INDIA’S NEW PANIPAT AND SOMNATH
1. Nature of war remains unaltered and character of war continues to evolve has a fair degree of truism attached to this Clauswitzian adage. However, a movie I have enjoyed to re-watch and re-re-watch, Enemy at the Gates got me to think is the definition of this Gate. Vassili Zaetsev the legendary sniper of Soviet forces is fighting to defend Stalingrad as this is the physical space which is of paramount importance to Soviets but as the character of war evolves, is physical or geographical domain the key or has the center of gravity metamorphosed to the cognitive domain which needs to be defended and the Enemy at the Gate of not Stalingrad but Cognitivograd (a figment of my imagination and pun intended) needs to be defended. In a recent discussion on Russo-Ukraine Conflict, it was highlighted that grammar and lexicon of warfare in Europe cannot be transposed to Indian sub-continent and hence for Indian conflicts, Indian solutions would have to be found and the lessons from Ukraine contextualized to Indian context.
2. As an amalgam of the above mentioned two chains of thought, one thought of indigenizing them and redefine the Panipat Syndrome and Somnath Syndrome to modern context. I read of Panipat Syndrome a few months back and it brought out a whole new meaning to the Battles of Panipat. One needed to ask the question as to why this sleepy hamlet witnessed three great battles which more or less decided the fate of India’s throne. Panipat Syndrome was coined by the late Air Cmde Jasjit Singh, in 2007[1]; the syndrome alludes to New Delhi’s power satraps’ long tradition of chronic indecisiveness, sluggish response to security threats, and its inability to soberly assess the global strategic environment. In short, New Delhi only acts when the adversary is either on its doorsteps or when Indian policymakers are left with diminished options. The proverbial Gate to India’s capital was Panipat and only when the enemy was at the Gate that Indian rulers would wake up to the challenge. The character of the gate has evolved and it may not be Panipat anymore but has a Panipat of sorts been created in the Cognitive Domain and we are waiting for the adversary to arrive there before we start responding.
3. Cognitive warfare can be functionally defined as “the weaponisation of public opinion, by an external entity, for the purpose of influencing public and governmental policy and destabilizing public institutions”[2] Cognitive Warfare is all about degrading the adversary’s cognitive capability. A key element of maintaining cognitive superiority in a Cognitive Warfare context is an effective cognitive defense. Emotions are integral to cognitive capability so, a major attack vector against cognitive capability is emotional manipulation. Cognitive attacks will be based on emotional manipulation at a level far beyond what is possible in today’s social media environments like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
4. Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu (R) met with Shehryar Khan Afridi, the then-minister of state for interior, on December 17, 2018 in Islamabad and was requested to help Pak set up a cyber-army. Turkey responded positively to this request, sending a team under five police chiefs from various departments in the Security General Directorate (Emniyet) who worked for months in Pakistan to get the project off the ground and finally completed it. The cooperation has since continued under successive governments, with some 6,000 Pakistani police officers trained by Turkey for this and other projects[3]. The deal was carried out under a bilateral agreement that was directed to attack the US and India. The operation was also carried out to influence the views of Muslims in Southeast Asia. The secret work was camouflaged under the bilateral agreement on cooperation against cybercrime when in fact it was against perceived influence operations pursued by the US, India and other foreign powers. Soylu is no ordinary Turkish interior minister. Unlike his predecessors, Soylu has gained notoriety in running troll and bot armies in cyberspace on behalf of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and had worked on similar covert operations even before he became interior minister in September 2016.
5. In order to adequately defend against such cognitive attacks and ensure cognitive superiority, India will have to learn to automatically recognize instances of such attacks and create a strategic depth between the vectors and Panipat of cognitive space; the Indian Armed Forces. We must continuously develop techniques to inoculate its forces against them as well as organizational structures and mechanisms to deliver awareness of and inoculation against such attacks on an ongoing and continuous basis to personnel at all levels.
