COMMENTARY

Sadbhavana and the Paradox of

Winning Hearts and Minds
An Institutionalist Perspective
Kaustav Dhar Chakrabarti

Counter-insurgency in
theory separates itself from
conventional war by rendering
the insurgent movement and its
goals irrelevant. Concurrently,
government is reinvigorated and
welfare schemes implemented
under the rubric of winning
hearts and minds assuming that
improved governance ameliorates
ethnic grievances. The results
of better government delivery
are nullified when combined
with practices such as collective
punishment diminishing the little
chance that institutions have
of changing political beliefs as
the examples provided from the
Kashmir conflict show.

This commentary is based on an ongoing

project on state response to insurgency
in India.
Kaustav Dhar Chakrabarti
(kaustavchakrabarti@orfonline.org) is
Associate Fellow at the Observer Research
Foundation, a New Delhi-based public policy
think tank.
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

june 13, 2015

rmy officers who served in Kashmir both before and after the
onset of the separatist insurgency share a common anecdote. Prior to
the armed rebellion which began in
1989, curious onlookers would wave at
soldiers as their convoys sped past the
countryside towards the Line of Control
(LoC), the de facto border that divides
Kashmir between territories administered by India and Pakistan. At best, the
children cheered at the passing green
and camouflaged vehicles; at worst, the
movement elicited bored indifference.
The arrival of rebels, celebrated as freedom fighters by most Kashmiri Muslims,1 and the military response against
them turned jaded indifference to extreme hostility. Troops were met with
cold stares, or alternatively, obedience
forced out of fear; but at no public
spacetea stalls, cafes, traditional bakeries, or the Valleys famous gardens and
lakeswere they made to feel at home.
This widely shared experience, by no
means unique to Kashmir, is disturbing for
the counter-insurgency doctrine. counterinsurgency seeks to provide incentives for
civilian actors to share information about
insurgents so they can be targeted selectively (in military talk, surgically). When
efficiently executed, counter-insurgency
avoids indiscriminate violence for its antagonising effect, and supplements military
operations with public services and dissemination of a credible mass ideology
(Kalyvas 2008). Schools, hospitals, job
fairs and sloganeering are as enduring as
patrols, arrests and ambushes.2 The salience of such non-security instruments has
likened counterinsurgency to the art of
winning hearts and minds, a competition for government (Fall 1965), even
armed nation building (Kilcullen 2010).
Such normative aims notwithstanding, the grain of public opinion runs

vol l no 24

against counter-insurgency. Popularity

comes at a premium, had the incumbent
state been popular, there would have
been no need for counter-insurgency in
the first place. This is especially true in
long-standing ethnic disputes over disputed sovereignty where identity and political beliefs have been hardwired over
decades. Kashmir fits this description.
The former princely state was claimed
by both India and Pakistan at the time of
partition in 1947. A war ensued. Threatened by Pakistani tribal marauders who
had breached the states defences, the
ruler Hari Singh signed the Treaty of
Accession with India. A United Nations
(UN)-mediated ceasefire led to Kashmirs
de facto division. India reneged on its pledge
to ratify the legal accession through
plebiscite. Since then, New Delhis practice
of manipulating local politics to suppress
the issue of plebiscite and condoning
graft and misgovernment by pro-Indian
political elites has fed into popular
discontent (Bose 2003; Behera 2006;
Varshney 1991; Ganguly 1996). It
follows that the insurgency received
widespread support, and conversely, the
state response struggled to find willing
collaborators. Like elsewhere, counterinsurgency increased local alienation;
rather than quell dissent, its abrasive
nature increased rebel support.
Despite the population's fear and loathing towards the incumbent state and its
armed forces, consumption levels of nonsecurity services generally remain high.
Social services under Operation Sadbhavana (harmony), a hearts and minds programme run by the army in Kashmir, are
popular ostensibly because of their superior quality as compared to facilities run by
successive state governments. Over 14
years, the army has spent Rs 400 crore in a
variety of civic services: two residential
schools, 66 Goodwill Schools, institutes
for special children, employment schemes,
health and veterinary care, access to water
in remote villages, even a full-blown Kashmir Premier League cricket competition.
Villagers often turn to army officers before
they present their complaints to local
administrators despite sharing ethnicity
and language with the latter. They seem to
accept that for all its ills, the army is
better organised and results oriented.
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COMMENTARY

