Counterinsurgency training for Afghans

SUMIT GANGULY, Ngee Ann Kongsi Chair in International Relations at the Rajaratnam School for International Studies, Singapore declares that the most effective and economical way to prepare Afghan troops in counterinsurgency operations was to rely on the Indian Army. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, "Let India Train The Afghan Army", he states that the Indian Army with its decades of counter-insurgency experience in multiple terrains, training capacities, cheap labor and training costs, cultural similarities, and its record of civil-military relations made it the ideal candidate to train the Afghan national army.

COIN lessons from Jammu and Kashmir

Rahul K Bhonsle, editor of South Asia Security Trends drawing on learnings in Jammu and Kashmir states that it was critical that any winning hearts and minds (WHAM) campaign consisted of a two-pronged strategy including a process of reaching out to the people and thwarting the efforts of proxy operatives to negate the WHAM strategy. In a Manekshaw paper for the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, “Winning Hearts and Minds - Lessons from Jammu and Kashmir”, he recommends a human-centric approach commiting to equity of rights and reducing human losses as well as sustained policies which establish the genuineness of the government as critical to any counter-insurgency campaign.