6. The second syndrome which needs to be tackled in a similar fashion is the Somnath Syndrome. Somnath Temple of great grandeur and the epitome of Indian wealth was raided, desecrated and destroyed 27 times over a period of time. The coinage of this syndrome at least to my knowledge goes to Cmde C Uday Bhaskar in an article penned by him in Reuters in 2011 where he linked the series of terrorist attacks in Mumbai to the proverbial Somnath of modern India in terms of its economic value and branding.[4] Somanath or Mumbai was not targeted so many times because there was something evil about it. Ghazni, Ghori, Ibrahim Lodhi, Taimur and Nadir Shah or any of the genocidal raiders did not invade India because Indians had done something wrong or were somehow “anti-Islam”. It was because they COULD. Indians were militarily weak and poorly organized, and the looters could grab the wealth and kill or enslave the people without much of a risk and they had no fear of massive, disproportionate retaliation.
7. In today’s world of a hybrid conflict and non-contact, non-kinetic warfare, Somnath of today does not exist in the physical domain but in the cyber domain where data theft, defacing of websites, attack of infrastructure projects through cyber vectors would entail similar results and the moot question again is why are we the second most targeted nation for cyber-crimes in Asia[5]. In India, finance and insurance was the most targeted sector in India (60%), followed by manufacturing and professional services. On 02 Jan 23 a report revealed that Indian government was the most targeted in 2022[6] with hackitvist group from Malaysia, Dragon Force launching #Op INDIA and #Op Patuk against Indian websites which spurred other groups to join in as well. The motivation for such cyber-attacks is again not financial anymore but to make a social or political point and it is being done against India because it can be done without fear of retaliation and of course the international norms are so porous that chances of criminal prosecution are almost ZERO. This then is the Somnath of modern times because the cyber domain is attackable and there is no defensive arrangement in place and goes without saying that there is no force available which can mete out disproportionate punitive response to such attacks.
8. While we have heard of a group named the “SideWinder”, aka Rattlesnake, which has launched a staggering over 1,000 attacks since April 2020 on government, military and business cyber assets based in Pakistan and managed to hijack, steal or modify content in the intended computer systems[7]. Earlier, such India-based “nationalist” cyber groups, would, at the most, deface the websites, while Pakistan and China-based similar entities would indulge in cyber espionage and disruption of critical assets of organisations based in India. According to a report by California-headquartered Zscaler, a cyber-security company, the people behind SideWinder, in one of their recent attacks, have now planted a new malware called “WarHawk”, which, as per the researchers, completely hijacks the system of the intended recipient. Such capacities and capabilities need to be harnessed to ensure that the lines of effort converge and achieve the desired results and break the Somnath Syndrome.
9. It is undeniable that the nations in the Indo-Pacific region have come to view New Delhi as a major strategic player able to take an action. However, it remains to be seen whether the inept Indian responses will reinforce the Panipat and Somnath Syndrome or will we be able to break through historic catharsis and reassert ourselves in cognitive and cyber domain as a force not to be messed with.
[1] Air Cmde Jasjit Singh, Strategic Reach-Strategic Depth and the Question of the IAF’s Strategic Posture, pg 21. https://capsindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Jasjit-Singh.pdf accessed on 14 Nov 22.
[2] Bernal, A., Carter, C., Singh, I., Cao, K., Madreperla, O. (2020). “Cognitive Warfare: An Attack on Truth and Thought”, NATO and Johns Hopkins University: Baltimore MD, USA.
[3] https://nordicmonitor.com/2022/10/turkey-helped-pakistan-set-up-a-secret-cyber-army-for-influence-operation-against-us-india/ accessed on 10 Jan 23.
[4] Cmde C Uday Bhaskar, Mumbai blasts and the Somnath Syndrome, https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-58256720110714 accessed on 10 Nov 22.
[5] https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2021/feb/25/india-was-the-second-most-cyber-attacked-country-in-asia-pacific-in-2020-2268658.html accessed 10 Jan 23.
[6] https://government.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/technology/most-targeted-country-in-e-gov-sector-cyber-attacks-against-indian-government-agencies-doubled-in-2022/96678243 accessed on 15 Jan 23.
[7] https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/private-indian-hackers-launched-thousand-cyberattacks-pak-military accessed on 15 Jan 23.
