Dignity of Life: Moral Philosophy, Organisational Theory, and Hostage Rescue 9789390620746

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DIGNITY OF LIFE MORAL PHILOSOPHY ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND HOST GE RESCUE

AVICHAL

DIG NITY OF LIFE

Scholarly, multidisciplinary, and iconoclastic, this book provides a comprehensive study of human behaviour in organisational setting, discusses the theory and principles of self-organisation, elaborates the strengths of self-organisation over command organisation, and gives a complete roadmap to set up and sustain in any culture and society an exceptionally capable hostage rescue force specialising in mass hostage rescue. However, its numerous valuable insights, relying not on technology but people and employing the force of their intrinsic motivation, are not relevant to the niche of special forces and wider military context alone but can be employed across all occupational settings to build highly efficient organisations where people work voluntarily and deliver responsibly without the supervision and control of command element. Beyond formal organisations, all fields of human activities, including the private lives of individuals too can immensely benefit from radical ideas and useful information contained in it.

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Besides discussing the deeper questions of life as a whole, of organisational life in general, of mass hostage rescue in particular, and of character, culture, environment, leadership, and communication, it also elaborately explains how we make decisions in crisis, who is an expert and how one can become an expert, how do we learn and how we can learn better, what makes us commit errors and mistakes, what lies behind our failures, and how we can deal with errors and failures both as individuals and organisations.

9 789390 6 20746

I K International Pvt Ltd

DIGNITY OF LIFE

DIGNITY OF LIFE MORAL PHILOSOPHY ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND HOSTAGE RESCUE

AVICHAL

I K International Pvt Ltd New Delhi

Avichal ([email protected]) is an Indian police officer who has been associated with the world of special forces as a practitioner, instructor, designer, administrator, institution builder, and adviser for over two decades and has operated and trained in many countries of the world I K International Pvt Ltd 4435-36/7, Ansari Road, Daryaganj New Delhi 110 002 (India) www.ikbooks.com 2023 © by Avichal All rights reserved. Published 2023 ISBN 978-93-90620-74-6  Printed and bound in India by Thomson Press India Ltd MIX Paper from responsible sources www.fsc.org

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This book is made from Forest Stewardship Council certified paper to ensure sustainable forest management. FSC (www.fsc.org) is committed to stringent sustainable forestry standards and operates the world’s most rigorous and trusted forest certification system. Product with FSC Mix label is made with a mixture of materials from FSC-certified forests, recycled materials, and/or FSC-controlled wood. While controlled wood doesn’t come from FSC-certified forests, it mitigates the risk of the material originating from unacceptable sources

To B. V. Wanchoo, my boss, who believed in me; gave me wings to fly and freedom to explore and experiment without bounds. To Manpreet, my wife, who gave me precious lessons in morality without preaching; by silently practicing moral values and consistently leading a moral life. To Chottu, our cockatiel, who taught me the value and dignity of life without saying a word.

Before experiments, measurements, mathematics and rigorous deductions, science is above all about visions. Science begins with a vision. Scientific thought is fed by the capacity to ‘see’ things differently than they have previously been seen. —Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Contents

Preface

xi

Acknowledgements xix Introduction

1

1. On Violence and State

7

2. Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions

19

3. Decision-Making in Crisis

53

4. Expertise, Expert Team, and Sustained Effective Performance

69

5. The Man

109

6. Culture and Environment

205

7. Paths to Errors and Failures

281

8. Philosophical Doctrine of Hostage Rescue

415

9. Operational Strategy for Hostage Rescue

439

10. Fighting Tactics for Hostage Rescue

461

11. Overcoming Group Size Barrier

483

12. Finding and Managing Our Men

497

13. Arming and Equipping

521

14. Training and Learning

561 ix

x

Contents

15. What Actually Happened?

623

16. Readiness

639

17. Leadership

665

18. Human Communication

677

19. A Primer for Politicians

683

20. On Sniping

687

Epilogue

703

Bibliography

705

Index

721

Preface

I You do not build institutions and organisations all alone. You need many people in different positions and roles to cooperate and a large pool of resources to translate abstract ideas into material forms. If you want to do something new and radically different and you insist on doing it right at the same time, then, institution building becomes an immensely challenging and, at times, virtually impossible enterprise. Heroes do not exist in real life; their myths are constructed for political gains. In real life, you cannot succeed truly without the encouragement of everyone powerful and the cooperation of everyone involved. Institutions and organisations are the physical forms of abstract ideas; there is nothing natural about them. They do not happen themselves; they are made to happen by human will and collective efforts. An idea occurs in the mind of someone and shared with others in the form of words spoken and written. If consensus is built and powerful people buy this idea, it becomes real over time. But convincing others and forging consensus is not easy. People are fixated on their own ideas; they are the prisoners of their own views of the world; it is not easy to sell a different and new idea to them. There is another problem too. Complex ideas take time to evolve and crystallise completely; they keep forming and growing as you go on reflecting, explaining, and doing. In the beginning, therefore, a man might find it impossible to explain his ideas to others for want of words and time required to elaborate everything there is in his mind. To make matters worse, it becomes nearly impossible to convince all and get everyone on board if your ideas are radical and novel and your blueprints and roadmaps are cryptic and intricate—so much so that those who are on your side might as well be there without understanding your mind completely and correctly. When xi

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all are not with you and your ideas and some of your detractors are also powerful, it generates tremendous friction and gives rise to endless struggles, which slow you down and might stop you in your path leading to your goal; unproductive and wasteful activities bog you down by consuming a lot of energy and time. It burns hearts, swells emotions, generates rivalries, breeds suspicions, stalls progress, and stunts productivity. It disappoints, discourages, demotivates, and disheartens you and those who travel with you. If it is not checked timely and overcome in time, it might delay and even derail your project eventually. I experienced and endured all this for years on end and failed too because of this in the end. For success, I needed control and a moment came when there seemed nothing in my control. To salvage my dream, I could find nothing, for there was nothing there to help me elaborate and explain everything to those who had doubts. In the moments of acute despondency after quitting, the idea of writing a book came to my mind which would translate my ideas into words in full. Fortunately, that was entirely in my control. I also thought that if such a book had existed to guide me and others then, it would have revealed everything to everyone involved, answered all their questions and clarified all their doubts. I thought I might have made it then or might not have set out on a course to failure in the first place. Clarity of ideas, goal, blueprint, and roadmap would have either seen it through till the very end or cut it short in the very beginning and both would be better outcomes than failing halfway. I thought if I wrote this book, it might just help someone like me somewhere sometime. It gave me hope. It pulled me out of despair and distress. It saved me from drowning in a sea of sorrow and sadness. So, I did it. II This is a book of ideas, of such ideas that challenge the established ways of thinking and doing. There is nothing more to it and nothing more in it. Ideas are not real and tangible to begin with; they form and exist in our minds first. An idea is transformed into a physical reality by human endeavours when a large number of people believe in it and work together for it. Discrediting any idea as unreal and fantasy, therefore, is wrong, for a belief in it precedes its transformation into a reality. A better way of disagreeing with an idea is to say that you do not believe in it. A widespread disagreement, however, does not belittle an idea in any way; it just remains an idea in that case. An idea can be stopped from becoming a reality but it cannot be stopped from existing. An idea can live forever—arguably, as long as humanity does.



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Ideas are built on ideas. They evolve incrementally from what exists before. Also, the same idea can originate independently at many places, in numerous minds, in different times. No man, therefore, can claim or take entire credit for inventing an idea. Its ownership remains dispersed and distributed in time and space and all ideas truly belong to humanity as a whole. To understand what I mean by it, before reading this book, I suggest readers in earnest to read A People’s History of Science by Clifford Conner, Horizons by James Poskett, and The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. These three great revisionist works of genuine scientific quest and rare scholarship prove my point and also reveal the kind of intellectual mess humanity is living in and how knowledge is constructed not by the truth but by biases and prejudices, power and domination. After reading them, you would not be so sure that there is no truth beyond what you know and see, what you were told and what you have read. They would open you up and prepare you to explore and imagine a myriad of possibilities there are in the world, I hope. For ideas are judged differently by different people, many readers might find certain ideas discussed in this book disruptive and some might even find them outrageous or preposterous. There is little I can do about it other than forewarning, for all bold and courageous alternatives to established thoughts and conventions are necessarily provocative and unsettling. III In broad terms, this book discusses an alternative way of human organisation based not on the idea of rationality that runs our world today but on the notion of morality which was invented early but discarded quickly and relegated to a romantic idealistic realm—a euphemism for saying that morality is impractical, unpragmatic, and far removed from ‘human condition.’ We are grappling today with countless problems in all aspects of personal and collective existence and trying to solve them by many different ingenious and complicated ways without realising that trust based on shared moral values is the simplest and surest way of solving nearly all problems of human organisation and condition. But is it not utopian? Not indeed! This book exposes the hollowness of ‘utopian’ label and tale spun around it by revealing that the whole human world is the outcome of ideas—it all depends on which ideas are preferred and which are discarded. There is nothing in the world made by us which is beyond fictions and myths we believe in. Our realities arise from our beliefs which, paradoxically, are not real. This is the fact of human life.

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In specific terms, this book is about solving the complex problem of mass hostage rescue. For in it I have mainly discussed theoretical and conceptual, not technical and practical, it is not a handbook or a manual of hostage rescue. Tactical manuals and operational handbooks which exist aplenty are not going to help those who do not have favourable social traditions and supportive organisational practices in their cultures and systems on which a truly capable hostage rescue force can firmly stand. However hard they might try and however reassuring they might look but for want of robust foundation and resilient framework constructed by certain social and organisational principles, edifice erected on the ground and holding out imposingly on its compressive strength in stable environment would just not have enough structural rigidity to absorb and withstand the wave after wave of devastating forces generated by the quake of mass hostage crisis; it will invariably buckle and collapse when it is required to last most. My book addresses this problem and comprehensively explains how a competent hostage rescue force capable of resolving mass hostage crises can be raised in any culture and society. At the same time, paradoxically, this book does not have anything that can fix the problems of existing hostage rescue organisations; it is relevant only if a new force is raised from scratch. As discussed in chapter two, there are so many things that must be done correctly right from the very beginning that a hostage rescue unit founded on principles outlined in this book has to be raised all over again; any number of alterations, adjustments, and modifications done at a later date, I believe, will not be able to rectify an existing unit entirely. Though it is a book on hostage rescue, its contents do transcend the central question of rescue. By placing the character of man at centre stage, thereby dislodging much vaunted technology and management solutions designed and deployed to control human behaviour, it renders itself useful to all aspects of personal, social, and professional lives of people. All individuals and organisations can, therefore, benefit from this book if those chapters which are too specific to hostage rescue and might not be useful are skipped and excluded from reading. Chapters which are largely technical are 2, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, and 20. So, more than the half of book is useful to general readership. IV To found my argument on a firm footing, I have liberally cited the works of undisputed scholarship in various fields of study. I could have easily presented such information and ideas in my own words, with or without



Preface

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citing sources. But I wanted readers to know about people who inspired me, their thoughts and their ideas in their own words, and wanted readers to read them for developing greater clarity and wider perspective on all issues. So, I have quoted authors verbatim and given full credit to all for each sentence written by them right there with the detailed information of cited works in bibliography for corroboration and further reading. A few books which were referred to but not quoted have also been included in bibliography. I have tried to ascertain the nationality of scholars I have quoted but I could not find information in each case. My intent is to highlight countries where research is concentrated in a particular field of study. So, in the absence of information on the nationality of writers, I have taken the liberty of tagging persons with countries where they worked at the time of writing a cited work. I have followed a pattern in citing authors which might be useful for readers to know. First introduction of an author mentions nationality and profession before name and subsequent reference gives just surname; first reference in another chapter gives full name again without nationality and profession after which only surname is used. I have recommended further readings in text itself while discussing certain matters where I thought my text alone was not enough and a reader should explore its depths by delving into more focussed and specialised works. I have recommended certain books on various topics and subjects during the course of discussion for inclusion in training syllabus, which I believe would be very useful. They are essential readings in my view. I have cited many movies too, not always for their historical accuracy but to drive home a point which is more effectively done by powerful cinematic medium. As for the reality, it is often much darker and hideous than what is reconstructed and portrayed in the creative and documented works of all kinds; no one can experience and express pain and suffering as intensely and totally as victims endure in their lives. Out of multiple theories in each field which could be employed for understanding and explaining, I have selected those which in my judgement are best suited to the problem of mass hostage rescue and which I find more reasonable and workable based on my personal experience as a practitioner, instructor, administrator, and institution builder. Needless to say, my personal biases and limitations are implicit in my choices and they have mediated and influenced my decisions consciously or unconsciously. I read and referred to accessible publications on certain ongoing events and phenomena which were latest at the time of writing but did not update the

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facts given since, for in all such places, I am not giving information for its own sake but merely using it to make a point. Given the evolving nature of the world and our emerging knowledge of it, however hard I might try to update, such information would soon become outdated anyway. A change in figures and facts that does not change a trend or pattern does not weaken or upend an argument contingent on it; we know that, so, I did not revise data used afterwards; my purpose had already been served. Covid pandemic was undoubtedly the most devastating crisis of lifetime for all of us who witnessed and experienced it. But I did not much discuss it in telling the story of humanity and its scientific enterprise, largely because when it struck the world, I had almost completed all such chapters where covid story could have been useful and just managed to mention it in brief. I did not edit my writings afterwards for covid lessons because the well researched definitive findings of pandemic would take more time and they would not alter human story in any way; it will remain what it has always been—a story of selfishness and greed. V I live in Asia where problems exist in great abundance. But in this book, my primary context and sources used to highlight the problems of humanity are Western, or so it seems. I must make it clear that it is not a result of my bias against West or a desire to address or influence white populations there but a consequence of the liberal culture of West that allows free speech and tolerates nonconformist thoughts and radical beliefs, at least on paper if not so much in practice. Room available in these few countries for the expression of ideas today is far greater than what is available in other cultures and societies in the world. They also have a remarkable tradition of scientific research and writing there and have abundant resources to invest in academic research. It is no wonder, then, why West offers the best exposition and critique of human species and civilisation that is available today; I indeed had little choice and leeway. If examples from other cultures and countries are missing, it is only because either such credible works of scholarship as I wanted to cite are not available from the other parts of the world or they were not accessible to me at the time of writing. There is another reason why I have made a mention of African, Asian, and South American countries only sparingly in discussions on the problems of humanity. That these countries are poor and these societies are traditional and they are riddled with problems and their systems are dysfunctional is known to all and no one is really surprised by anything—brutalities and cruelties, scandals and scams, disasters



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and catastrophes—that occur there with some regularity. Since they do not lead, preach, police, or punish other countries, they avoid the limelight and scholarly scrutiny too. A preponderance of American and British references is entirely due to my personal limitation; among international languages, I know only English. Much of the world has, thus, remained out of my reach as most of research done in the world especially a large number of latest works published in other languages are not translated into English. For using gender specific language, I might give a wrong impression; it was a deliberate decision, though, I must clarify, for I do not like using he or she, him or her every time, and anyway, hostage rescue is a masculine world. I respect women as much as I respect men and my choice of language is not a reflection of my discriminatory beliefs, which are none. VI A cover to cover reading of any book is always better and this is what books are meant for; my book is no exception and for its best understanding, I recommend a full reading from beginning to end. For academic or occupational purposes, however, any chapter of this book could be read and used as an independent paper. To facilitate its use as reference material for educational and instructional purposes, this book is divided into chapters, each chapter into sections, and each section into paragraphs. A particular portion of a chapter can be referenced by section and paragraph, thus. For example, 9(XIII)4 takes your students to chapter 9, section XIII, paragraph 4 of this section. Similarly, 9(XIII)6-8 refers to three paragraphs, that is, 6, 7, and 8 of chapter 9, section XIII. For discontinuous parts, we can divide chapters or sections or paragraphs by a forward slash, for example, 9(XIII)6/15 indicates paragraphs 6 and 15 of chapter 9, section XIII. Paragraphs are not numbered; they should be counted by reader. VII Students new to certain subjects which are discussed in this book might find it difficult to fully comprehend scholarly works referred to and recommended for reading. There are, unfortunately, no short cuts to acquiring knowledge. In order to develop a deep understanding of a new subject, a student has to necessarily traverse an arduous intellectual path, demanding persistence and perseverance. Many references might have to be read and more than one reading might be necessary of each at times followed by prolonged reflection to make sense of esoteric sciences that all fields of knowledge have become over time. I have little doubt that with sufficient time invested in and efforts

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devoted to repetition and reflection, all subjects would gradually become clear and understandable. Remain engaged, therefore, to gain knowledge and become an expert in your field, for expertise has a long incubation period before it becomes manifest in the world. VIII Every reader will read my text differently and find it different, for reading is a creative process which produces meaning as a result of an interaction between the written words of author and the beliefs, knowledge base, and experiences of reader. I am aware of my own limitations and those of others, so let each man be his own judge of my work and its worth and let it be his interpretation. I would end it by saying that ask not who I am and what I have done because that will lead your search for authority, not ideas. Ideas are bigger than a man. An idea is worth a million men, and sometimes, even more.

