Essays in Honour of K.P.S. Gill
The Fragility of Order
Edited by Ajai Sahni

K.P.S. Gill’s imprint on the history of counter-terrorism is incomparable. The comprehensive defeat he inflicted on Khalistani terrorism in the Punjab and his contributions to policing in regions of widespread disorder were exceptional, exemplary. He encapsulated the masterful strategic approach to terrorism and crisis policing as no other leader has in recent history.

But Gill was much more than an exceptional police leader. His achievements go beyond his life, beyond personality, into the realm of ideas. He had a vision that was not rooted in the perspectives of a policeman. He was, in fact, one of the most profound thinkers of our age, focusing on conflicts across the world, and the constantly fraught struggle for democracy. He was a man of heroic proportions, a true hero, as few are in this age.

This volume is an effort to honour K.P.S. Gill by keeping under continuous and rigorous scrutiny the many issues on which his career and his mind were focused. It brings together leading commentators and exceptional international scholarship on a wide range of contemporary issues relating to ongoing and emerging challenges of security in an increasingly uncertain global context.

Foreword	i
1. K.P.S. Gill The Alchemy of Leadership –Ajai Sahni	1
2. How to Thwart Subversion and “Death by a Thousand Doubts” –Anna Simons	17
3. The Bear, the Eagle and the Elephant: The Counterinsurgency Doctrines of Russia, the United States and India –Peter A. Kiss	33
4. Challenges for Peacebuilding: Engaging Armed Nonstate Actors in Post-Conflict Security Governance –Albrecht Schnabel	63
5. Combating ‘Terrorism’: A Strategic Warfighting Perspective –Thomas A. Marks	99
6. The Islamic State, and After –Ilan Berman	129
7. The Maoists: A Fading Red –K. Durga Prasad	137
8. Power Sharing and Sectarianism: The Lebanese Sunni–Shia Conflict –Lars Erslev Anderson	149
9. Use of the Internet by Jihadist Groups: Evolution and Predicaments –Laurence Bindner and Raphael Gluck	163
10. Early Detection and Prevention of Extremism through Community Development Programmes –Miriam Eser Davolio	177
11. K.P.S. Gill and the Saving of Punjab –Hiranmay Karlekar	193
12. Pakistan’s Forgotten War? The Nationalist Insurgency in Balochistan –Peter Chalk	211
13. Pakistan: The Roots of Radicalisation –Vikram Sood	223
14. Politicising the Army –Rahul Bedi	237
15. ‘Hybrid Warfare’: The role of mercenaries in Eastern Europe and South Asia –Prem Mahadevan	249
16. Hezbollah’s Military Engagement in Syria: from Hubris to Nemesis? –Wolfgang Muhlberger	267
17. Through LTTE Eyes: The Sri Lankan Counter-Insurgency Strategy –Rohan Gunaratna	281
18. The Fragility of Order –Ajai Sahni	317
Contributors	339

Lars Erslev Andersen is senior researcher at Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). He is a historian of ideas and the Middle East in international politics. Earlier, he was Associate Professor in Middle East Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, where he was also Head of Department for the Center for Middle East Studies. His research focuses on Theories on World Order and Global Security, jihadism and the conceptual history of terrorism, US security policy and policy towards the Middle East, China’s increasing interest in South Asia and the Middle East, political developments in the Persian Gulf, Lebanon and the Israel - Palestinian conflict. His recent publications have been on US counterinsurgency strategies in Iraq, political developments in Lebanon, the Palestinian Refugee problem, and China’s increasing interest in South Asia and the Persian Gulf.

Rahul Bedi has been in the field of journalism for 39 years, beginning his career with The Indian Express in 1979. He was posted in London till the early 1990’s where he was reporting for Indian and other overseas newspapers and magazines. Presently he is the New Delhi correspondent for Jane’s Defence Weekly of the UK, the Daily Telegraph, London and the Irish Times. He was also Assistant Master at Mayo College, Ajmer and The Doon School, Dehra Dun during the 1970’s.

Ilan Berman is Senior Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC. An expert on regional security in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Russian Federation, he has consulted for both the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Department of Defense, and provided assistance on foreign policy and national security issues to a range of governmental agencies and congressional offices. He has been called one of America’s “leading experts on the Middle East and Iran” by CNN. Berman is a member of the Associated Faculty at Missouri State University’s Department of Defense and Strategic Studies. A frequent writer and commentator, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs , the New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post and USA Today, among many other publications. He is the editor of various international books on topics ranging from Radical Islam to Totalitarian Regimes.

