The recent attack on Pathankot airbase was novel as well as audacious. And to our surprise and exasperation, hitherto an excluded arena was no longer so.
The terrorists were well equipped and had sufficient arms and ammunition to last for almost four days. Some conjectured that perhaps the ammunitions and accoutrements were already positioned inside the airbase.
As many noted, any sub-conventional operation of this sort requires a high degree of logistical support. At the moment, we may not be certain about the exact logistics of the attack. Yet we can be certain that contraband flowing through an existing supply chain—albeit an illegal one—originating from Pakistan, extending across Punjab, provided cover to men and material traversing through the chain, before it terminated in the vicinity of the airbase.
Illegal supply chains for various items and services exist all over the world: Be it the diamonds mined from the Central African Republic sold in the world’s biggest diamond market, Antwerp; or the Colombian drugs sold across the border in California, U.S.; or the stolen arts and antiquities from Asia sold in Europe; or the young women trafficked for sex from the Balkans to Europe and the Americas.
These illegal chains mirror the legal ones and function in the shadows or even in the penumbra of the legal ones. Just as any other legal supply chain does, an illegal supply chain too matches supply with demand. Because the illicit trade in the chains fetches high profits, it is attractive, and the lucrative business draws in a motley group in its fold: petty and professional criminals, organised-crime syndicate bosses, money launderers, mafia and terrorists.
Terrorists, who menace the Indian state, are the relatively newer actors and entrants in the illegal chains. They ever increasingly utilise the existing legal and illegal, formal and informal supply networks to the hilt.
In contrast to the enormity of illegal supply networks, we have treated their existence as a general law and order issue, ignored them for long and reached a modus vivendi. Consider the illegal sale of liquor in Gujarat, birthplace of Gandhi, which flourishes since decades alongside the legal supply chain for supplying alcohol to authorised consumers. The greyness of trade benefits the bootleggers: absence or presence of a mere permit or license turns a legal transaction into an illegal one and vice versa. And no one can fathom at what stage the two chains, the legal and the illegal, part or meet.
The unlawful chains are so agile that they establish and disband themselves at short notice, so resilient that disruptions set them back only awhile, and so efficient that deliveries are on time with a high service level—all characteristics of which even professional managers would be envious. Money and information flow secure—with omerta in place—and fast within the closed grid. And this is just the perfect platform, terrorists need to piggyback.
In recent months, no sooner had the Indo-Nepal border been blockaded than the illegal petrol and diesel supply chains proliferated across overnight. Other than fuel what else moved to and fro is anybody’s guess.
In any case, from the outside these networks are labyrinthine, multi-tiered and opaque. In fact, even in a well-known publicly listed company, rare would be the CEO, who with confidence can claim his supply network to be fully transparent and visible down to the lowermost rung of suppliers. More so, let alone penetrate, the murkier chains are nigh impossible to identify as each link gives the impression that it is isolated, without any upstream or d0wnstream links, lulling the watchers into complacency.
The more we allow the illicit supply chains to spread like a spider’s web across India, scarcely there would be a place, no matter how far away from the border, which terrorists cannot attack : A ready chain eases the logistics of moving guns and grenades, bombs and bullets, rifles and rockets, apart from men to their target. To believe otherwise would be to underestimate our adversaries and their innovativeness and ignore history to our peril. AK47s, RDX and terrorists have found their way to India not only from our western borders like in the Dinanagar and Pathankot attacks but also from the eastern borders with Nepal up to the Maoist infested areas and beyond.
In 26/11 Mumbai attacks in 2008, the logistics route was through the seas, whereas in 2002, in the attack on Akshardham temple in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, a circuitous route involved Kashmir, Hyderabad, and Bareilly. In 2001, the attack on the Indian Parliament involved terrorists from the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed across the western borders.
To win a conventional war, a farsighted military leader disrupts enemy’s supply lines; the strategy has to be no different to win a sub-conventional or proxy war. However, the tactics will differ, as both the enemy and its supply chain are not visible, making the task harder. We may not always cross our borders to destroy the origin of these chains, though we did just that in Myanmar, but at least we can eliminate the links within our borders.
In every terrorist attack, the logistics arrangements were through the illegal supply chains. Ignoring these chains in the years past has taken a heavy toll, though, while facing terrorist attacks, the Indian security forces and the populace have shown tremendous courage. But as Sun Tzu said in 500 B.C.E: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. Only weakening, disrupting and, best of all, eliminating the illegal supply chains can accomplish this aim. If Indians have to live without fear of terrorist attacks, then illegal supply chains have to die.
Prashant K Singh is a logistics and supply chain management professional with the Indian Air Force. The views are personal.
He tells how supply chains & logistics affect everything around us on his blog, Unshackled, a part of Business Standard's platform, Punditry.
He tweets as @ZenPK
