a guerrilla war. Let’s tackle the former first.

The Army, in 1989, was set up to fight a large-scale mechanised war in the deserts of Rajasthan and the plains of Punjab. It was not prepared for a long, hard guerrilla war on home ground, even though there was some experience to draw on from the intervention in Sri Lanka. So it entered the conflict wholly unprepared for what was to come. This lack of experience, as well as the enemy’s careful exploitation of its weaknesses, meant that the Army was on the back foot for a large part of the conflict. Soldiers were at the receiving end of constant small-arms fire, roadside bombs, mortar attacks, and rocket fire. These ambushes — set up by an enemy who had a better handle on the lay of the land and the support of the locals — were taking a heavy toll on lives and morale.

Irregular warfare of this sort takes a heavy toll on professional soldiers trained to fight a professional enemy in uniform. Soon, all ideas of peaceful reconciliation go flying out of the window and the troops do what it takes to hunt down and kill the attackers. All too often, that involves using a combination of bribery and coercion on the locals for intelligence, followed by ruthless pursuit and destruction of insurgent networks. Sometimes, innocent civilians get caught in the crossfire. Other times, they get mistaken for terrorists, and get either thrown into prison or killed in firefights. And then there are instances where the insurgents go on a killing spree and lay the blame at the Army’s feet, as happened with the Chittisinghpura Massacre. Victory under such conditions is almost impossible to achieve, and often, a slow, grinding, brutal slog. There is no magical strategy or tactic or technology that can make things easier or cleaner.

Now for the second bit. Large-scale insurgencies are difficult to beat even at the best of times. Under the conditions that India operated — facing terrorists that had been trained, equipped, and sheltered by a nuclear power who enjoyed the support of the world’s most powerful country; a hostile international community that lectured India on “restraint”, “respect for human rights” and “Kashmiri aspirations” at every opportunity; and a government staring at an economic crisis — that task becomes well-nigh impossible.

Actually, scratch that. Insurgencies are laughably easy to defeat, as long as the powers-that-be are willing to do away with modern notions of justice, liberty, and human rights. How? Collective punishments. Tactics designed to cow down the population by out-terrorising the enemy. Brutal reprisals even for the smallest offence. All made possible by overwhelming deployment of military formations that are given a free hand to use such measures. There is only one hitch. No liberal, democratic nation state can ever put such ideas into practice. They undermine the very foundation of the state. After all, the idea of India (and I use this term very seriously) is finished if the country adopts the same methods that the Nazis employed to cleanse the eastern USSR of its native population, or the Pakistanis used to crush the rebellion in East Pakistan.

So the military and government, to their credit, shunned this approach to the largest possible extent, although instances of abuse occurred from time to time. Some of it was necessary. Most was not, but it happened anyway. Even the world’s most powerful and supposedly most professional Armies — those of the United States, France, Great Britain, and Israel — could not prevent such abuse from happening in regions they sought to pacify. And if you think their approach is any less ruthless than India’s, I have some nice beachfront property in Arizona to sell you. All said and done, India is probably the only country in the world that has come close to defeating a large-scale insurgency on home ground while largely keeping intact the ideals that the nation was founded on. And that is a significant achievement by any measure.

So today, when folks write about how the AFSPA is evil, or complain about the instances of brutality that occurred (especially from unsourced accounts), I get the feeling that they are largely ignoring the context in which these decisions were taken and the condemnable instances of abuse took place.

The same people often call for “bold”, “creative”, “out-of-the-box” thinking on the Kashmir issue,. In doing so, they discount the fact that for the last 70 years, some of India’s sharpest strategic and public policy minds have racked their brains trying to find a feasible, lasting solution to the problem, and have come up with little more than temporary fixes. There are fundamental disagreements between the parties involved that preclude a quick resolution. The separatists want Kashmir to break away from India, India wants to retain Kashmir, and Pakistan wishes to keep the Valley on the boil, seeing a drawn-out conflict as a thorn in its arch-enemy’s side. Neither side is willing to back away or compromise on these core objectives. So all attempts at dialogue often ends in a deadlock, and talks invariably break down. The only “lasting result” is a long, hard, and often violent struggle to see which side outlasts the other.

To imagine that the Indian state alone can break the stalemate and work towards a peaceful modus vivendi in such a toxic climate rife with hostility is just wishful thinking.