Laurence Bindner is a Consultant on the spread of jihadist content online, Paris. Her fields of expertise cover the dissemination of jihadist content online, jihadist propaganda and rhetorics. Her analysis also focuses on terrorism financing, the links between terrorism financing and illicit trade, and the quantification of jihadist networks in France and the EU. Member of the CTED (Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate) Global Research Network of the UN, she is the former Director of Development of the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism (CAT) in Paris. Her work covers analysis in terrorism financing, the links between terrorism financing and illicit trade and the quantification of jihadist networks in France and the EU. She has developed an expertise on jihadist rhetoric online.

Peter Chalk is an adjunct senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. He is a specialist correspondent for Jane’s Intelligence Review and Associate Editor of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, one of the foremost journals in the international security field. Chalk has regularly testified before the U.S. Senate on issues pertaining to national and international terrorism and is author of numerous publications on various aspects of low-intensity conflict in the contemporary world. Chalk is also a senior instructor at the Postgraduate Naval School in Monterey, California, and a non-resident fellow with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra. Before joining to RAND, Chalk was a Professor of Politics at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, and a Postdoctoral fellow in the Strategic and Defense Studies Centre of the Australian National University, Canberra.

Miryam Eser Davolio of Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Winterthur (ZHAW) in Switzerland has expertise in Social Policy. She conducted research in 2015 into Jihadi radicalisation in Switzerland.

Raphael Gluck has a background in web development, social media marketing and IT consultancy. Over the past several years he has focused on the spread of terrorist propaganda online, charting jihadist group digital strategies, including app development and social media proliferation on the surface web as well as the deep and dark web. He is also the co-founder of Jihadoscope, which monitors Jihadist activity across the web and social media.

Rohan Gunaratna is Professor of Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technology University, and Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, Singapore. He received his Masters from the University of Notre Dame in the US where he was Hesburgh Scholar and his doctorate from the University of St Andrews in the UK where he was British Chevening Scholar. A former Senior Fellow at the Combating Terrorism Centre at the United States Military Academy at West Point and at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Gunaratna was invited to testify on the structure of al Qaeda before the 9/11 Commission. The author of 16 books including Inside al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (University of Columbia Press), Gunaratna edits the Insurgency and Terrorism Series of the Imperial College Press, London. A trainer for national security agencies, law enforcement authorities and military counter terrorism units, interviewed terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia and other conflict zones. Gunaratna also interviewed the LTTE leadership, including Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Hiranmay Karlekar is a distinguished Indian journalist, Consultant Editor of The Pioneer and, currently, a member of the Animal Welfare Board of India, India’s apex governmental body dealing with animal welfare. A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard (Class of 1967), Karlekar, in his career as a journalist spanning four-and-a-half decades, has been Editor of Hindustan Times, Deputy Editor of The Indian Express , Assistant Editor of The Statesman and the Hindusthan Standard , an erstwhile publication of the Ananda Bazar Patrika group in Kolkata, and Associate Editor of Aajkaal published from Kolkata. Apart from his innumerable journalistic writings, Mr Karlekar’s publications include two Bengali Novels, Bhabisyater Ateet (1994) and Mehrunnisa (1995), as well as, In the Mirror of Mandal: Social Justice, Caste, Class and the Individual (1992), Bangladesh: The Next Afghanistan? (2005) and Endgame in Afghanistan (2012). He edited and contributed two chapters to Independent India: The First Fifty Years (1998), an anthology of essays published to mark 50 years of India’s independence.

Peter A. Kiss served 26 years in the US Army during the Cold War as a parachute infantryman, and subsequently as an intelligence specialist. In the latter capacity he begun to study asymmetric warfare during the Balkan crises of the 1980s and 1990s, and obtained some first-hand experience in Iraq as a security specialist in 2004. In 2011 he earned his PhD in Military Science at the National Public Service University in Budapest, Hungary. In 2014 he was invited to join the newly organized Scientific Research Center of the Hungarian Defense Staff as senior researcher. He is the author of several books and essays (some in Hungarian, some in English) on small arms and on asymmetric warfare, including some essays on India’s experience with insurgency. He is fluent in Hungarian, English, Russian, Italian and German.

