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March 13, 2005
REVIEWS: Wars that cannot be managed
IN his preface to the book, Brig Kar promises a “reader friendly” treatise avoiding complicated technical “aspects as far as possible”. And that is precisely where he fails. His book is virtually littered with a hoard of technical terms and their abbreviations to make it a laboured read.
In form and content the book reads more like a General Staff (GS) manual on how to wage “silent warfare” and get away with it — a task as horrifying in concept as in application. The very sub-title suggests, rather encourages, the prospect of a nuclear, chemical and biological (NCB) Armageddon. It suggests the management of its disastrous fall-out with ease and smoothness.
Two chapters are insidiously titled “Preparing general public” and “Hospitals for WMD” (weapons of mass destruction) simultaneously to invoke the dreadfully real prospect of the holocaust and the hopes, no matter how illusory, for the survivors — the public and the public utilities such as hospitals — to meet it effectively.
The author goes on to pose the question, “Would the preparation for a likely, almost imminent, WMD invasion lead to panic?” He admits the possibility of such awareness of “impending disasters” may cause a “certain amount of panic” among the people and yet hopes that “awareness” would prevent people from panicking when the “disaster” actually strikes. An innocently naive or overly optimistic perception when heavens actually fall.
How can a people under a WMD attack, better aware of its inescapable horror, behave any better than those not so well aware of that? Would they at all have the time or the wits to know what hit them and the world around them? Even under a conventional attack in the subcontinental India-Pakistan context, people would tend to show little nerve or self-control and go helter-skelter for safety.
Those who have been through the course of the 1965 and 1971 wars would bear witness to utter panic gripping people out in the open at the first sound of an air raid siren in big cities like Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi. The author, however, goes on to illustrate his point by citing the example of certain precautionary notices carried by government transport systems about “unclaimed” baggage under or before their seats.
People get used to this message and do not panic. A startling plunge from the sublime to the ridiculous — from creating awareness about how to manage a WMD disaster to keeping an eye on unclaimed baggage in a railroad coach. Fancy that!
Not too sure of the effectiveness of his prescriptions, the author goes on to suggest that “cautionary measures should be pragmatic, well packaged, publicized with maturity and easily implementable” — an essential PR exercise in real terms.
He recommends the creation of National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in India as the ‘lead agency’ to coordinate the management of natural and WMD disasters. Whereas, the need and rationale is for preemting sudden disasters (material or man-made) which cannot exactly be managed or foretold.
The best way for managing WMD disasters is to preempt them and prevent them from happening at all. For once the bomb or the chemical and the biological canister explodes, managing its fall-out would be meaningless for the victims and beyond the capability of the traumatized and disabled survivors to control.
Therefore, rather than talk of managing such terminal disasters, the only sane thing would be to ensure against their occurrence. Furthermore, since their devastating impact would be practically unmanageable any serious planning to manage them would amount to luring people into a false sense of security. By implication, brainwashing them to accept the grim reality of such a warfare as inevitable — almost as an act of fate.
According to the author a terrorist attack involving WMDs could create havoc beyond the capability of the state and local government to control. That would bring NDMA into action to transform a local catastrophe into a national disaster. The brutal fact must, however, be accepted that any WMD holocaust, especially a nuclear one, would have always to be managed, if at all, at the highest national level regardless of its size and magnitude.
The structure and capability of RAID (Rapid Assessment and Initial Detection Element) spelt out by the author makes his GS draft paper of little practical value and use. Such exercises would normally be the first to go by the board even on their first touch with the grim reality of war — especially of an all-devouring nuclear war.
Brig Kar’s detailed prescription for managing a WMD war would seem to underscore the Indian vision of such a war at one time or the other in the future. After all, O.P. Sabherwal says, “Indian nationalism today both secular and saffron is hinged to the acquisition of the big power symbol.”
Silent Warfare: Managing Nuclear Chemical Biological (WMD) Disasters
By Brig (Dr) H.K. Kar
Manas Publications, 4858, Prahlad Street, 24, Ansari Road, Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110 002, India
Tel: 011-23260783, 23265523
Fax: 011-23272766. Email:
manaspublications@vsnl.com Website: www.manaspublications.com
ISBN 81-7049-180-0
220pp. Indian Rs495
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