India: Fleeting Attachment to the Counterinsurgency Grand Strategy

India’s success in dealing with insurgency movements was based on adherence to four key rules of engagement: identifying a lead counter-insurgent force, launching population-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) operations, non-use of excessive force and confining the role of the COIN operations to preparing a ground for a political solution. While the country does not yet have a COIN doctrine, these four rules of engagement do constitute what can be referred to a COIN grand strategy. Analysis of the several continuing insurgencies, however, reveals the country’s inability to adhere to the grand strategy. Political considerations, incapacity to manoeuvre through the demands of various stake holders, and even the wish to expedite the decimation of insurgent outfits through a force-centric approach has produced a long history of failures in dousing the fires of discontent.