Acknowledgements

I had no access to any professional library and no grant to support my research. It was made possible by the support of these friends and well-wishers who arranged many books and papers for me after I decided to write: Ajay Gupta, Krishan Makhijani, Dipesh Gupta, Sunju Bajaj, Leen Plokker, Champa Lal Sankhala, Shivam Agarwal, Vinod Srivastava, Deepankar Sharma, Shalin, Sudeep Lakhtakia, Gyurmed Dorje, Sandeep Unnithan, Sanjeev Tripathi, Tony Gaspar, Gurpreet Kaur, A. B. Reddy, Arun Khanduri, Maninder Singh, Ashim Kumar, Laltu, Vikram Kapur, Paramjit Singh. I am grateful to all above. To those who I forgot to name here, I offer my sincere apologies. It was a long and immersive journey of a decade and I do not remember everything now. I am grateful to Pravesh Jain for creating drawings and cover page. I am thankful to my office assistants Nima Sherpa and Tapan Kamar for helping me throughout in various ways. I am heavily indebted to hundreds of friends, trainers, students, specialists, colleagues, and counterparts in India, Belgium, Israel, Sweden, Germany, France, America, Austria, Australia, Switzerland, Holland, Britain, Norway, Russia, Finland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan who I interacted with in my active years. What I know, I owe to you all. I am also indebted to my numerous detractors and critics who rubbed me all along in my active years, for without their unintended constructive role in my life, I would not have become sharper as I eventually did. xix

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Above all, I owe this work to two persons. I would not have evolved professionally if I had not served in Special Protection Group for eventful twelve years and, more importantly, if it was not commanded by B. V. Wanchoo for well over seven most exciting years. I would not have evolved as a person if I had not met and lived with Manpreet and inspired by her intuitively moral behaviour at each step in life.

Introduction

I Terrorism is a tool often employed by the marginalised sections of society for voicing and asserting their political differences with the Establishment. It is, however, not the only tool available for this purpose but a tool of choice and not all dissenting and dissatisfied groups embrace and deploy it to register their protest and offer resistance to demand their rights as they think fit. Though our generation has seen terrorism in some of the most ingenious and innovative forms, it is not a new phenomenon as terrorism has challenged State militarily since ages. Political significance of terrorism in our times, however, could be attributed to a couple of important developments. There has been an impressive geographical penetration of terrorism due to ideological agreement and organisational networking; terrorism has become almost omnipresent today and spread virtually all over the world with a shared sense of purpose. Terrorism has acquired a new strategic dimension by posing a perceptible and direct military challenge to State in the current international order of States which has largely contained interstate military conflict. Due to these developments, terrorism has become a matter of serious concern and assumed centre stage in public discourse, unlike in the past. A State facing terrorism in our times cannot afford to ignore it for long, therefore; it has to grapple with it politically and militarily sooner or later. This book deals with the military response of State to the problem of terrorism. Politics of terrorism is beyond its scope. Terrorists plan silently, organise secretly, and remain in hiding in order to survive and sustain their resistance to State. For this purpose, they have to master the art of deception, disguise, and subterfuge. As a result, though they exist, roam, and live somewhere like we all do, their whereabouts are not known exactly to State in which or against which they operate. In 1

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certain cases, however, a State might choose to ignore them due to political or military expediency, a precise knowledge of terrorists and their addresses notwithstanding. Terrorists emerge from their safe houses as terrorists only to execute their plans. They attack at the time and place of their choice and take everyone by surprise. Extremely critical for State is the juncture of terrorist strike, for it bifurcates the counterterrorist strategy of State into two distinct parts and instantly switches its frame of mind from a state of normalcy to a state of emergency. This phase separation and time frame transition brought about by a terrorist attack is illustrated and explained in figure 1.

Before a terrorist strike, State has two choices and enough time. The best option is to locate terrorists clandestinely and engage them suddenly in their homes and hideouts in order to kill or capture them before they manage to kill or capture others. An alternative option is to enhance the general security of country with special emphasis on certain individuals, installations, and places which are more likely to be targeted by terrorists. A host of strategic steps are taken to harden probable terrorist targets that increases risks for terrorists as security intensifies friction and creates roadblocks for terrorists so that they cannot have a smooth passage. Security increases the odds of their getting exposed before reaching their target. As a result of action initiated by the agents of State after they are detected, terrorists are either caught or killed or they manage to escape. In any event, their plan fails to



Introduction 3

materialise and achieve its objectives. Security, thus, has a diversionary and disruptive effect on the planning, preparation, and mission of terrorists. Both strategic options—pre-emptive and preventive—are effective and implemented simultaneously as a part of comprehensive counterterrorist strategy of State in normal times before the point of terrorist attack. After a terrorist strike, State has two immediate choices depending on situation that has developed subsequent to attack. In any event, it has no luxury of time. Especially if it has resulted in a hostage crisis, State has to either negotiate a deal with terrorists for a peaceful resolution of crisis or it has to confront terrorists militarily—whether under siege or at large—to mitigate and prevent the loss of life and property. In certain situations, negotiation is not an option and physical confrontation is the only response that State is left with. This book examines the question of resolving a terrorist crisis by military force. Negotiation is not discussed in it. A terrorist attack can manifest in several different forms. Out of its all manifestations that the world has witnessed so far, a mass hostage situation like that of Moscow (2002) and Beslan (2004), a mass kidnapping incident like that of Chibok (2014) and Kankara (2020), and an ongoing distributed massacre like that of Mumbai (2008) are the most difficult terror events for a State to respond and resolve. On the other hand, such incidents are also extremely difficult for terrorists to plan, organise, and execute; the enormous scale of such events makes them rarer in occurrence. I consider these five incidents the worst-case scenarios for States; they started a series of ongoing events that carried on for days with hundreds of living perpetrators and breathing victims involved. Such incidents progress and evolve continuously; they are unlike bombings which conclude at that point, for after a bomb blast, the immediate response of State is nothing more than disaster management. I, therefore, propose to distinguish such ongoing terrorist incidents from other terrorist incidents and identify them by a generic term complex terrorist crisis. These incidents, in my view, are also test cases that benchmark the military preparedness of State to combat terrorism. Subject matter of this book is the resolution of a complex terrorist crisis by military force with a minimal loss of life, property, and time. Hereafter, phrase ‘minimal loss’ would mean a minimal loss of life, property, and time. II For the purpose of this book, the world can be divided into four types of States on the basis of their military preparedness to resolve a complex terrorist

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crisis with minimal loss. I have employed four parameters clubbed into two blocks for this classification. These parameters are culture and society, peace and politics. Culture creates favourable conditions by imparting right values to and shaping the right character of individuals. These individuals make society which incorporates culture and supplies right material to State for the creation of a right military capability. Peace and politics provide reasons or absence thereof for invoking the will of State which, then, empowers individuals and mobilises resources necessary for creating a right military capability for the resolution of complex terrorist crisis. This typology is illustrated in figure 2 and elaborated below.

States in first category are culturally and socially ready for a right military capability required for the resolution of complex terrorist crisis. They are also militarily challenged or politically ambitious and, hence, have necessary will to possess right military capability to combat terrorism. These States, therefore, are militarily ready to resolve a complex terrorist crisis with minimal loss. This book is obviously not for the first category of States. States in second category are culturally and socially ready for a right military capability required for the resolution of complex terrorist crisis. They are, however, neither militarily challenged nor politically ambitious. Hence, they are militarily not ready to resolve a complex terrorist crisis with minimal loss. These States can scale up their current capability if political decision is taken and sufficient resources are mobilised as they have fundamentals and framework in place. This book is not for the second category of States, therefore.



Introduction 5

States in third category are culturally and socially not ready for a right military capability required for the resolution of complex terrorist crisis. They are neither militarily challenged nor politically ambitious. Hence, they are militarily not ready to resolve a complex terrorist crisis with minimal loss. These States do not need this kind of military capability either. Therefore, this book is not relevant to the third category of States. States in fourth category are culturally and socially not ready for a right military capability required for the resolution of complex terrorist crisis. A vast majority of them is not politically ambitious either. However, these States are militarily challenged by terrorism. A serious challenge presented by terrorists to them notwithstanding, they are militarily not ready to resolve a complex terrorist crisis with minimal loss. These States need such a military capability and they need it badly. They have attempted to build this capability too but what they have created has not worked so far and will not work ever in a mass hostage crisis situation. This book is written for countries in fourth category only. Its purpose is to reveal how a State can overcome cultural, social, and technical constraints if it has political will to possess right military capability for the resolution of a complex terrorist crisis with minimal loss. III All complex terrorist crises either involve a large number of hostages or have too many people trapped inside a building that has been taken over by terrorists. People who are trapped are in danger, for they can be killed or taken hostage at any time if not freed timely. Hence, the resolution of a complex terrorist crisis, in essence, means the rescue of all hostages and endangered persons from a terrorist stronghold. Killing or capturing terrorists becomes a secondary objective of crisis resolution in a complex situation. This is a book of my reflections on the fundamentals of mass hostage rescue and the creation of a hostage rescue force capable of resolving a complex terrorist crisis with minimal loss. It is meant for States. A State by definition is the greatest military power within a defined geographical territory; there cannot be an independent and superior military force inside a State. No other organisation existing inside any State can, thus, possess this force. Also, no other organisation can muster people and mobilise resources on a scale and of a quality that are necessary for raising such hostage rescue force. I reiterate that, in the world as it exists today, it is beyond the means and capacity of a non-State organisation to create conditions necessary for making and sustaining such hostage rescue force.

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Mass hostage crisis resolution is a complex subject. When a hostage crisis assumes complexity as it does in the case of five incidents mentioned above, the field of study no longer remains a delicate blend of science and art. It inflates beyond its regular confines and ventures into the world of speculation and extrapolation. Those very few States which are believed to possess the best military capability for hostage rescue have never been tested in recent times in a situation that I call a complex terrorist crisis. On the other hand, those States which encountered these situations were found unprepared for resolving these complex crises with minimal loss. Though it could be contended if others could have done better in these situations, the glaring mistakes and blunders of those who faced them certainly cannot be considered best practices in complex circumstances. This book makes an attempt to organise in a right way for responding in a better way in a complex terrorist crisis situation. It bypasses a relevant question as to why such a force cannot be created in certain societies and cultures. Instead, it explores the positive question in this context as to how it can be competently raised in any society and culture, provided there is political will to do it.

Chapter 1 On Violence and State

I Terrorism unleashes violence. Violence is a means employed by it to disillusion people and alienate them from State, to force State to yield to its demands—share power or cede territory—and also to militarily weaken, and more ambitiously, to defeat and capture entire State. Any talk of terrorism, thus, necessarily brings up the question of violence and State. And, since this book essentially concerns the matters of violence and State, I will begin with my reflections on violence and State. II What is violence? It is not easy to define, for word ‘violence’ is used variously and conveys multiple meanings. In its most direct and simple sense, violence implies the use of physical force intended to hurt or kill a living being. In addition to the actual use of force, violence also implies a threat of use of force. In another sense, violence implies only the ‘unauthorised’ use of force such as ‘criminal violence’ and ‘terrorist violence.’ Conversely, when force is used by State, it is generally assumed as ‘sanctioned’ and projected as well as considered as good, right, desirable, legitimate, and justified. As a result of this spin, violence is replaced by some other euphemistic word or phrase such as ‘force,’ ‘defence,’ ‘peace keeping,’ ‘putting under restraint,’ ‘restoring order,’ ‘sentence,’ ‘justice,’ ‘operation,’ ‘battle,’ ‘war,’ and much more besides, which serves the purpose of deflecting and camouflaging the negative connotation of violence. Violence is also used to describe ‘unruly’ and ‘anarchic’ behaviours that conflict with the decrees of State. Violence conveys the strength and energy of emotions as well. Violence is used in the sense of natural destructive force too. Violence is also used to imply the consequences of structural arrangements of a society that cause and perpetuate the social discrimination and economic deprivation of certain 7

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groups of people. Violence is as well used in the sense of political, economic, social, and religious coercion. In yet another sense, violence implies behaviour causing the emotional distress and suffering of a living being. While its lexicological richness and variety is impressive, for the purpose of this book, I will use word ‘violence’ largely in its first and basic sense described above, that is, in terms of physical force used to hurt or kill, irrespective of its sink, source, reason, intent, ideology, or purpose. In addition to the use of force, ‘violence’ here will also mean the threat of its use. In sum, an act of hurting or killing or that of threatening to hurt or kill is an act of violence. III What is State? Defining it is not so simple either, so I will do it in the course of discussion. First, I will define some words and concepts relevant and related to State. State is often associated with politics. For the purpose of this book, ‘politics’ is nothing but the pursuit of power, irrespective of setting in which it takes place. In this sense of word, any behaviour and context can be called political if intent for and a play of power is involved therein. In other words, your conduct becomes political and you begin to play politics in your role, whatever that might be, when you desire and act to dominate, control, or influence others or wilfully work to have your way against the opposition of others. Not much, then, is beyond politics in human affairs. This broad definition of politics, of course, includes the affairs and dealings of State and also the manoeuvres, manipulations, and machinations of statecraft normally perceived as politics. I will use it in both senses. Power, in essence, is what allows one to impose one’s will over others and alter the world to some extent as one wills. We will discuss more about power in the next section. Politics often employs propaganda. By ‘propaganda’ I mean an organised and sustained information campaign based on certain ideas, beliefs, and, above all, lies, carried out for the purposes of capturing, securing, or sustaining power. It is a political tool for manufacturing public opinion and rallying people behind certain idea, ideology, or individual. Propaganda tends to monopolise public discourse by discrediting competing narratives, punishing polemics, and smothering dissent. All States are military powers. In this book, I will use word ‘military’ in a broader sense to mean all armed forces organised for achieving political ends. This sense of word will include police forces too. It will as well encompass militias and mercenaries championing the ends of an ideology and sponsored