And yet, the same army continues to be

unpopular, if not hated, and is seen as an
occupying force. This raises an important
questionwhy do non-security aspects
of counter-insurgency fail to alter peoples
attitudes towards counter-insurgents?
Several arguments are made. First,
discontent against counter-insurgency
troops is neither sudden and dramatic,
nor isolated from wider politics and past
history. Schools and health centres are no
substitute for political rights of ethnic
groups; their failure should not surprise
anyone (Cederman et al 2010). Second,
consumption of services may be reflective of political beliefs when consumers
have the option to choose among competing political competitors. Counterinsurgency welfare programmes are
most often run in far-flung places where
the civilian administration is absent. In
such conditions, making use of army
hospitals is as suggestive of helplessness
as it is of endorsement of the government. Third, conflicts collectivise memory of shoot-outs, fake encounters, and
torture that mark the first phases of
counter-insurgency when information is
hard to come by (Wood 2003). Trauma,
grievance, and feeling of injustice no
longer remains confined to neighbourhoods and villages, it becomes shared
among the community and assumes a
cultural meaning (Alexander 2012).
Adroit operators cannot expect to simply
turn up and override the actions of their
more abrasive predecessors (Greenhill
and Staniland 2007). Any subsequent
measure to win hearts is an effort too little and too late. Fourth, the very occurrence of conflict sharpens in-group/outgroup cleavages, especially when counter-insurgents draw their membership
from ethnic groups rival to the population whose consent is sought (Sambanis
et al 2012). The presence of predominantly non-Kashmiri and non-Muslim
army soldiers solidifies a pan-Kashmiri
identity and attenuates class, caste, sectarian and kinship differences.
Shadow of Indian Stratagems
It would seem that the long shadow of
Indias dubious stratagems and human
rights abuse in Kashmir obviates any measure to win hearts and restore normalcy,
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its purported end-state. At the face of history, structure, and the cultural salience of
ethnicity, institutions stand little chance in
shaping peoples behaviour. Before discarding them, it is worth examining counter-insurgency institutions in detail.
Counter-insurgency falls into two paradigmsthe population-centric and enemycentric schools of thought. Both agree
that individuals respond to incentives;
above all else, they seek to minimise damage and increase well-being (Leites and
Wolf 1970). Population-centric counterinsurgency predicts that demonstrating
resolve and capacity to limit civilian damage and offer opportunities to increase
their well-being yields compliance. The
doctrine is threefold. First, counterinsurgency operators should not force
civilian cooperation through coercion.
Second, civilians should feel protected
from insurgent reprisals so they can exercise agency. And third, counter-insurgency should include social welfare measures to encourage civilian cooperation.
Flowing from this logic, force is applied
in moderation, troops placed alongside
habitation centres to credibly demonstrate
security, and a host of public and private
goods offered through the rubric of government and development. The enemycentric school is the mirror image; if physical safety is paramount, the threat of endangering it through brute force should
compel civilians to denounce insurgents,
despite sympathising with them. Non-compliance is met with collective punishment.
This view of counter-insurgency is essentially institutionalist; states and rebels possess resources, including the ability to provide security, while civilians
have information about local collaborators (mukhbirs) which is needed to kill
surgically. In an incomplete information
space marked with asymmetry of resources, states generate signals to elicit
participation and deter defectionstay
with us and raise your stock, or fight us,
and face the consequences.
In reality, practitioners mix the two
strategies. The practice of giving operational freedom to small-unit commanders
to leverage local idiosyncrasies results in
non-uniform application of counter-insurgency principles. Restraint is encouraged,
but when insurgents remain elusive and

continue to kill soldiers in ones and twos,

counter-insurgency reverts to violence,
fear and torture to obtain information and
pacify the restive population even as it
continues to provide social welfare concurrently. Cordon and search operations,
the bedrock of counter-insurgency in
Kashmir, where male members of towns
and villages were forced to assemble in
community centres while their houses
were searched for weapons, were more
abusive in the aftermath of troop casualties.
Houses used by insurgents to hide were
destroyed even when their owners were in
no position to decline rebel request for a
safe haven. While popular protests elsewhere in India are met with police
violence, in Kashmir, such violence continues to be demonstratively more lethal and
routinely causes civilian deaths. Trails of
enemy-centric counter-insurgency are
writ large; collective punishment is no aberration, it is institutionalised to generate
compliance. The population is protected
from foreign terrorists and at the same
time, persecuted to extract obedience.
Mixing strategies, no doubt driven by
practical military necessity, inadvertently creates noisy signals that inhibit
cooperation. When one military agency
promises security and gains, and another
threatens physical harm and censure,
ordinary civilians have little reason
to understand, let alone trust, counterinsurgency signals. The wartime order
that results from mixed strategies has
little predictability. When civilians are
no longer sure whether their action will
be met with bouquets or brickbats, their
decision to not participate in such
orders is hardly surprising.
The micro dynamics of mixing strategies does not leave macro politics untouched. Schools will produce successful
students, hospitals will raise health
standards. But when combined with
ill-treatment at check posts, destruction of
property, and arbitrary abuse, much of the
population will discount the good and emphasise the bad. Development and welfare
are worthy goals in and by themselves, but
their intended outcome is to change the
populations true preference, which mixed
strategies fail to deliver. This cedes political
ground to opposition parties and undermines the legitimacy of elected leaders.

june 13, 2015

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Economic & Political Weekly

COMMENTARY

The implication might appear paradoxical; counter-insurgency requires greater

emphasis on respect for rules and
norms, not for ethical reasons, but to facilitate the very practical military expediency that often causes its compromise
in the first place. Any order-making enterprise should generate unambiguous
signals to engender civilian participation. One cannot protect and punish at
the same time; practitioners should
stick with a unified paradigm throughout the conflict and across time.
Whether counter-insurgency is better
situated as a nation-building enterprise
or an imperialist stratagem is debatable.
History is replete with its generous application in both contexts. That being the
case, just because an exercise is rooted in
contentious or even unjust motives does
not imply that its execution is doomed to
be marked by repression and illiberal
practices. Changing the true preferences
of civilians is a tall order, even politically

Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

june 13, 2015

astute counter-insurgency may not succeed is creating liberal democratic culture when stacked against unresolved
historical disputes, a culture of shared
trauma, and sharpened ethnic polarity.
Counter-insurgency based on contradictory institutions certainly will not.
Notes
1

Kashmiri non-Muslims, Buddhists and Shiite

Muslims from Ladakh, and Hindus from Jammu do not share similar aspirations.
These include public goods like education and
healthcare facilities, water supply and sewage,
road construction, restoration of local markets,
and employment schemes, among others. Private goods are offered as wellprivileged access to government, lucrative government contracts at preferential terms, promise of political
office in return of compliance, and sometime,
the lure of graft. Such programs run under ideologies as varied as saving democracy, secular ethos, and defence of religion.

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