Prem Mahadevan is a senior researcher with the Center for Security Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. He completed undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral degrees in War Studies and Intelligence Studies from King’s College London, and has briefed NATO Headquarters and the Global Counterterrorism Forum about the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai, focusing on the role of Pakistani state actors. His doctoral thesis was published by IB Tauris in 2012 as The Politics of Counterterrorism in India, and in 2014 he authored An Eye for An Eye, a book for the Indian Army’s Centre for Land Warfare Studies on the potential role that special operations can play in combating cross-border terrorism. At the request of the Swiss Foriegn Ministry, he has briefed the Ukrainian Government about counterintelligence and strategic communication responses to hybrid warfare, drawing upon the Indian experience of combating Pakistani covert operations in Jammu & Kashmir as well as the ISI’s support for international terrorism.

Thomas A. Marks is Associate Scholar at FPRI'S Centre on Terroism, in Counter-Terroism and Homeland Security. He is head of the Irregular Warfare Deparment, at the College of International Security Affairs (CISA) of the National Defense Univercity (NDU) in Washington DC. He is a former US Army officer and US Government officer as well as an independent contractor. He previously served as the Oppenheimer Chair of War fighting Strategy at the Marine Corps University (Quantico), where he taught Insurgency and Operational Art. His notable books include Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam (1996).

Wolfgang Muhlberger is Senior Research Fellow at FIIA (The Finnish Institute of International Affairs) where his work focuses on political developments in the MENA region and Euro-Mediterranean relations. His research evolves around post-Arab Spring transitions in Tunisia, Libya and Syria, with an emphasis on the role of external players, including non-state actors such as the Lebanese Hezbollah, or international players like Russia. He is also interested in theoretical and empirical aspects of Arab statehood. Currently, he is preparing an edited volume on Dis-order in the MENA region, from the viewpoint of political narratives. He is a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) related New-Med research network and represents FIIA in the EuroMeSCo steering committee. He was a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv and at the NATO Defense College in Rome. Arabist and Islamologue by training, his professional background in and on the region extends over 15 years, including positions in research (Austrian Defence Academy), diplomacy, and with media (The Economist Conferences).

Ajai Sahni is Founding Member & Executive Director of the Institute for Conflict Management. the South Asia Terrorism Portal, and Impact (the Institute’s strategic V-Log). He is also Publisher and Editor of the South Asia Intelligence Review, Faultlines: The KPS Gill Journal of Conflict & Resolution , and Second Sight: Occasional Writings on Security & Strategy . At the Institute, he is responsible for research and administration; as well as oversight of and participation in consultancy projects, including advisory projects undertaken for various National or State Governments. Sahni he has served as a member of the Uttarakhand State Police Commission; of the Strategy Formulation Group of the Maharashtra Police; of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific – India; and of the Committee to Review the Organisation, Structure, and Processes of the Ministry of Home Affairs, GoI. He has lectured at numerous professional institutions and has appeared frequently as an expert on terrorism and insurgency in the electronic and print media in India and internationally.

Albrecht Schnabel is Head of the Asia-Pacific Unit at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF). He also serves as Senior Fellow in DCAF’s Policy and Research Division, and as Research Associate at the Global Health Centre (GHC) of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. From 2008 to 2016 he served as Senior Fellow in DCAF’s former Research Division, where he headed the Security Institutions Programme and the Human Security and SSR Programme. He currently co-leads the GHC-DCAF project on “The Security Sector and Global Health Crises” (since 2015), and serves as an associated member in the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS) projects on “How to Break the Gridlock in Global Health Governance” (2015-2017, with GHC/IHEID) and “Civil Wars and State Formation: The Social Construction of Order and Legitimacy During and After Violent Conflict (2016-18, with the University of Geneva).

Anna Simons is a Professor of Defense Analysis at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), joining the faculty in 1998. Prior to teaching at NPS, she was an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles, as well as chair of the Masters in African Area Studies Program. At NPS, she teaches courses in the anthropology of conflict, military advising, low intensity conflict in Africa, and political anthropology. Simons is the author of Networks of Dissolution: Somalia Undone and The Company They Keep: Life Inside the U.S. Army Special Forces . She has written extensively about intervention, conflict, and the military from an anthropological perspective for a wide range of publications, such as The American Interest, The National Interest, Orbis, Third World Quarterly, and Parameters . Simons holds an A.B. from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Harvard University.

Vikram Sood was a career intelligence officer for over thirty years. He retired in March 2003 after heading R&AW. He is currently adviser at the Observer Research Foundation, an independent public policy think tank based in New Delhi. He is the author of the book, The Unending Game: A Former R&AW Chief’s Insights into Espionage . He also writes frequently on foreign relations, security and strategic issues in journals and newspapers and has contributed chapters related to security, intelligence and India’s neighbourhood in various books.