On Violence and State 9

by an organisation. I will, however, also use it in a restricted professional sense to mean the defence and expeditionary forces of State that excludes its police and quasi-professional forces. Physical force used wilfully for violence is unleashed by an agent of violence. An agent of violence unleashes such force—proximately or remotely, directly or indirectly—by employing different means and mechanisms of storing, releasing, and transferring energy. Actual inanimate means of violence are called weapons. Weapons may be possessed by individuals or organised groups for the purpose of violence. Such ‘armed’ groups organised for achieving political ends are called forces. Primary political purpose of weapons and forces is to secure compliance—by directly inflicting pain, injury, death, and destruction or by indirectly making an example of suffering, loss, displacement, and devastation caused by weapons elsewhere or by conveying the threat of use of weapons which alludes to its harmful consequences that are known and have been demonstrated previously. Interestingly, in the grand scheme of things, contrary to what is believed widely and propagandised universally, military forces are not the only ‘agents of violence’—this phrase, by definition, seems to envelop all active members of a collective put together by a political ideology, including those who pay for its military forces, identify themselves with its ideology, and approve its cause. In a broad sense, then, unarmed civilians also become responsible, however indirectly, for violence unleashed by the military forces of their organisation and ideology and, thus, can be called the agents of violence. It calls into question the very notion of innocence which is invariably deployed by State after a terrorist attack on civilians. IV I will now come straight to the key question, for if this book deals with the question of violence and State, it is legitimate to ask: Why must a State defend its citizens from violence as such and especially from violence used by a group for realising certain political ends? To paraphrase it, why must a State defend its citizens from terrorist violence? The answer seems obvious enough: Because State has a contractual obligation to its citizens to protect them owing to their right to life, which is typically enshrined in a document called constitution and embodied in the laws of State. Arguably, State possesses its armed forces—military to deal with the external agencies of violence and police to combat the internal agents and outfits of violence—for this basic reason, that is, to defend its citizens. This argument appears quite logical, so long as it is made in the context of certain countries labelled as ‘developed,’ for these few countries in the world have amply demonstrated

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over a period of time that State is indeed responsible for protecting the lives of its citizens. All of them have remarkably transformed their societies and administrations in order to guarantee right to life to their citizens in a comprehensive, tangible, and verifiable sense. Not only at home, some of them have routinely secured and saved the lives of their citizens even on foreign soils in various situations. But not all countries in the world are ‘developed’ and when we see things in the light of this fact, contractual argument becomes quite weak and its rationale fizzles out. A vast majority of countries—known variously as ‘underdeveloped,’ ‘less developed,’ ‘developing,’ ‘Third World,’ and so on—cannot back the theoretical claim of protecting lives of their citizens by any hard evidence. In these countries, right to life is often violated directly and indirectly and avoidable deaths abound. Food and water is in short supply—a condition that kills people slowly but surely. Aged, adults, and infants die of hunger and malnutrition every day. Adulteration of food and beverage kills people quite often both slowly and suddenly. Numerous lives are lost due to the non-availability of medical care or because of medical negligence. Innumerable people die in road accidents due to the dismal conditions and deplorable standards of infrastructure, vehicles, training, and enforcement. Poor standards of workplace safety claim hundreds of lives annually in various sectors of production. Group rivalries and sectarian hatred lead to bloody massacres quite often. Criminal violence is rampant. Thousands perish in inclement and extreme weathers each year. Natural calamities take a great toll of life every now and then. Man-made disasters strike quite frequently. And, it goes on and on. It would not be an exaggeration to say that human life has little value here. It can also be argued authoritatively that these States do not guarantee right to life to their citizens either on their own territories or on the territories of other States in the same way and manner as done by ‘developed’ countries. How, then, we can accept the formal constitutional-legal argument of ‘right to life’ in the actual conditions of these countries? If not, then, the question I began with remains unanswered in the case of a large number of countries in the world. State in such cases has not been seen doing enough to save the lives of people owing allegiance to it and residing within its boundaries. Why, then, must a State defend its citizens from terrorist violence? If it must, and if it does seem to act rather resolutely against terrorism and shows its will, which is comparatively missing from the other problems of loss of life, then, how do we explain it and resolve this paradox? We need to find an answer which is valid in all cases; an answer that explains a total intolerance of terrorist violence displayed by State, which invariably finds a full, unbridled, and hysterical expression in the media reporting of every



On Violence and State 11

single terrorist attack and the resultant loss of life, irrespective of scale. We need a universally applicable theory of State which explains all these questions convincingly. In order to search a plausible answer and to explain evident contradiction discussed above, I will set this problem in an alternative historical-theoretical framework. Let us begin our enquiry with a very basic question: What is State? Also, how modern State is different from its pre-modern variants? No authority whose writ runs over human population has a global character. Its power is always spatially limited because people live everywhere on earth and the entire world is not and has never been ruled by a single authority in any period of history. So, a political authority remains relevant only to an area in which a population owing its allegiance to it and obedient to its command resides. It gives us a first important concept to understand State, that is, territoriality. A State rules over a population which lives within a territory controlled by it. In the past, the territorial boundaries of State were never as clearly defined as in the case of modern State. There were several masters who had overlapping and competing jurisdictions over people residing in the same area. Political obedience and allegiance of population was transient, distributed, and dictated by circumstances prevailing at a particular time. It changed radically with the advent of modern State. State at that point became fiercely territorial. Allegiance of population to political authority became absolute and complete within territory owned and possessed by a State. As a consequence of this fundamental principle of territoriality, the entire land mass of our planet has been divided among States—polar regions and oceans being the only exceptions on planetary surface, due only to an international understanding and agreement between modern States. Our world has now been arranged and organised into a system of States that largely accepts and respects the territorial integrity of all States. This system of States also recognises, in principle, that a State is sovereign—having unlimited power and independent authority to rule within its territory. Political authority whose writ runs over a population living inside a demarcated territory would need a workforce to impose and enforce its will on population and keep its land. Realm of political authority, thus, encompasses the military, economic, administrative, and judicial functions of society. It gives us a second important concept to understand State, that is, function. Functionaries of a pre-modern State possessed comprehensive mandate and exercised consolidated authority that allowed them to discharge all executive functions simultaneously. There was no role differentiation to

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clearly distinguish military, economic, administrative, and judicial functions from each other. There was also no differentiation between public and private rights and duties. All of that transformed with the coming of modern State. Agents of State now became functionally differentiated, that is, different functions were discharged by different specialised agencies. Modern State also brought about a clear distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private.’ As a result, ‘public officials’ could be distinguished from ‘private individuals’ based on their function and association with State. To summarise, I will borrow the words of British political scientist and historian Samuel E. Finer who notes that the transition of pre-modern State into modern State happened when the dual processes of transition “from consolidated service to differentiated service and from differentiated territory to consolidated territory” were completed. While our discussion so far has explained certain essential features of State, it has yet not revealed the very essence of State. In order to understand it, we have to first understand certain critical concepts which are fundamental to a fullest comprehension of State, and for this, I will bring in British sociologist Anthony Giddens to our discussion. “To be an agent,” Giddens says, “is to be able to make a difference to the world, and to be able to make a difference is to have power.” He proposes a general definition of power as “transformative capacity,” that is, “the capability to intervene in a given set of events so as in some way to alter them.” He further elaborates that power is “the capability to effectively decide about courses of events, even where others might contest such decisions.” In other words, power is what allows one to impose one’s will over others and alter the world to an extent as one wills. Existence of power in a society is necessarily reflected in domination that creates the “relations of autonomy and dependence between actors or collectivities of actors.” In “the context of any collectivity, association or organization, domination is expressed as modes of control, whereby some agents seek to achieve and maintain the compliance of others.” And, the “intensity of control” can be measured by “sanctions that can be invoked to secure compliance, the most extreme being the command over the means of violence, of life and death.” Means and ability to use force and unleash violence secures compliance and gives an agent or agency the supreme power over other individuals—of life and death—in society inasmuch as whoever has a monopoly over the means of violence becomes the supreme authority in society. However, if this supremely powerful entity has will to remain supremely powerful, it has to consistently sustain and maintain its monopoly on violence. If it fails to do so, its power may be contested, shared, or wrested away. Also, due to its ownership of power, the nature and conduct of such entity is always political.



On Violence and State 13

Given its history and reality, State can be best understood in terms of power, domination, control, violence, and politics. Having understood its nature clearly, German philosopher Rudolph von Ihering was first to propose in late nineteenth century that State is any institution which claims a monopoly on violence within a given territory. German philosopher and sociologist Max Weber agrees with Ihering’s definition when he writes that States are “human associations that successfully claim the monopoly of legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Giddens puts it slightly differently, “The state can be defined as a political organization whose rule is territorially ordered and which is able to mobilize the means of violence to sustain that rule.” In short, State is what successfully claims and then maintains its monopoly on the means of violence within a territory under its control and calls its violence legitimate. British-Czech philosopher and social anthropologist Ernest Gellner clarifies it further, “The idea behind this is simple. . . . Private or sectional violence is illegitimate. Conflict as such is not illegitimate, but it cannot rightfully be resolved by private or sectional violence. Violence may be applied only by the central political authority, and those to whom it delegates this right. Among the various sanctions of the maintenance of order, the ultimate one – force – may be applied only by one special, clearly identified, and well centralized, disciplined agency within society. That agency or group of agencies is the state. . . . The state is the specialization and concentration of order maintenance. The ‘state’ is that institution or set of institutions specifically concerned with the enforcement of order (whatever else they may also be concerned with). The state exists where specialized order-enforcing agencies, such as police forces and courts, have separated out from the rest of social life. They are the state.” Finer summarises its definition by condensing all elements together. All States are “territorially defined populations each recognizing a common paramount organ of government” which is run by “specialized personnel; one, the civil service, to carry out decisions, the other—the military service to back these by force where necessary and to protect the association from other similarly constituted associations.” It can be said that State, as it exists today, is the most powerful agency and supreme political authority inside a demarcated territory. Its power is coterminous with its territory and its will is absolute within it—so much so that land, people, and everything existing therein are owned and controlled by it and remain at its disposal. Such a total concentration of power is a consequence of State’s monopoly on violence on a given territory, which it jealously claims, possesses, and guards—so much so that State is what monopolises violence within a defined territory. It, then, is no exaggeration to say that its military is the cause of its power, for

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it claims and maintains monopoly on violence on behalf of State. Military is the linchpin of State and in its military lies the barest essence of State. Such an all-powerful entity called State, however, has not been there throughout history. There have been powers akin to State but they were rather amorphous and their political control on a territory was fluid and transient. State was able to crystallise in its modern form by claiming its monopoly over violence within a demarcated territory only over a period of time and as a result of advances in the organisation of military as well as technological developments in the fields of warfare such as armaments, communications, and transportation. Its advent was a result of dual processes of consolidation of centralised control over the means of violence and the internal pacification of homeland realised by the elimination of all rival military powers both of which were carried out by military forces and went on hand in hand in the evolution of modern State. A modern State possesses integrated administrative machinery having a reach over entire territory controlled by it. In a pacified situation, State imposes its will over population through its civil administration. If any resistance is offered anywhere, it secures compliance by resorting to the threat or use of violence executed by its coercive military arm. Its success, and also its very existence, therefore, is directly dependent on its monopoly over the means of violence, which is maintained by its military forces. There is no scope, place, or possibility for the existence of any independent and parallel military power vis-à-vis State on its territory. A State that does not have means or will to maintain monopoly on violence on its territory faces sustained assault by rival military powers staking their claim on the same territory in order to impose their will on population. If a rival military power is able to successfully decimate or credibly destroy the military forces of State, it takes over State. In this case, State does not wither away or vanish but victorious military power now becomes State. On the other hand, if military conflict goes on for long and the dilution and fragmentation of political authority crosses a threshold, State does not disappear either but it is reduced to what we call failed State—a situation akin to pre-modern State. Ironically, as Gellner points out, “there are states which lack either the will or the means to enforce their monopoly of legitimate violence, and which nonetheless remain, in many respects, recognizable ‘states’.” It is a paradoxical fact of contemporary international system of States. A question, then, arises as to why such weakened and failed States are allowed to exist in the prevailing order of States created by these absolutist entities? The answer reveals an interesting characteristic of modern State.



On Violence and State 15

Unlike in the pre-modern world, other States in our time most often choose not to seize an opportunity for capturing the territory of a weak or failed State unless a territory in question is disputed and claimed also by another State. While modern State is fiercely territorial, it normally does not display a tendency for territorial expansion beyond limits assumed by it as its natural boundaries. Consequently, States usually do not pose a direct, immediate, and active danger to each other in prevailing world order, even though they always remain prepared for the contingency of a military confrontation with another State. Due to a manifest absence of an expansionist urge, wars between States are far fewer and international peace is far more stable and durable today as compared to previous ages. Disputes between States are not resolved militarily but sorted out peacefully. As a result of a credible absence of active threat from enemy States in the contemporary world, terrorism has been packaged, given, and acquired the status of the greatest active military threat to State. While this seems the most plausible military scenario in a foreseeable future, we cannot discount the possibility of wars between States, including a great war yet again in the backdrop of recent global resurgence of nationalism, which has begun to empower and enthrone fanatical demagogues and weaken the established international order of States that has been largely successful in avoiding and averting wars until now. The above historical-theoretical discussion gives a definitive answer as to why State does not—and speaking for it, why State must not—tolerate any terrorist violence on its territory. It is not without reason that terrorism is considered today as the biggest active threat to State. Terrorist violence is not a form of criminal violence to deal with, which is business as usual for State. Terrorist violence is political violence that directly and most definitely challenges State and undermines its monopoly on violence. Terrorism invariably hurts State’s ego, if not existence, for monopoly on violence is an essential precondition for being State. For State, combating terrorism is, then, not a question of protecting its people. It is, in truth, a question of protecting itself. Numbers of dead or the scale of destruction caused by a terror strike is not relevant; a road accident, natural calamity, or industrial disaster may kill many times more people and destroy much more property than a terrorist attack. It is the very idea and its politics which is anathema to State. Nothing, therefore, hurts State and shakes its foundations as a terror strike does—except, of course, a military aggression by another State which starts an outright war. In both cases, a State goes out of its way and fights all the way to save itself, not its people. It actually does and remains prepared to do whatever it takes—sacrificing the unlimited lives of and causing untold suffering to its people—for self-preservation. Origins of its

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double standards in dealing with the question of loss of life lie in its very nature—State is a selfish, monopolistic, and kleptocratic political institution, no matter what face it puts on to hide its true nature. It always takes much more than it gives back and it does far more for itself than for population it controls. ‘Stateliness’ of agents of State—that bewitching grandeur and splendour, those compelling luxuries and trappings—is maintained out of a good share of capital extracted by State from its people in the name of providing its services to them—so much so that even in the poorest of countries, the civil and military agents of State are well provided and unmistakably reflect an aura of power in their contexts. State does not go after criminal violence with a vengeance, with the same vigour and resolve, because it is different in nature. It does not have political motives and territorial overtones that dare and threaten State with the same directness. Though, technically, criminal violence does violate State’s claim on monopoly over violence, such infringement is nearly always indirect and limited in substance. While it is true that violent criminals do refuse to fall in line and manifestly do not approve the idea and edicts of State, their compliance is nearly always secured in a routine course and by usual methods. State does not unleash its full military might against these criminals as it does against terrorists except in an extraordinary situation when the frontiers of criminal and terrorist outfits tend to intersect and merge with each other. Differential response of State to deal with criminal and terrorist violence, which is evident and known to all, is due to the fact that State is not so much concerned for saving its citizens as it is for preserving itself. Even the most powerful and capable States have yet to muster will to declare an all-out ‘war’ against drug mafias and cartels responsible for directly and indirectly killing so many people in each country and all over the world as they have unmistakably demonstrated in their “war on terror.” It is the fact of life—not right to life; it is the politics of State. Alternative theory of State is not only valid for all not ‘developed’ countries of the world but it is equally valid for a few ‘developed’ countries that we have today. It, therefore, seems to me a better explanation of State’s no-holds-barred response to terrorist violence as against the concocted constitutional-legal tale of an obligation to protect the lives of citizens told by State to justify its disproportionate violence against terrorism. A simplistic constitutionallegal argument, however, is politically prudent for rulers owing to its great emotional appeal to the masses and intense connection it makes with a nation. Why speak the truth if a lie works for all. And, if we all still believe in this lie, it only demonstrates the immense power of propaganda.



