Takes Three To Tango

Happily enough, it’s not just symbols and sentiments, important visits and promises of support from the government that the island command now looks forward to. All three armed forces have progressively defined deeply altered threat perceptions on other fronts, and recognising an admit-tedly troubled neighbourhood to the East and South East, the command’s responsibilities have only been ampli-fied.

In strategic terms, that’s a whole lot more importance and funds. In Three Tango command, with the three leader. Shiv Aroor reports. terms of what each one of us can associate even more with, that’s more ships, more aircraft, more personnel and more strategic responsibilities. Lt Gen Singh, who should have moved out of his office in October, was asked to stay for another six months to finish the job he had start-ed.

For New Delhi, the decision was premeditated. Already in awe of the seamless chain of command that brought the three services under Singh, they decided to wait and watch, let the officer and commander finish his job. In a conversation with The Indian Express in Port Blair, he said, “That allowed us to finish the job we had started. Everything was being carried out to the optimum pos-sible under the inherent advantage of independent services and force, brought together and working like they had never spent a day apart.” And impulsively, “We are testimony that the optimum use of force must happen and can happen under a com-mon commander. It is simple to see.” The government has spent 18 months telling the country that it’s looking for consensus on a Chief of Defence Staff, but Lt Gen Singh’s example is not one they will easily, nor admittedly, ignore. In fact, when the three chiefs descended on Port Blair late last month, it was New Delhi saying thanks.

At command headquarters in Port Blair, you cannot miss the invol-untary sagacity that has set in. Officers know deep down that while the tsunami snuffed out life and prop-erty on a mindless scale, it proved to be what the command needed most to finally mobilise, and prove right the strategists whose visions since decades compelled its birth.

The Andaman example will now be put forward by every propo-nent of the joint chief philosophy. In 2006 the islands will see more than it has in the four years of its exis-tence. The government will decide if it wants to base Jaguars or Sukhoi-30s permanently at the devastated Car Nicobar; more airfields could come up to augment the four at Port Blair, Carnic, Campbell Bay and Diglipur; more jetties will emerge; the Coast Guard will send more vessels. The command’s operational profile is all set to take on a phenomenally more engaging tone, after rapid evo-lution in the last 12 months.

Earlier this month, eager to show that things were back to nor-mal, the command invited eight countries with their warships to the islands, a decidedly ambitious call for islands whose infrastructure lay in ruins just months before. And as no officer on the island will deny, the undertone of those five days was a subtle message: a message that like last year, the islands had the resources and power to mobilise an international relief and rescue oper-ation in the region; but that as the Indian Union’s easternmost outpost, it is also fully ready for war.