Wary of a repeat of the Tanda incident earlier this year when the Army came close to losing the Northern Command’s top brass, Army Chief Gen N.C. Vij has called for mandatory counter-insurgency training for all army personnel posted to Jammu and Kashmir.The new directive includes logistics personnel as well. ‘‘The capacity of the combat schools has been expanded to impart training to logistics personnel,’’ a spokesperson said. A core group of officers, junior and non-commissioned officers and other ranks are trained at the various Corps Battle Schools, who, in turn, return and train their colleagues.The directive comes following embarrassing findings by the army’s internal investigation which exposed the vulnerability of several army installations and formations in the state. One of the terrorists who had survived the attack, managed to hide himself and threw a grenade, killing a brigadier and injuring Northern Army Commander Lt Gen Hari Prasad commander and Corps Commander Lt Gen T.P.S. Brar. The senior commanders survived only because the terrorist was too weak from loss of blood to strike further.Shocked at the audacity of the attack, the Army launched a full-fledged court of inquiry which threw up loopholes in the deployment and training of army units and the vulnerability of the Army’s logistic units. Apparently, the terrorists had even indulged the unsuspecting guards from the EME battalion at the Tanda Camp in a conversation before launching their attack. The terrorists, sources said, were dressed in army fatigues with fidayeen written in Urdu on them and approached the sentries asking for the camp commandant.Now the Army is ensuring that all personnel are trained at the Corps Battle Schools in the state before they are deployed. While it is mandatory for soldiers deployed in the counter-insurgency grid to be trained at the schools, even those from logistics will have to undergo training.Instructors from the Army’s Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School have been drafted for training the army personnel while an additional school has been raised at Bhaderwah in Doda district. Sources said the expansion was necessary as the two existing schools were hard-pressed with nearly 1,000 personnel on the waiting list. As of now, the Nagrota-based 16 Corps has a school in Sarol near Rajouri while Srinagar-based 15 Corps has a school at Kheru in Anantnag district.