On Violence and State 17

V Domination of State over humanity is total today. State in its modern variant called nation State is the basis of a dominant ideology that runs the human world and determines what is right and wrong in many a facet of human life. Discourse is controlled, narrative is defined, and ideological consensus is built by State through the means of law, education, mass communication, policies, and programmes. Its hegemony on our thoughts and emotions is so very complete that totally irrational and highly hypocritical positions are perceived as entirely normal and approved by all. For example, ‘war’ itself is not a ‘crime’ even for an aggressor, for it is waged by States, no matter its cost—even if a myriad of people are killed and countless endure untold misery. Something else instead—that States decide among themselves—is called ‘war crime’ or, more creatively, ‘crime against humanity’ for causing the death and suffering of innumerable people. Despicable killings they all are but one becomes unspeakable evil and the other inimitable glory under the bewitching tutelage of State. Once you know that, it is not impossible to decipher as to why such a hue and cry is made and its much inflated danger readily bought and sold by all in the wake of a terrorist strike. Is it the hideous face of death which causes all that uproar? Are people really afraid and scared of dying? It does not seem so. Roads and railroads, airways and waterways—all are active killing fields virtually everywhere. But we ride and drive, fly and sail—with little worries. We get to see the mangled wreckage of ships, planes, trains, buses, cars, and bikes on the screens of our devices and on accident sites every so often. But we nonetheless use all means of transport without hesitation. Bridges collapse and buildings fall. But we are not afraid of crossing barriers and entering these structures. We live, work, travel, and unwind cheerfully in the vicinity of dangerous places—near nuclear power plants, large chemical factories, oil and gas depots, nuclear weapons facilities, ballistic missile fields, and various other explosive stores and arsenals. We know that they all are dangerous and all of them can and do kill people, here and there, now and then. But we do not seem to care much. Tsunamis, earthquakes, and landslides are the known killers of nature and they strike us repeatedly. But we love to live and visit beaches and mountains so very much. In fact, the oblivion of people to the killing potential of forces of mankind and nature and their belief in the safety of dangerous technologies—without any knowledge of how things are made and managed, how they work, and how they can go wrong—is rather irrational. These facilities, systems, and contraptions have failed and demonstrated their catastrophic potential in the past; they can fail and kill yet again. But no one seems to worry. Why? Perhaps, because mass communication technologies and

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propaganda machinery controlled by State and big business that manufacture public opinion and forge general consensus actively downplay their risks. Perhaps, also because we are very optimistic and lively animals; we do not much worry about dangers and death, so long as threats remain distant, quiescent, or covered. Why, then, the scare and fear of terrorism is nearly always disproportionate and many a time irrational? Might it too, then, be considered a consequence of ideology and propaganda of State? It does seem so, for the potential of terrorism to kill is not more than that of many other things that we live peacefully with and it is certainly minuscule in front of large-scale devastation wracked by wars that we, as citizens of our countries, cheerfully participate in and actively glorify at the behest of State. Terrorism! Bear in mind, this name itself is reflective of the ideology and interest of State. Otherwise, in a sanitised sense, it is just an idea and fact of a non-State rival military power that contests State’s monopoly on violence. Terrorism, if not terrorists, essentially targets State, not people. Loss of life, even though intended, is merely incidental. Terrorism is the enemy of State, not of people as such and occasionally, when the forces of terrorism win and erstwhile terrorists capture and become State, the very same people change their allegiance and rally behind new State. This new State also embraces them all in due course, if not immediately. The same people now sign the songs of bravery and glorify the past brutal acts of violence as the necessary and noble deeds of those who were once condemned as terrorists and denounced as enemies. It is not surprising since humans have a greatly contriving mind. And, while history can be told variously, it is always written by State for its citizens at least, if not for the world. Whither truth? Well, it is always lost and forgotten in the pursuit of power. But who cares in an immoral world.

Chapter 2 Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions

I I have used a phrase ‘complex terrorist crisis’ resulting from hostage-taking by terrorists in introduction. Before proposing a definition of this phrase, I will define three words on which it rests, excluding ‘terrorist’ whose meaning I leave to the judgement of reader. First word is ‘crisis.’ For the sake of clarity, I have picked two dictionary definitions for it. Eighth edition of Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines ‘crisis’ as “a time of great danger, difficulty or confusion when problems must be solved or important decisions must be made.” Fifth edition of Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines ‘crisis’ as “a situation in which there are a lot of problems that must be dealt with quickly so that the situation does not get worse or more dangerous.” Both definitions convey the essence of crisis resolution by underscoring the urgency of action. Second word for which I have chosen two elaborate definitions is ‘hostage.’ The above Oxford dictionary defines ‘hostage’ as “a person who is captured and held prisoner by a person or group, and who may be injured or killed if people do not do what the person or group is asking.” Fifth edition of Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary defines ‘hostage’ as “someone who has been captured by a person or organization and who may be killed or injured if people do not do what that person or organization demands.” Both definitions emphasise that the safety of hostages is linked to the fulfilment of demands of hostage-takers and indirectly indicate the critical importance of time and life in a hostage crisis. Third word is ‘complex’ whose meaning in the context of this book is best explained in three lexical references cited below. Merriam-Webster’s Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary defines ‘complex’ in adjective function as “having parts that connect or go together in complicated ways.” Fourth edition of Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines ‘complex’ as “difficult to understand or find an answer to because of having many different parts.” 19

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Second edition of Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners defines ‘complex’ as something that “has a lot of details or small parts that make it difficult to understand or deal with.” By combining these three words defined above, we get a phrase central to this book and a sense that we get from these varied definitions is that the resolution of a ‘complex hostage crisis’ is indeed very challenging and difficult. With the definitions and nuances of relevant keywords in hand, I will now define ‘complex terrorist crisis.’ A complex terrorist crisis is characterised by: 1. Involvement of a large group of terrorists in an attack or in several distributed but coordinated and synchronised attacks. 2. Presence of a large number of hostages or trapped persons or both inside a building or compound taken over and defended by terrorists. 3. A multitude of rooms, floors, corridors, stairwells, lifts, shafts, and other complex structural features in a terrorist stronghold. 4. Several terrorist strongholds at one time, which are physically distinct and distributed in space. Out of these four, first two are essential conditions and last two are optional conditions for a terrorist crisis to be labelled as a complex terrorist crisis. A crisis emerging out of a terrorist attack can be called a complex terrorist crisis if it meets two essential conditions and any one or both optional conditions listed above. Possible permutations of a complex terrorist crisis, then, are 123, 124, and 1234. Much as the above four-point definition of complex terrorist crisis is simple and sound, it has certain limitations too. Location of terrorists and hostages is a crucial and given feature in this definition. And, both optional conditions imply that crisis is contained spatially, that is, its location is known and terrorist stronghold has been brought under siege by State. It can be argued that only then, it becomes a full-blown hostage situation. If terrorists are at large with a number of people in their control and their whereabouts are not known at the time, it makes a better sense to call it a case of kidnapping than hostage-taking. But, then, if a large number of individuals have been kidnapped, as in the case of Chibok (2014) and Kankara (2020), it is still better to classify such situation as a complex terrorist crisis, even though it appears to be not fulfilling the optional condition of containment demanded by its definition. I would call it a complex terrorist crisis, for



Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 21

the structural and spatial dimensions of crisis, while invisible and unknown at the time, are very much there. And, also, for the resolution of crisis by the force of arms, they are as much relevant to a kidnapping incident as they are in a hostage situation. That information is just opaque at the time in a case like this and crisis is most likely to reveal its structural and spatial characteristics in due course in any one of these three forms—a big building or a compound, several distributed sites, or both—where hostages have been imprisoned and guarded by terrorists. It, then, will conform to the above definition. While I have exercised theoretical caution in saying ‘most likely,’ I see little or no possibility of it not happening, for it is inconceivably difficult to control and defend a mass of people in fright kept in an open space and simultaneously hold out against the wrath of State for long; terrorists are not that silly and stupid, I believe. Also, there can be certain complex terrorist scenarios with frightful consequences that may not meet the listed conditions of what I call here complex terrorist crisis. I have intentionally excluded such incidents from the definition of complex terrorist crisis since the nature of these problems is different and their consequences would be largely determined not by the counterterrorist capability of State but by its political will and decisions. For example, if the president or prime minister of a country is taken hostage by terrorists. It would precipitate a profound political crisis, unleash hysterical media frenzy, and put ‘national honour’ at stake, even if the loss of life is not much indeed. Risk of a rescue operation would be so much that State might refrain from using force. Terrorists might, then, bring State to its knees and compel it to do or not do certain things that would bring discredit to that country. On the other hand, if State refuses to give in and loses its president or prime minister, it would deliver a severe jolt to nation’s psyche and its sense of security. A State in this situation gets in a bind and there is no easy way out. But it is a highly improbable scenario today, given a tight security cover deployed around presidents and prime ministers in whom the executive powers of State are vested and who do not merely hold a titular position. Other examples of complex terrorist scenarios not covered by the definition of complex terrorist crisis are a terrorist takeover of a national monument, rare treasure, critical infrastructure, strategic facility, or a weapon of mass destruction. These doomsday scenarios are also highly improbable due to a stringent physical security of premises, multilayered systems security protocols, and an extremely high level of technical competence required for causing a disaster. Moreover, State might immediately resort to a total destruction of life without damaging property by employing unconventional military weapons after a swift evacuation of population present in the vicinity

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of crisis site. For none of the above requires a mass hostage rescue operation, these are excluded from the definition of complex terrorist crisis. Given the title and theme of this book and also the trinity of words defined above, the phrase of choice should have been ‘complex hostage crisis’ instead of ‘complex terrorist crisis.’ But I have chosen the latter due to reasons given below. Hostage crisis is not exclusive to the problem of terrorism, for criminals may also resort to hostage-taking. In that sense, it is better to call it hostage crisis which covers both terrorist and criminal incidents. However, assumption behind not using ‘complex hostage crisis’ is that it is beyond the imagination, capacity, and commitment of criminal intent to precipitate a hostage crisis on a scale and proportions that deserves this classification and that terrorism is conceivably the only driving force, other than State, which can amass capability as well as will necessary for precipitating a complex hostage crisis—hence ‘complex terrorist crisis,’ which exclusively relates the phenomenon of complex hostage situation to terrorism. If we go by the definition of ‘hostage,’ demands presented by hostage-takers for the resolution of hostage crisis seem an essential element of such crisis. But that condition is not in agreement with a possibility of there being no demand from the perpetrators of violence who simply want to kill as many people as possible and hold out as long as possible as witnessed in Mumbai massacre (2008). Such mindless violence has closer affinity to terrorism than crime—hence ‘complex terrorist crisis,’ which has a broader scope and greater elasticity to encompass unusual situations. Also, persons trapped inside a terrorist stronghold but not in the direct custody and control of terrorists, perhaps, not even known to them, offer a challenge of classification and leave a question mark if they can be technically called hostages. A crisis involving a large number of such persons would still be called a ‘complex terrorist crisis.’ And, above all, the underlying context of this book is terrorism— hence ‘complex terrorist crisis.’ II Let us discuss the operational mechanics of all four conditions in brief to grasp the nature and complexity of such crisis. Large numbers of terrorists is a first problem of complex terrorist crisis. Advantage of numbers after a terror plot has been successfully executed and a crisis precipitated is immense and indisputable. Large numbers of terrorists significantly boost enemy firepower and destructive force. In turn, this vertiginously increases the risks of loss of life. A bigger force of terrorists can resist and fight State’s forces much more effectively and defend its stronghold for a far longer duration. Not only a



Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 23

bigger group of terrorists can make several tactical moves and manoeuvres for sustaining its counteroffensive against assaulting forces, its members also find a better psychological support and greater mental strength in numbers that help them last longer in a fight or stand-off. By the sheer weight of numbers, terrorists can regroup and reorganise in various ways to fight counterterrorist forces on the one hand and harm defenceless hostages on the other both at the same time and against all odds. Terrorists can, thus, successfully execute their plan of last resort and finish a mass hostage crisis in their favour, to the chagrin and embarrassment of State. Large numbers of hostages is its second problem. While a good number of terrorists makes as many targets to be searched, engaged, and destroyed, which complicates the mission of rescuers, a large number of hostages in the same place makes it the worst-case scenario for them. Terrorists can take advantage of a mass of hostages in various ways—by disguising as, merging in, hiding behind, and using hostages as a human shield. These tactics render it impossible for rescuers to identify, isolate, and engage terrorists with a breakneck speed and unfailing accuracy essential for minimising the loss of life in a hostage crisis. An overbearing friction produced by a large number of faces present in front of rescuers takes a heavy toll on their ability to take lightning quick and correct decisions. As a result, rescuers perforce become slow, sluggish, and prone to making mistakes and the sharpness and precision of hostage rescue force dips steeply. Presence of large numbers of hostages in the scene of firefight greatly increases the probability of adrenalinedriven panic reaction of a few frightened individuals which then might spread across the board in no time, making the semblance of order imposed on frightful hostages vanish at once and chaos filling the scene of action the very next moment. Commotion and chaos, in turn, increases the probability of rescuers committing the errors of judgement and engaging hostages instead. A dense crowd all around, on the other hand, makes it easy for terrorists to engage many targets, even when firing blindly without control and sights. An explosive device similarly becomes more effective in killing people in a crammed situation. Overall risk of loss of life, thus, spikes phenomenally as a result of a large number of hostages in a terrorist stronghold. As if the insurmountable difficulties of complex terrorist crisis created by large numbers of terrorists and hostages are not enough, situation becomes even more difficult for hostage rescue forces on account of its third problem— the structural, architectural, and geometrical complexities of a large terrorist stronghold. Large numbers of rooms, floors, corridors, staircases, lift shafts, and other such features multiply challenges and risks for rescuers. Due to

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Dignity of Life

these features, a typical compact hostage rescue force may find itself embroiled in a long-drawn battle with terrorists inside such stronghold that would increase risks to hostages and the loss of life. In such a building, terrorists can afford to run away, hide out, and disappear altogether after a contact. Also, the ‘chase and hunt’ tactic of rescuers can be virtually neutralised by the employment of hand grenades by terrorists, which are extremely effective in narrow and confined routes such as hallways and stairways. Approach can be booby-trapped, which would definitely slowdown, arrest, and even repel the advance of hostage rescue force. Explosive devices deployed by terrorists may also trigger a limited or an out-and-out ‘landslide’ response drilled by operators to escape an instant and unconquerable danger for personal survival. A multitude of windows makes the task of sniper units greatly difficult and its command and control a daunting challenge. On the other hand, snipers can be substantially neutralised by reflective glasses, tinted panes, blinds and curtains, and adverse light conditions. Sending a small assault force inside to resolve a complex terrorist crisis, therefore, is not an option. It takes a much larger force to raid and take over a large stronghold, which comes with its own complications and costs. A swollen size of force takes its toll by weakening command and control, blunting the sharpness of strike, reducing its operational effectiveness, and raising the risks of friendly fire. Flawless ‘areas of responsibility’ and the fail-safe ‘limits of exploitation’ drawn up neatly on paper and drilled repeatedly in a ‘glass house’ with empty guns and imaginary enemies are more likely to be forgotten or deliberately discarded in the actual dynamics of fight inside a large, complex, and fiercely defended stronghold. Response, then, would become interactive and improvised, messy and chaotic. A large operating force increases the risks of loss of life by friendly fire as two hostage rescue teams moving with the flow of events might suddenly and unexpectedly bump into each other. As a rule of thumb, the bigger and more complex the building, the greater time it takes to win it back. It, thus, gives more breathing time and also a plenty of space to terrorists to reorganise to fight longer and regroup to simultaneously engage rescuers and harm hostages as a last resort. A large building needs both more people and more action time to resolve a crisis. Greater numbers of people involved in action can be correlated to the greater risks of human error as a general rule. Fatigue caused by operating for the extended periods of time impairs decision-making and deteriorates physical performance which, in turn, further raises the risks of human error. Although it is neither visible nor acknowledged, the factor of human error might just be a significant cause of loss of life in complex terrorist crises. In a nutshell, all the challenges and difficulties of training as



Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 25

well as operating on smaller scales are multiplied and magnified enormously in a large and complex building. Such a stronghold, an essential feature of a complex terrorist crisis, is a complete nightmare, a perfect nemesis for rescuers. Last and, perhaps, the worst of all is the problem of multiple terrorist strongholds—distributed spatially but occurring simultaneously—in a complex terrorist crisis. For terrorists, a situation cannot get better and for State, it cannot get worse than this. In the initial phase of crisis, a multiple attack situation causes a perfect fog, a complete confusion. There is no credible definition of situation due to a near complete absence of clarity and certainty of events—no one knows as to what exactly is happening and who is behind it. Informed decision-making is, thus, and understandably, rendered impossible in the early phase of coordinated attacks. These conditions allow confusion to run amuck and by the time fog is finally lifted and the big picture becomes clear, State finds itself caught in an impossible situation. Existence of multiple strongholds complicates a hostage crisis beyond belief, for so many situations are there to be dealt with at the same time with all the usual crippling conditions of complex terrorist crisis—a paucity of time, a scarcity of resources, and the enormity of cost. For the safety of hostages cannot be taken as a given in a volatile and unstable situation of siege, State has to be ready for an immediate use of force—for the entire duration of a hostage crisis—in case terrorists begin to take a drastic action against hostages at any instant. In a multiple stronghold situation, then, a counterterrorist assault may have to be initiated at any moment at any stronghold, if State is provoked by terrorists beyond restraint. For this reason, hostage rescue forces have to be mobilised, positioned, and kept on standby for assault at each stronghold soon after a realisation that such complex terrorist crisis has taken place. Also, the storming of one stronghold might require all other strongholds to be stormed at the same time if terrorists are connected to each other or to the outer world via certain means of communication. Inability to do so might cost hostages their lives as action against one stronghold may trigger the final terrorist action against hostages elsewhere out of fright, panic, rage, or revenge. Presumption of jamming all communications links is too naive, for terrorists may force negotiators to restore and resume communications lines available to them, if taken off; to stay connected with each other might be a crucial element of their strategy. A multiple stronghold situation, without doubt, is the worst possible nightmare for State and it is next to impossible to deal with such a complex terrorist crisis effectively if State has not indeed prepared for it in peacetime.

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III What if I say that however complex a terrorist crisis might be, it is indeed very easy to resolve it. Unbelievable, but true it is. It is an ironic fact that a complex terrorist crisis can be resolved rather quickly and quite easily, so long as terrorists are willing to negotiate. All that it takes is a drastic decision made by those in charge of country. If rulers want to save all hostages at all costs, they can choose to surrender and accept the demands of terrorists. Capitulation by State, then, is an option that always exists on the one extreme of crisis resolution spectrum. If rulers, on the other hand, want to protect the ego and authority of State at any cost, they can authorise military to destroy either entire terrorist stronghold or entire life present inside it without harming structure and inanimate objects, by employing conventional or unconventional military weapons and war materials. Annihilation of stronghold or people inside, then, is also an option that always exists on the other extreme of crisis resolution spectrum. Interestingly, these extreme options are equally available to all States in the world, rich or poor, for none of these two solutions indeed requires any expertise, experience, or preparation for dealing with a complex terrorist crisis. Paradoxically, the extreme ways of resolving a crisis are indeed the simplest and easiest ways. Resolution of a complex terrorist crisis is not at all difficult if choices are made between extremes. However, something radically changes about its resolution no sooner than a State chooses to strike a ‘right’ balance by finding a solution somewhere in between—by neither capitulating to the will of terrorists nor sacrificing the lives of hostages. In a situation where State does not want to hurt its pride or harm its image and does not want to abdicate its ‘contractual’ commitment to defend or save its people too, a complex terrorist crisis becomes a problem of unimaginable magnitude. Talking out a resolution has worked many a time in the past, so why not talk terrorists into releasing hostages in a complex terrorist crisis too? After all, expert negotiators are trained to do precisely that. While State must talk to terrorists and begin talking at the earliest if they are willing to, talking is not likely to yield much in the end. There is a reason why negotiation is not a solution to such crises. A complex terrorist crisis is meticulously effected on a spectacular scale by a committed cadre of a capable outfit. It is the culmination of years of planning and preparation and it is planned and executed to achieve certain unambiguous objectives in the end. While a number of people come together to do different things, it is only assault group which finally heads out to strike carefully selected targets. From that moment onwards, assaulters are virtually on their own and the success or



Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 27

failure of mission depends on the grit and performance of these select men and women. Members of assault group are, therefore, picked with extreme care. They are also elaborately trained and prepared to endure the many pressures of a crisis and withstand the psychological and physical onslaught of State. Assaulters, thus, come ready to face the course of their mission and embrace the consequences of their actions, death included. They are made of toughened bodies and hardened minds who cannot be manipulated or prevailed over. Nature of complex terrorist crisis also works in their favour, for it puts so much at stake for State that terrorists naturally acquire a sense of being in total control of situation. They, then, expect State to listen to them rather than to tell them. On account of these factors, negotiating a peaceful resolution of complex terrorist crisis by psychological tricks and manoeuvres— developed to handle petty criminals and the victims of depression—is highly improbable, short of capitulation by State. In all probability, it seems to me, the desire of State to find a ‘right’ balance between capitulation and annihilation can be fulfilled, in the end, only by the force of arms. That talking does not resolve it can be said to be another characteristic of complex terrorist crisis. I am, therefore, proposing that the best uncompromised solution to a complex terrorist crisis—that desirable ‘point of right balance’ between extremes—is a military solution. And, State that does not wish to choose between extremes must be ready for hostage rescue operation in a complex terrorist crisis. This presupposition is the basis of subsequent discussion. If we agree that a right balance between extremes to resolve a complex terrorist crisis is found through a military action, then, the question of its definition demands an answer. What is it that we are calling ‘a right balance’ and where does this point exist on crisis resolution spectrum? Ironically, it is not possible to figure out an exact point of right balance before the fact and it can only be determined subsequent to the resolution of crisis. Also, its fair determination would require a meticulous review of the actual point of right balance attained or claimed by State post-crisis and a critical assessment of all events that happened during crisis coupled with an adversarial analysis of how those events and outcomes could have been influenced in favour of State, that is, in order to resolve crisis with minimal loss. Before the commencement of military action, only an expected point of right balance can be projected to fall within a region of probabilities. If both assessment and job are done well by a hostage rescue force and right decisions are made at right time by political command, we can agree, the actual point of right balance is likely to fall within a predicted region of probabilities or somewhere near this band on crisis resolution spectrum as shown in figure 2.1.

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A point of right balance is neither a fixed point on crisis resolution spectrum nor does it necessarily lie in the middle of its two ends. It fluctuates and may locate itself anywhere between two extremes of capitulation and annihilation, for it is determined by the specifics of situation. Its actual location, moreover, remains transient throughout a crisis and changes with the emerging elements and events of ongoing crisis and their relationships with all other variables of crisis. For a point of right balance is essentially linked to situational dynamics, it cannot be prescribed with exactitude. Its fluidity, however, does not give an excuse to State to do whatever it chooses to or can do and still claim its solution to be the best way of resolving a complex crisis in given circumstances. I assert that this point can be projected technically and that State cannot cover up and pat its back at the expense of people’s lives. State cannot claim the moral high ground of saving lives while it does not do enough to save every single life that can be saved. Only exceptions are the extremes of capitulation and annihilation, for those choices cannot be debated and disputed technically. I will develop a theoretical model of crisis resolution below and employ analytical insights gained from it to examine my hypothesis that a State cannot manufacture a point of right balance for its convenience and there cannot be many different points of right balance for the resolution of a complex terrorist crisis, irrespective of State which grapples with it. While the exact cost of military resolution of a crisis can only be determined by a post-operational assessment and outcome analysis, an expected cost of military resolution can be calculated beforehand by a pre-operational assessment and risk analysis. Crisis resolution model proposed here for this purpose is based on two macrovariables or major risk factors that determine calculations for arriving at an expected cost of military operation. These macrovariables are the complexity of crisis and the ability of State.



Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 29

Risks and cost of its military resolution are directly proportional to the complexity of crisis. If a crisis is more complex, the risks and cost of its military resolution are more. If a crisis is less complex, the risks and cost of its military resolution are less. This reciprocal relationship is shown schematically in figure 2.2 by an ascending curve.

Risks and cost of military resolution of crisis are inversely proportional to the ability of State to deal with it. If State is more capable, the risks and cost of military resolution of a crisis are less. If State is less capable, the risks and cost of military resolution of a crisis are more. This inverse relationship is shown schematically in figure 2.3 by a descending curve. Risks of complexity of a crisis (Rc) are determined by five variables given below: 1. Number of terrorists present inside terrorist stronghold (nt). 2. Battery of armaments in possession of terrorists (na). 3. Number of hostages and trapped persons present inside terrorist stronghold (nh+tp). 4. Number of rooms, floors, corridors, staircases, and other complex features in terrorist stronghold (nrfcs). 5. Number of terrorist strongholds involved in a crisis (ns).

Dignity of Life

30 High

Ability

Low

Loss

High

Risks and Cost of Military Resolution of Crisis Figure 2.3

Risks of complexity of a crisis can, thus, be worked out by adding values or weights assigned to all five determinants mentioned above. For those who love the conceptual brevity of mathematical expressions, its equation can be written as: Rc = nt + na + nh+tp + nrfcs + ns. Risks of ability of State (Ra) are constituted of three risk factors given below: 1. Human errors of action and omission (rhe). 2. Ambiguity of information about terrorists, armaments, hostages, trapped persons, and stronghold (ri). 3. Factor of technological limitations and failures (rtec). Equation for the risks of ability of State can be written as: Ra = rhe + ri + rtec. Risks of human errors of action and omission (rhe) are produced by two variables, which are: 1. Errors of command decisions (rhe (cd)). 2. Errors of operational actions (rhe (oa)). Human error equation can be written as:



Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 31

rhe = rhe (cd) + rhe (oa). Risks of ability of State are, thus, determined by a sum of four variables given below: Ra = rhe (cd) + rhe (oa) + ri + rtec. Total risk of military resolution of a crisis (Rmr) is derived from the risks of complexity of crisis and the risks of ability of State by adding their respective values. Equation for the total risk of rescue operation is: Rmr = Rc + Ra. The above equation can be expanded in the form of independent variables as follows: Rmr = nt + na + nh+tp + nrfcs + ns + rhe (cd) + rhe (oa) + ri + rtec. Risks of complexity are dictated by the strength of numbers of various determinants. These numbers are a given and their properties and values cannot be influenced or altered after a terrorist attack has taken place and settled down in a hostage situation. Risks of complexity, therefore, are a constant, which we can call complexity constant. In mathematical language, it can be written as: Rc = k. Schematically, it is shown in figure 2.4.

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Total risk of military resolution of a crisis, we can say, is a sum of one constant and four variables in a given situation. Mathematically, it is expressed by equation written below: Rmr = k + rhe (cd) + rhe (oa) + ri + rtec. From the above equation, then, it is deduced that it is only the ability of State that maximises or minimises the risks and cost of military resolution of complex terrorist crisis. In other words, only its ability to deal with complex terrorist crisis is in the control of State; it has no control over the complexity of crisis after it has occurred. Though the exact cost of military resolution (Ce-mr) cannot be predetermined or predicted accurately, the probability of it being somewhere close to the expected cost of military resolution (Cx-mr)—worked out by calculating the total risks of military resolution (Rmr)—is high if State is really ready to deal with a complex terrorist crisis. These three entities, then, relate to each other in following fashion: Ce-mr ≈ Cx-mr ≈ Rmr. Calculations of risks and the projections of cost, however, can go completely haywire by the play of a strange factor. I call this the factor of volatility (Vo). Factor of volatility can unexpectedly and dramatically inflate the exact cost of military resolution rendering its predictions completely and ridiculously wrong. Volatility factor diminishes control over events and renders their predictions unreliable. Nature and function of this strange factor is elaborated below. Total number of human agents involved directly in a crisis and interacting physically inside a stronghold during assault constitute three interest groups— rescuers, terrorists, and hostages. For simplification, I am treating trapped persons as hostages although they are a different category of human agents experiencing a different reality in crisis situation. Total number of human agents can be further divided into two categories and it can be said that rescuers and terrorists are active agents while hostages are passive agents in this situation. Out of these three groups of common and shared interest present in a stronghold, two groups of rescuers and hostages are the friends of State, assuming there is no ‘Stockholm syndrome’ in the latter. Terrorists, on the other hand, are the enemies of State. Friends wish and work for the minimisation of loss of life and a quick termination of military action while enemies work for the maximisation of loss of life and a prolongation of military confrontation. Reciprocal and inverse relationships of these groups



Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 33

with each other and with the interest of State are shown schematically by ascending and descending curves in figures 2.5 and 2.6. Best Actions

High Operational Performance

Hostages

Worst Actions

Rescuers

Best Actions

Relationship of Cooperating Groups Figure 2.5 Best Actions

Terrorists High Operational Performance Worst Actions

Rescuers

Best Actions

Relationship of Opposing Groups

    

Figure 2.6

All members in a group are expected to behave rationally and do their best in order to maximise the common interest of their group. However, the behaviour of human beings cannot be presumed rational in all circumstances. Possibility of instinctive and irrational decisions and actions—which are unexpected or undesirable and do more harm than good to the collective interest of group—remains there which introduces an element of uncertainty in the

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assessment of events before they have actually happened. Factor of volatility (Vo) is the sum total of uncertainties of actions of all agents involved directly and interacting physically inside a stronghold during military action. In terms of different groups, it is the sum of cumulative uncertainties of actions of rescuers (Ur), the cumulative uncertainties of actions of terrorists (Ut), and the cumulative uncertainties of actions of hostages (Uh). Its equation can be written as: Vo = Ur + Ut + Uh. Probability plays a significant role in determining the factor of volatility. Volatility factor is directly proportional to the total number of human agents (Nha) which is a sum of total numbers of rescuers (nr), terrorists (nt), and hostages (nh). In mathematical language, it is expressed as follows: Vo ∝ Nha, where Nha = nr + nt + nh.

Greater numbers of individual agents in a situation are likely to increase the uncertainties of human action which, in turn, will make the factor of volatility more potent and powerful. Lesser numbers of individual agents in a situation are likely to reduce the uncertainties of human action which, in turn, will make the factor of volatility less potent and powerful. In other words, the more the people, the more behavioural uncertainties are likely to occur, and vice versa. Due to the play of numbers, the volatility of crisis is linked to and influenced by the complexity of crisis. Numbers are at the heart of complexity. Numbers are what make a situation more or less volatile. All three types of human agents of common interest in a crisis can take correct and quick actions as well as wrong and delayed actions, thereby furthering or compromising the interest of their group. By doing so, they can either impede and limit or hasten and heighten the loss of life. Since these groups have opposing interests and their actions would cancel out each other, they would not make sense for the purpose of deriving the value of volatility factor unless the uncertainties of human actions are benchmarked against a common property—loss of life and time after the commencement of assault. If the actions of agents increase the loss of life and the time of action after the commencement of assault, behavioural uncertainties tend to shift the flow of events towards a complete collapse of control and order leading to a total disaster. At the point of complete chaos, the probability of behavioural risks is 100. On the contrary, if the actions of agents decrease the loss of life and the time of action after the commencement of assault, behavioural uncertainties tend to shift the flow of events towards a clockwork precision



Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 35

leading to a spectacular success of operation. At the point of complete control, the probability of behavioural risks is 0. Probability of behavioural risks can, therefore, vary between the extremes of 100 and 0. Correct and quick actions taken by rescuers minimise the time of confrontation from start to finish. Crisis is resolved swiftly by surgically terminating terrorist threat and rapidly evacuating hostages and trapped people from stronghold. Best decisions and actions of rescuers, thus, maximise the preservation of life by pulling down the probability of behavioural risks closer to 0. It can be expressed mathematically as: Ur ≈ 0. Worst actions caused by the wrong and delayed decisions of rescuers maximise the time of confrontation from start to finish. Wrong actions of rescuers take the initiative away from them, slow down or arrest the tempo of assault, release pressure built on terrorists, and give opportunities to their opponents to recover, regroup, and reorganise for violent confrontation and achieving their mission objectives. Worst decisions and actions of rescuers, thus, maximise the loss of life by raising the probability of behavioural risks closer to 100. It can be expressed mathematically as: Ur ≈ 100. Correct and quick actions taken by terrorists maximise the time of confrontation from start to finish. Such actions take the initiative away from rescuers, slow down or arrest the tempo of charge mounted against them, release pressure built on them, and give them opportunities to recover, regroup, and reorganise for violent confrontation and achieving their mission objectives. Best decisions and actions of terrorists, thus, maximise the loss of life by raising the probability of behavioural risks closer to 100. It can be expressed mathematically as: Ut ≈ 100. Worst actions caused by the wrong and delayed decisions of terrorists minimise the time of confrontation from start to finish. Crisis is resolved early and easily by State. Worst decisions and actions of terrorists, thus, maximise the preservation of life by lowering the probability of behavioural risks closer to 0. It can be expressed mathematically as: Ut ≈ 0.

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Rescuers and terrorists, as we know, are active agents but hostages are passive agents inside a stronghold. Considering their passivity in the resolution of crisis by force, the best decision that hostages can take is that of not doing anything spontaneously and just obeying the commands of rescuers. Only when some of them somehow decide to act out of their own volition during rescue operation, they start to work at cross purposes. Correct decisions and actions of hostages assist rescuers in doing the correct identification of friends and foes, immediately isolating terrorists from hostages, swiftly engaging hostage-takers, rapidly incapacitating and neutralising all agents of death and destruction present in stronghold, and quickly evacuating all hostages to safety. Best decisions and actions of hostages, thus, maximise the preservation of life by pulling down the probability of behavioural risks closer to 0. It can be expressed mathematically as: Uh ≈ 0. Wrong decisions and actions of hostages produce and spread panic reactions, make the identification of friends and foes difficult for rescuers, cause commotion, generate confusion, and degenerate order into chaos. It prolongs the duration of confrontation which then gives opportunities to terrorists to recover, regroup, and reorganise for violent confrontation and achieving their mission objectives. Worst decisions and actions of hostages, thus, maximise the loss of life by lifting the probability of behavioural risks closer to 100. It can be expressed mathematically as: Uh ≈ 100. The above relationships are shown schematically in figures 2.7 and 2.8. Each member of a group can individually take all kinds of decisions and actions—ranging between the best and the worst for the common interest of group. Volatility factor of a group of common interest is determined by cumulative decisions and actions taken individually or collectively by all members of that group during rescue operation. Given so many variables, is there any way State can control the volatility of complex situation? Manifestly, State does not directly control the behaviours and responses of either terrorists or hostages. All it can do to control the play of volatility factor in a complex terrorist crisis is to maximise its own ability that is likely to take the probability of risky actions of rescuers (Ur) closer to 0 during hostage rescue operation. However, by controlling the uncertainties of actions of rescuers, State is able to indirectly control the behaviours and



Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 37

Best

Decisions and Actions

Worst Low

Loss

High

Actions of Terrorists Figure 2.8

responses of terrorists and hostages both. State is able to impose its will on all agents not under its control when its hostage rescue force by a cascading charge and searing force and its rescuers by their lightning decisions and accurate actions are able to effect a remarkable reduction in the probability of behavioural risks of the other two groups of human agents present in stronghold. In other words, a decisive advantage is gained in favour of State by a speedy and unstoppable tempo of assault which rapidly and conclusively deprives the members of other groups of all avenues and opportunities to

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Dignity of Life

consciously or subconsciously act against the interest of State. Actions of both the enemies and friends of State which are inimical and injurious to State are swiftly arrested and positively neutralised by a superb tactical efficacy of agents of State. That strange and sensitive factor of volatility, which is intrinsic to every complex terrorist crisis, is in this manner effectively neutralised by the ability of State. In mathematical terms, State’s complete control over terrorists and hostages can be expressed as: Vo ≈ 0, where Ur ≈ 0, Ut ≈ 0, and Uh ≈ 0. Readiness of State for the military resolution of complex terrorist crisis enables it to take correct and quick decisions and actions at all levels, from political to operational. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Similarly, such readiness of State also cannot be realised rapidly. A decisive military capability for complex crisis resolution can only be achieved methodically over a long period of time by building a robust national framework to deal with complex terrorist crises, finding right material for populating hostage rescue forces, empowering and enabling concerned individuals and organisations in a right way, and equipping these forces with the most reliable tools and technologies available at the time. A systematic approach and honest commitment to building and sustaining complex crisis resolution capacity definitively minimises the risks of ability of State (Ra) by controlling all of its causative factors. Such readiness of State lowers the risks of human errors of action and omission (rhe) at all levels of decision-making, from political to operational command (rhe (cd)) and of all rescuers involved directly in violent action (rhe (oa)). It decreases the risks of ambiguous information about stronghold, hostages, and terrorists (ri) by the countervailing effects of technical efficiency and operational efficacy. Readiness of State also reduces the risks of technological limitations and failures by amassing, updating, and inventing operational hardware required for hostage rescue missions and by implementing procedures necessary for a scientific management and maintenance of operational hardware in order to guarantee a round-the-clock mission readiness of all equipments (rtec). Effects of such readiness can be described mathematically as follows: rhe (cd) (min) + rhe (oa) (min) + ri (min) + rtec (min) = Ra (min) ≈ 0. A rich national framework—with its matrix of multiple and distributed hostage rescue forces—is able to take on multiple strongholds simultaneously and effectively. Risks of numbers of strongholds (ns) are in this way minimised by a capable national framework designed to deal with complex terrorist crises. And, State is able to control and eliminate, with minimal loss, a



Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 39

seemingly overwhelming threat and insurmountable challenge mounted by a multiple stronghold crisis situation. Mathematically, we can write it as: ns ≈ 0. Readiness of State for the military resolution of complex terrorist crisis lifts the probability of effective performance of State closer to a maximum in a given situation by seizing the initiative and sustaining the tempo of assault throughout operation. If there are certain factors that cannot be controlled apparently by State, for example, complexity constant, they have to be taken as givens and dealt with boldly and timely. Outcome of a military resolution is generally catastrophic and rarely serendipitous. The end, therefore, may not be pleasant but this is the best that could be done by any State. It, then, can be called a fair point of right balance and can be calculated as well as verified with some semblance of objectivity. A point of right balance cannot be achieved by State without readiness to deal with complex terrorist crises. Notion of readiness for complex crisis resolution itself needs a definition at this point. At the point of readiness, I propose, the military capability of State suddenly takes a quantum leap that is caused by the phenomenon of emergence. After its emergence, the capacity of State cannot be comprehended in terms of and by summing its constituents since it has ‘emerged’ into an entirely new entity which is not only much more than its parts but also completely different and distinct from them in character. As a result of this phenomenally inflated capability, the military action of State outmanoeuvres terrorists by not giving them space and time to recover, regroup, and reorganise after the commencement of assault. It is no longer a game of hide-and-seek, then. It is all over in one swift and surging wave of action against them. Combined effect of correct anticipation and swift action reduces the risks of human errors of action and omission by rescuers (rhe (oa)) to a minimum, takes the probability of risky actions of rescuers (Ur) closer to 0, and pulls down the probability of risky actions of terrorists (Ut) closer to 0. Similarly, an awfully rapid charge by hostage rescue force overcomes the unpredictable, confusing, and chaotic behaviours of panicked hostages by psychologically overwhelming them and physically controlling and commanding them to complete submission and compliance. When rescuers storm stronghold with lightning speed, when they come like a bolt from the blue, filling space and killing killers everywhere, hostages get no chance to act and freeze in their places instead. Such a dumbfounding action precludes the initiation and propagation of confusion and chaos created by the contagious panic reactions of hostages and brings

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40

down the probability of risky actions of hostages (Uh) closer to 0. State in this manner attains a point of right balance of military resolution of complex crisis. All gains, then, are on the side of life. Military action of State around a point of right balance also manages the risks of stronghold by the acquisition of actionable and reliable information and by simultaneously operating with multiple teams in the same stronghold, which spectacularly break in with synchronicity and swarm all over stronghold in no time. Quality of information and the reach and speed of action together offset the odds of failure and bring down the risks of ambiguity of information about terrorists, hostages, and stronghold (ri) closer to 0. Mathematically speaking, this state, then, is: ri ≈ 0. Thus, at a point of right balance, the military capability of State is able to influence, check, reduce, and neutralise seemingly independent, uncontrollable, irreducible, and unalterable factors constituting the volatility (Vo) and complexity (Rc) of crisis. It is a consequence of State’s military readiness to deal with complex terrorist crises. At the point of readiness, complexity curve is sharply bent by a sudden inflation of military capability of State caused by emergence, as shown schematically in figure 2.9. Complexity bending is an incredible phenomenon that may not neutralise the complexity of a crisis completely but considerably reduces its impact and effect on the outcome of military resolution.

Emergence of Military Capability

k

Complexity

Unable to Resolve Complex Terrorist Crisis

0

Ability

Point of Readiness

Complexity Bending Figure 2.9



Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 41

By minimising risks and uncertainties related to terrorists, hostages, stronghold, and a multiplicity of target sites as well as risks related to command decisions and rescue operation, the ability and preparedness of State to militarily deal with complex terrorist crises reduces the exact cost of military resolution (Ce-mr) much below the expected risks of military resolution (Rmr) of crisis. Mathematical expression for this state is: If Vo ≈ 0, Rc ≈ 0, and Ra ≈ 0, Ce-mr < Rmr. Self-organised, unfathomable, and uncontrollable complexity of crisis, then, is effectively handled as if it has been bared, unravelled, and simplified by the sharp edge of readiness and ability of State to militarily resolve a complex terrorist crisis with minimal loss. In addition to variables discussed above, it is important to understand the critical role of time, in its own right, in determining the risks and cost of military operation. Although a hostage rescue force is always ready to undertake a rescue mission, for a specific operation, it needs to fine-tune its plan of action to the specifics of crisis. This exercise is a function of time. It takes time to mobilise and despatch forces with equipments for a large-scale operation like a complex crisis intervention and beyond a point, it cannot be controlled favourably, for distance determines journey time. Assuming that there is no delay in transporting and transferring forward detachments and main forces from their bases to the theatres of operation, time taken in organising for action, which starts immediately after the arrival of forward detachment at the scene (t1), becomes more important. Exercise of planning and organising continues right up to zero hour (t0). Time taken in assembling and organising for action (∆t) is inversely related to the risks and cost of military resolution of complex crisis (Rmr). If required time is available, a force is better prepared and performs better, or vice versa. Mathematically, these relationships can be expressed as follows: Rmr ∝ 1/∆t, where ∆t = t0 − t1.

If State is forced to take military action by sending forward detachment in without giving time to hostage rescue command to assemble and organise its main forces for action, the risks and cost of military resolution are augmented and tend to reach a maximum. On the other hand, if hostage rescue command gets sufficient time to assemble and organise its main forces for action and if it strikes at the moment of its choice, the risks and cost of military

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resolution plummet and tend to reach a minimum. Inverse relationship of time required for organising for action to the risks of military action is shown schematically by a descending curve in figure 2.10. High

Immediate Action

Loss

Deliberate Action Low

0

Time

Time in Crisis Resolution Figure 2.10

Given the critical importance of time in saving lives, nothing but the principle of minimal loss can justify an immediate or premature action undertaken by forward detachment. Corollary to this rule is equally sacrosanct and inviolable: Military response cannot and shall not wait for a complete mobilisation if immediate intervention is warranted by the principle of minimal loss. Everything is absolutely and inescapably tied down to the primary goal of saving life. Why mathematics? I admit that the expected risks and cost of military operation would only give a vague sense of reality and the numbers derived from mathematical equations would not mean much in this undertaking. I am also aware that the purpose of calculating and quantifying the expected risks and cost of military operation is limited—to assess the readiness of State for resolving a complex terrorist crisis militarily. This exercise, I concede, has no scientific purpose, objective, or value and calculations done in one situation will have no bearing on another situation. Why, then, I have gone to great pains to write these mathematical expressions—to do something I am not good at—when I could have easily predicated my theory on narrative without mathematics, on description without calculations? While human relationships and responses cannot be reduced to pure numbers as done in the world of physics, we can certainly make better sense of things by reasonably assigning arbitrary values to various variables. Such efforts to do



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maths cannot give our conclusions coveted scientific objectivity and certainty but our derivations, then, do not remain purely subjective and amorphous either. They assume a quasi-objective character and certainly become more transparent, if not more reliable—hence mathematics. I propose a four-point scale of numerical values for risk analytics: 1. Low with a value ranging between 1 and 3 or the mean value of 2. 2. Medium with a value ranging between 4 and 5 or the mean value of 4.5. 3. High with a value ranging between 6 and 7 or the mean value of 6.5. 4. Very High with a value ranging between 8 and 10 or the mean value of 9. All variables are assessed subjectively as low, medium, high, or very high and assigned specific or mean values based on expert assessment and their sum total is averaged out on a scale of 1 to 10 in order to find the factor of risk in terms of low, medium, high, or very high. Now, a necessary word of caution about modelling. If not completely ridiculous, it is certainly an overly simplistic maths, for relationships between these variables are not going to be linear as shown in given functions. Their dynamical nature can only be expressed by non-linear functions but, then, it is impossible to exactly quantify the values of all interacting factors in the first place to do any meaningful calculations for establishing their relationships. Also, a probabilistic risk assessment would not make much sense in a complex terrorist crisis anyway, irrespective of complex computing tools used, for risk would actually remain in a state of flux throughout and change unprecedentedly with unpredictable human actions, counteractions, and reactions during the progression of events. Any value derived at the beginning of operation, therefore, would mean little or nothing in reality and, if it does turn out to be right, I would not call it by any other name but a fluke. Given these limitations, I did not attempt to refine this model mathematically by means of machine learning, which might have yielded better—certainly more impressive—functions. A crude modelling has been nonetheless attempted and proposed, essentially to balance intuitive assessments and numbers offered by experts, which are arrived at and derived through the indefinable and unfathomable processes of their minds. At the same time, it would also not be prudent to summarily rubbish such enigmatic risk projections as made

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abstrusely by experts in favour of certain values calculated by a transparent but equally unreliable model used for computing risks. It is indeed sensible to use the judgement and figures of expert intuition alongside numbers processed by this or another such model to make sense of risks before commencing a rescue operation, provided we have time for it. If nothing else, a seemingly scientific method of mathematical equations is likely to bolster the confidence of rescuers and commanders—and their controllers too—just the same, by subtly working on their psyche shaped by a shared belief of humanity in science. Conversely, it is also likely to save face should projections made by a model turn out to be ridiculously wrong, for it, then, might not be seen as a personal failure of involved individuals, which in all probability would be seen that way if risk projections are made intuitively. Let us now settle a crucial question for which the above modelling is done in the first place. Can State arbitrarily claim, after the fact, that its military resolution of a crisis was the best job that could be done in given circumstances, irrespective of the quantum of loss suffered in action? And, can it also argue that this loss, in the final analysis, was determined primarily by the complexity of crisis and not by the ability of State? It can, of course, be said that while ability to deal with complex terrorist crisis can be acquired by State before a crisis, such ability during a crisis is a given; it cannot be improved at the time in any manner. If we assume that State’s ability is a constant for the duration of crisis, then, a higher degree of complexity will cause a greater loss, and vice versa. Also, complexity factor cannot be altered in character after a crisis has formed itself; it remains a constant all through the duration of crisis. By a sophistry of double constants, therefore, State might try to persuasively argue that loss incurred was essentially a function of complexity. However, on a closer examination of facts, we can assert that it is not entirely true to say that the complexity of crisis cannot be altered in its effects, for the ability of State works as a counteracting force against it; State’s ability can and does force a substantial reduction in loss, provided it is able to effect the phenomenon of complexity bending by its speedy and efficacious action. Is it, then, not the ability of State which finally determines loss? Loss, we must bear in mind, is a resultant function of complexity et al., not a function of its structural form per se; the factors of ability and volatility interact with complexity and it is their combined interaction which causes loss, not complexity as such. Ability, thus, becomes a prime suspect, for it may aggravate or moderate the factor of volatility and, in turn, the effects of complexity.



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Let us call State’s bluff by further exposition of this argument. In the context of complex terrorist crisis, the readiness and ability of State to effectively deal with a complex crisis has to be assessed in binary terms such as ‘eitheror,’ ‘black-white,’ ‘able-unable.’ It is so because a State is either able to deal with a complex terrorist crisis or not. A State is either prepared to resolve a complex terrorist crisis with minimal loss or not. Readiness of State to rescue hostages from a complex situation has to be one hundred percent— full, total, and complete. If a State is less ready, it is not ready. It is either black or white in this business and State cannot hide behind the abundant shades of grey occurring and available in between. If a State is not able and, hence, not ready to deal with a complex terrorist crisis, its solution for crisis resolution would naturally tend to shift either towards capitulation or towards annihilation, instead of gravitating towards a point of right balance where military action is swift and surgical and causes minimal loss. When attempts are made by an unprepared State to search a solution closer to but short of capitulation, crisis drags on much longer. When attempts are made by an unprepared State to search a solution closer to but short of annihilation, action drags on much longer. In both cases, a lot of time is lost and in the latter case of military resolution, loss is compounded by the death of hostages on a large scale. All States which have faced complex terrorist crises were eventually able to resolve them one way or another. Crisis resolution, in itself, is no big deal, therefore. It assumes extraordinary proportions only when the question of cost is asked—resolution at what cost; when cost is assessed in terms of loss of time and life. For example, could it have been less costly only if State was better prepared both in terms of its ability to prevent a crisis from happening and to resolve it in the best possible way after it had happened? Ability of a State in the matters of handling non-State threats depends solely and totally on its will and endeavours. State is the most powerful and resourceful organisation that humankind has so far been able to invent. It just cannot fail easily in such matters if it chooses not to. Inability of a State to deal with complex terrorist crisis, then, is entirely of its own making. Nothing but the errors of action and omission, committed and compounded by several generations of political and professional men and women in charge of running the affairs of State, are responsible for a ‘skewed point of balance’—that an unprepared State is able to achieve by military action—causing a greater loss of time and life. State cannot argue afterwards that a particular solution was a ‘point of right balance’ between the extremes of capitulation and annihilation in given or overall circumstances without

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accounting for its own long-term lapses and inaction to prepare for a crisis like this. A definition of ‘overall circumstances’ must include reasons for the inability of State since State, by its own admission, is ‘duty-bound’ to save its citizens and, by extension, mitigate loss to a fullest extent of possibility. It should have foreseen such a crisis and prepared for it in time. If it did not, then, there should be the legitimate outpourings of rage and anger by its citizens against their State, as much as against terrorists, for both are responsible for causing the loss of life. If there are reasons to believe that more lives could have been saved than what a State could save in the end, it has to take the blame for not being able to resolve crisis with minimal loss, an outright capitulation excluded. Also, if any other State could have resolved this crisis militarily in a better way and saved more lives, the State in question has to admit its failure and inability. State cannot absolve itself from failing to imagine and prepare before a catastrophe actually struck. No one but State itself is to blame, then. As the owner of a territory, the enforcer of its diktats on its land, and the monopolist of violence inside its area, a State, on the face of it, has ethical, contractual, and juridical responsibility, so to speak, to defend all human beings living on its territory from all kinds of dangers and threats and to save their lives in all situations and circumstances. It is only reasonable, then, to expect that State possesses ability to deal with complex terrorist crisis too. If a State has it, the factor of ability becomes a universal constant— the best that any State can do globally at the time by following the best standards and practices of human organisation and also by perpetually striving to stay on a path of excellence. In that case, it is only the complexity of a terrorist crisis which finally determines the quantum of loss—to whichever extent it can still cause loss after receiving a severe blow of complexity bending delivered by a prepared State. We certainly, then, cannot blame such a State for incurring a residual loss, for this residual loss is what we call minimal loss. IV Our culture fosters a mechanistic worldview of orderliness and controllability, certainty and predictability. As a consequence, we learn to ignore the reality of disorderly perturbations and turbulences, causing randomness and chaos in the world and treat such regularly occurring phenomena as aberrations, anomalies, deviations, and unusual events. By the end of twentieth century, this dominant view of the world was seriously challenged by the same profession that established it a few centuries ago—science. Veterans, at the



Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 47

end of their long scientific careers, were doing a serious rethink; young minds were even more enthusiastic to revisiting the classical mechanistic world and rediscovering a neglected world of complexity and chaos. Winds of change had begun to blow and the world of science was at the threshold of another paradigm shift. Belgian physical chemist Ilya Prigogine who was one such veteran captured the spirit of this movement beautifully: “It appears now that the gap between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’, between ‘disorder’ and ‘order’ is narrower than it was thought before. . . . Rationality can no longer be identified with ‘certainty’, nor probability with ignorance, as has been the case in classical science. At all levels, in physics, in biology, in human behaviour, probability and irreversibility play an essential role. We are witnessing a new convergence between two ‘visions of the world’, the one emerging out of scientific experience, and the other we get from our personal existence, be it through introspection or through existential experience.” Our preferred and selective world of order and stability had begun to grudgingly and gradually give way to a real world around us, full of randomness and irreversibility. That things which appear normal and orderly suddenly start to go wrong and situation gets out of control is well known to humanity since beginning. Existence of such uncertainty and uncontrollability has been variously expressed in different times and cultures. Most popular expression of this strange tendency is found in what is called Murphy’s Law. It states that if something can possibly go wrong, then it certainly will. The fact that it has been proverbially accorded the status of a law reflects the universality and all-pervasiveness of this phenomenon. It is, however, no longer a matter of casual observation or merely a word of caution as it has been in the past. Instead, this problem has now become a subject of serious scientific enquiry. Why does this happen? Why does order suddenly fall apart and randomness tend to take over? One reason ascribed to such phenomenon is known as sensitive dependence on initial conditions, popularly known as ‘butterfly effect,’ which means that seemingly insignificant and tiny events located remotely can produce catastrophic effects. James Gleick, an American writer, finds its simplest explanation in folklore: “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; For want of a shoe, the horse was lost; For want of a horse, the rider was lost;

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For want of a rider, the battle was lost; For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost!” And, as they say: ‘All for the want of a horseshoe nail!’ Another explanation suggests that the disruption of order is intrinsic to a system and not necessarily linked to influencing variables. Danish and Chinese theoretical physicists Per Bak and Kan Chen argue that complex “systems naturally evolve to a critical state in which a minor event starts a chain reaction that can affect any number of elements in the system.” A cascading reaction has inherent potential of either magnifying into a catastrophe or just producing a minor event. It is “an integral part of the dynamics” of complex systems. “The theory of self-organized criticality makes a simple prediction about sandpiles: when a single grain of sand is dropped on a pile, it usually causes a few grains to fall, but every so often it will initiate a large avalanche.” Self-organised criticality, propounded as a holistic theory of dynamic systems, underlines that both tiny as well as catastrophic events are “the global features” that “do not depend on the microscopic mechanisms” of a system and, hence, the “global features of the system cannot be understood by analyzing the parts separately.” Scientific insights into non-linearity and complexity are now influencing our understanding of physics, chemistry, biology, meteorology, economics, politics, administration, and much more besides. I will make an attempt to apply these insights to military organisation too for laying the foundations of a theoretical framework for hostage rescue in a complex terrorist crisis. A system is defined as a set of things linked to each other that work together as a whole for a particular purpose, or so it seems. All systems are made of parts. When all parts come together and get organised into a whole that behaves as a unit with a purpose, output nearly often exceeds input. It is so because interaction among its constituent parts creates synergies that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. When parts are put together as a system, the synergies of their coming together are promptly seen in output. If, however, right parts in right amount are organised in a right way and given sufficient time to interact with each other in favourable conditions, it is possible that their interaction may somehow kick-start a galloping process of cooperation, coexistence, and coevolution. This, in turn, reinforces, refines, and revitalises all constituent parts which feed back to system to improve it further. Process of feedback internally



Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 49

advances system in its capacity and capability which rapidly and increasingly becomes greater and bigger with reference to the collective capacities and capabilities of its parts. Such self-reinforcing process, then, starts to propel system towards a strange metamorphosis—from merely being a collection of its parts with certain synergies to something with a distinct identity of its own. Such enigmatic transformation happens when system crosses a threshold of coevolution—that mysterious milestone called the ‘tipping point’ past which a system rapidly self-organises and precipitates its sudden and spontaneous emergence into an entirely different state and entity. A system becomes a complex system after the transformational event of emergence. The whole now is not only much greater than the sum of its parts but its nature is absolutely different and distinct from its parts and their collection. Also, it cannot be explained as a collection of parts because it has now acquired certain unique characteristics and properties which cannot be ascribed to components it is made of. Phenomenon of emergence is best understood by the event of amino acids and proteins coming together to form a cell. A cell is made of amino acids and proteins but it is also alive. Life, we know it well, is much more and totally distinct from non-living molecules that make a cell. Also, life cannot be understood merely by understanding its molecular composition and structure. Emergence of this complexity is a result of self-organisation that somehow triggers a ‘phase shift’ and enlivens cell. A complex system remains poised but does not get to a steady state equilibrium. Prigogine explains it why: “Non-equilibrium matter is much more sensitive to its environment than matter at equilibrium. I like to say that at equilibrium, matter is blind; far from equilibrium it may begin to ‘see’.” A complex system finds a right balance between stiffness and suppleness that renders it robust as well as resilient. Its rigidity enables system to retain its structure and character against internal and external forces that otherwise may disrupt it. Its flexibility, on the other hand, allows system to adapt and adjust to ever-changing environmental pressures and conditions. If it is too rigid and brittle, system would not be able to adapt and would either break apart or gradually disintegrate in the face of challenging environmental forces. If it is too pliant and malleable, it will lose its cohesive structure, identity, character, and purpose in a dynamic world. As American writer Mitchell Waldrop explains, “Complex systems have somehow acquired the ability to bring order and chaos into a special kind of balance. This balance point— often called the edge of chaos—is where the components of a system never quite lock into place, and yet never quite dissolve into turbulence, either.

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The edge of chaos is where life has enough stability to sustain itself and enough creativity to deserve the name of life.” Due to their ability to rapidly adapt to a changing environment, complex systems are also called ‘complex adaptive systems.’ A complex adaptive system is not controlled by a central command and does not process information in a linear fashion. Rigidity and discipline enforced by a hierarchical central control makes it difficult for a system to survive and thrive in a complex and unstable environment. A complex adaptive system has a distributed and parallel decisional architecture instead. Its decentralised components interact, cooperate, and coordinate locally and react independently in order to cope with and adapt to an evolving environment. A complex terrorist crisis, I propose, is better understood as a complex problem with random dynamics, uncertain future, and irreversible dimensions. Its stability and control remains poised at the edge of chaos like a high sandpile. A complex problem and challenges thrown by its non-linear dynamic environment cannot be controlled by tools operating with linear logic, fixed functions, and remote control. They are too rigid and sluggish; they cannot selforganise and adapt immediately by acting locally and reacting independently. We need adaptive tools to deal with the complex and unstable nature and environment of such a crisis if we want to resolve it with minimal disorder and do not want it to descend uncontrollably into chaos by disturbance caused by our actions. Let us describe the problem of complex terrorist crisis in its own argot. In a complex terrorist crisis, often much less is known and certain about terrorists, hostages, and stronghold while much more remains ambiguous and opaque about situation. What is seen and known is merely the tip of the iceberg. A vast mass of the reality remains submerged and hidden from sight. In these conditions, it is impossible to make a perfect, or even a workable plan. Also, given innumerable variables that are all set to interact with one another and with the whole, the evolution of situation can have no direction, so the course of events and their culmination cannot be predicted. It can only be controlled by managing events in real time as they occur and evolve. It has been repeatedly observed in complex terrorist crises that a rescue operation might start with a meticulous plan and perfect order but inside terrorist stronghold, the interaction of innumerable variables rapidly and uncontrollably pushes situation towards disorder. Soon after that, initial order, fragile as it was, tends to degenerate into chaos, and it mostly does. Hostage rescue operation is a complex mission if we care for the lives of



Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 51

hostages and desire to control the loss of life. It is a complex mission in technical sense too, for its events and outcomes cannot be predicted with certainty. Situation inside stronghold remains highly unstable and volatile up until mission is accomplished in its entirety; it can unfold uncontrollably and unpleasantly at any moment before operation is finally called off. There can be countless events which can bring disorder during operation and, hence, it is impossible to fix it in a fail-safe and perfect manner by something planned in advance or someone sitting at a distance. It has to be dealt with right there where things happen, when they happen, and as they happen. A conventional military organisation is structured like a mechanical system and follows a linear logic. It is designed and built for a central control and processes information linearly through its hierarchical chain of command. Its structure makes organisation very disciplined and orderly. But discipline of its members makes it quite rigid too. Also, the distance of its commanders from cutting edge, who take decisions for its operating arm, makes it sluggish and lag behind events. A centrally controlled military organisation, therefore, fails to adapt and respond to a fast changing world in which it exists and operates during a complex terrorist crisis. When a typical military organisation intervenes in an ongoing and rapidly evolving situation, it generates excessive friction and lethargy due to latency in communication, the ambiguity of information, and the varied interpretations of available inputs. Consequent indecision or wrong decisions of a distant central command create confusion and cause a breakdown of control and coordination at the sharp edge of fighting front. Organisation having lost its logic, now, swings to the other extreme—towards randomness with the loss of order at the front and also of control of command. It, then, rapidly spirals into chaos, for it is not in the habit of solving local problems immediately and fails to control events completely. Soon after chaos has set in, system collapses as a whole—randomness takes over, the direction of events is lost, and the control of situation vanishes. Only due to its enormous numerical superiority, State is eventually able to overwhelm and eliminate terrorists. In the process, however, it incurs the unacceptable and avoidable loss of time and life in stark and unfortunate infringement of the principle of minimal loss. A relevant question to ask, then, is: How a hostage rescue force can overcome these limitations and challenges? In order to safely rescue hostages from the custody and control of terrorists holed up in a complex stronghold, a hostage rescue force should have the ability to constantly adapt to a complex environment and immediately respond to a dynamic situation. Its decisions and actions have to be taken in real time at the fighting front where it contacts

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terrorists, hostages, hazards, obstacles, and bottlenecks. When descended into disorder, it should be able to quickly overcome shock and create order out of chaos by rapidly recovering, reorganising, and responding to a developing situation in a way necessary for achieving mission. A fighting force can acquire such ability as required to successfully deal with the rapidly unfolding events and uncertainties of complex terrorist crisis only if it has the characteristics of complex adaptive system and behaves like one. Emergence of a hostage rescue force into a complex adaptive system requires certain essential conditions and ingredients to begin with and sufficient time to self-organise thereafter. Remainder of this book is about these essential conditions and about sustaining them until it tips over, undergoes a phase change, and becomes a self-organised complex system. Money is not a real problem as generally believed, for challenge here is not to raise a well equipped ‘elite’ hostage rescue force. It instead is to create an adaptive entity with ability to immediately and rightly respond to fast moving events happening inside terrorist stronghold during action. Real problem is its sensitive dependence on initial conditions—how to assemble right people and organise them in a right way inside a right environment—and, then, how to sustain them together until emergence.

Chapter 3 Decision-Making in Crisis

I All of us know what do we do when we unknowingly lift something real hot or suddenly step on a spike—we react instantly and recoil speedily to move away from the source of threat to our body. It happens rather automatically without us realising how because we, like other animals, are hardwired to ‘act’ instinctively in some way, when surprised by something or when we sense something as an immediate threat. It is our stimulusresponse-based inbuilt defence mechanism which has ensured our survival as a species through an interminable evolutionary struggle. Can such a reaction be linked to or called a consequence of a decision, since we are concerned with decisions here. Not indeed, when the twelfth edition of Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘decision’ as “a conclusion or resolution reached after consideration,” which I find the most succinct definition of decision. Evidently, there is not enough time in such situations and it would be too late for our safety and survival if we have to come to a conclusion after consideration. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the processing of information relayed by our senses is autonomic and signals for action are transmitted to muscles directly without an application of mind and, arguably, without wasting time in taking a decision, given the immediacy of threat. No wonder evolution retains the most suitable qualities in living species. Let us discuss the problem of decision now. How do we make decisions for taking actions in normal life especially in economic affairs? We first define a goal in our mind that we want to achieve. Then, we make efforts to gather as much information as possible on our part in relation to goal or as much information as required in a particular situation. We, then select several options available to achieve goal and compare all options carefully to make an optimum choice. This is the best anyone can do to make a 53

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decision. Interesting thing, however, is that not every time, everyone is right even after doing due diligence in making a decision. So, it can be said that a decision inherently incorporates risk, an element of uncertainty, in terms of its outcome and best decisions may also fail. In other words, a considered decision does not mean that it is a fail-safe decision and success is guaranteed. Irrespective of outcome, however, a decision-maker who has applied mind and done a detailed analysis can draw some satisfaction from the fact that it may not be a right decision but it is certainly a well informed and well thought out decision, the best decision, so to speak. At the time of making decision, additional clues to improve it are either not available or not yielding any significant improvement to a conclusion already drawn. Moreover, as always, the benefit of hindsight is not available at the time. While rational decisions are not perfect decisions, we know that the analytical approach of decision-making works well most of the time in relatively stable and known scenarios that we routinely face in our world. The above discussion suggests that most of our actions can be called either reflexive or deliberate. Reflexive actions are involuntary and autonomic, instinctive and automatic. There is no application of mind or no intent behind a reflexive action. It is commanded by that part of our neural system which is beyond the reach of our conscious mind. So, we do not get to know how it happens. But when it happens, it happens almost instantly. Neural process manifests directly in action, it can be said, due to the absence of processing of stimulus and response in conscious brain which takes time and precedes a deliberate action. To put it differently, what precedes a deliberate action is a decision. In contrast, a reflexive action is characterised by an absence of decision. A decision taken in mind, then, can be said to be a consequence of application of mind and a result of formation of intention. Reflexive and deliberate actions can be further contrasted by their mechanisms and range of options. Reflexive actions are the outcomes of stimulus-response mechanism which has a limited range of built-in responses hardwired in organisms, evolved over the eons, primarily for surviving in a hostile world. Deliberate actions, on the other hand, are the outcomes of an information-deliberationdecision-action mechanism which has an unlimited range of creative actions especially in the case of an intelligent species like ours. A deliberate action is an execution of intention. It is a realisation of thought in the physical world. It is an element of behaviour, not just an abstract idea existing in the realm of mind. In contrast, decision is just a thought, an idea that resides in mind and awaits translation into action. Two are linked, though, for decision is the basis of deliberate action. Deliberate actions can



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be further divided into two categories—actions based on rational decisions and those based on intuitive decisions. Process of making a rational decision is deliberative and systematic. It is arrived at by carrying out a decision analysis, that is, by listing a set of alternative options available for solving a problem and then evaluating them methodically to find the best solution. A presumption that is implicit in this approach is that a greater number of options and superior computing ability to compare and contrast them systematically would yield a better decision. Rational analysis for making decision has been formalised and prescribed by academic researchers. Weight of research on its side notwithstanding, this approach has its limitations too, for rational choices can be made only in contexts where the nature of problem is well structured, situation is not fleeting and facts are not transient, situational variables and their relationships are known well, a set of alternatives is available and options are distinct and limited in number, and we have sufficient time and resources for the evaluation of alternatives to find the best course of action. Such contexts are characterised by a certainty of events and the reliability of actions. It is a suitable decision-making strategy for an orderly world in our control. But the real world is full of messy situations too and in such a world, this approach is called into question. Decisions made by us based on reason and analysis can be called rational or analytical decisions. Exercise of making carefully considered decisions often takes time and delays our decisions. That does not concern us much, however, for in normal times, we have plenty of time. But not every time in life we have enough time to make analytical decisions, for it might be too late and damage that we want to avert might be done before we act. So, how do we decide when we do not have time? Or, what if we encounter difficult problems where we do not have much time to deliberate and ponder about a best decision for taking action in order to control the course of events desirably? In such situations, we are forced to act under severe constraint and an extreme pressure of time. To make it worse, information itself is a big problem to deal with if problem itself is ill-structured and it cannot be defined correctly and understood completely. Information, in such situations, is missing, contradictory, ambiguous, vague, erroneous, and inadequate, all at the same time. It is also changing all the time if situation is ongoing and new facts are emerging continuously. Such situations are also often characterised by information overload, an excessive inflow of information, most of which is not relevant and just a noise but eating up our limited attentional resource and keeping us from useful facts. In these situations, our immediate and intermediate goals to control events are also transient and they change as situation changes. More often than not, official procedures

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to deal with such situations are either not there or they are not useful; they are better discarded than consulted and followed, therefore. Then, there might also be daunting situational problems concerning the mobilisation of material resources, the coordination of many tasks and many agencies at the same time, overcoming unwanted digressions and unnecessary interruptions, bad weather, poor lighting, high stakes, a fear of failure, the risks of losing lives, and much else besides. Welcome to the real world of making crisis decision, for these are all the elements of a crisis. Little wonder, then, that we do not follow meticulous rational analysis in uncertain, ongoing, opaque, and ambiguous crisis situations. How, then, do we make decisions in such situations? Before coming to crisis decision-making, however, I would discuss hostage crisis context, our main subject, at the risk of repetition. II Pressure of time in a hostage crisis is tremendous. Those who deal with it are acutely aware that the clock is ticking and making decisions for the resolution of crisis is a race against time. Negotiations, if happening, might just break down. Bombs might be set off. Execution of hostages might begin. Any moment! It is known to people who deal with hostage crisis that underlying situation remains highly volatile and fragile and superficial truce, stand-off, balance, or equilibrium, whatever we may call it, which exists is highly unstable, sensitive, precarious, and deceptive. Crisis managers indeed race against the clock until its resolution. Time in such a tight context becomes a powerful stressor that all too often lowers our cognitive ability and impairs our judgement. A decision-maker is caught in a difficult bind as, on the one hand, he is faced with an acute shortage of time to get a grasp on situation but, on the other hand, he is compelled to take decisions swiftly and execute them timely lest situation, as precarious as it is, might just get out of hand any time. This, though, is the very nature of crisis and we cannot do anything about it. Worse still, the nature and magnitude of problem in a crisis is much bigger than the shortage of time. Problem of time is just one facet of the whole gamut; there are many more crippling conditions and overwhelming factors that are required to be grappled with during a hostage crisis. To make matters worse, the paucity of time does not stop at being a problem in itself; it also reacts with and compounds the disabling effects of other problems and makes life still more difficult for crisis responders by its negative and disruptive play. A hostage crisis that fits the description of complex terrorist crisis is a dangerously vague situation right from the beginning through the end. It takes



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quite some time and information in the first place before a realisation dawns on people that a mass hostage situation has occurred. If the full scale and all aspects of crisis are never clear even after it is over, we can only imagine how limited is the quantum and quality of information that we have in hand while it is still going on. So much is there to know about terrorists, hostages, trapped persons, and stronghold such as numbers, location, dead, injured, intention, ideology, leadership, affiliation, arsenal, training, communication, rooms, floors, design, layout, construction, hazardous material and machinery, and so forth. So much depends, conventionally speaking, on the accuracy of information. And, so little time is there to define, decide, and act. Given the momentous role of information in crisis resolution, I want to elaborate on the problem of crisis information outlined in brief above. It is not without reason if we often feel powerless in the face of crisis. For information is power; with power you control. When you do not have information, you become bereft of power and cannot control the world. Information-induced powerlessness in a situation reduces our capacity to influence the outcomes of events occurring in it, even if we are powerful otherwise. There are several dimensions of this problem. Information available in a crisis is never complete and we do not know how complete or incomplete it actually is. A lot worse is that what we know concerning crisis is often incorrect and erroneous but we do not know it at the time. Problem of incompleteness and incorrectness of information is compounded by the ambiguity of available pieces of information which can be connected and interpreted variously. Then, there are several conflicting and contradictory pieces of information that create doubt and call into question the credibility of the whole gamut of information and assumptions based on it. Also, the problem of information is required to be solved amidst noise produced by an overflow of irrelevant information coming in from all sides causing counterproductive information overload and costly digression. Since a crisis does not present a fixed and frozen situation, information remains in a state of constant flux; the new pieces of information keep trickling in continuously with evolving events. No wonder, then, that crisis information causes considerable cognitive overload, widespread confusion, huge uncertainty, and serious differences among people, which sometimes are even irreconcilable. Together, they deliver a mighty blow on the efficiency and effectiveness of a decision-maker, for the impairment of his cognition and judgement induced by time pressure is further worsened by an additional friction generated by the problem of information in a crisis. A large part of crisis decision-making at various levels is about resolving the issues of coordination between many different jobs, agents, and agencies that converge at the same time and space. In a mass hostage crisis that we are

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concerned with here, the huge amounts of manpower and material resources are mobilised and deployed, commanded and controlled. The event of large numbers of variegated persons and organisations coming together to resolve crisis causes conflicts and clashes, even turf wars, due to competing interests, differing perspectives, differential priorities, individual egotism, organisational rivalries, intermediate goal setting, and a host of other human problems, which increase situational friction further and aggravate the challenges of making and executing decisions in time. Dealing with experts is not easy anywhere but it is particularly difficult to handle those who bear arms and wear uniforms due to their excessive pride and inflated egos, which are cultivated carefully and inculcated consistently in a closed military world they come from. Risks and stakes in a crisis are always high but in certain situations, they are indeed frightening. Risk is defined and understood both in terms of probabilities and effects. As British psychologist Glynis Breakwell explains, “Risk is the probability of a particular adverse event occurring during a stated period of time. In terms of probability, risk refers to the likelihood of some specific negative event (delineated as closely as possible in terms of amount, intensity and duration) as a result of an exposure to a hazard. . . . In terms of effects, risk refers to the extent of the detriment (the numerical estimate of the harm) associated with the adverse event” and “focuses upon the severity or scale of consequences. . . . People do not wish simply to know how likely an adverse outcome is; they also want to know how bad that outcome will be.” Risks in a complex terrorist crisis are estimated and projected in terms of chances of things going wrong and events getting out of control and also in terms of expected loss of life and time taken in resolving crisis. But the problem of risk does not end with an estimated death toll and length of time of operation. Spectre of risk silently but persistently weighs responders and rescuers down in their minds as risk is also intensely perceived in terms of losing face and failing to keep a commitment by men called out to save the day. A sense of failing to save both innocent lives and professional credibility weighs heavily on men and might numb already nervous decision-makers because with each decision of theirs comes the moral burden of responsibility—even if the question of legal accountability is silent when coping with a crisis. Each man has to come face to face with a moral crisis in his inner world in addition to a crisis that is playing out in the real world, which he is called out to resolve. Risks of action thus further bolster the friction of crisis by having a baleful effect on the emotional stability and intellectual sharpness of a decision-maker.



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Reliability and life of decisions in a crisis is intrinsically limited. A hostage crisis being an ongoing phenomenon cannot be resolved by a single or a few decisions taken at any one level at any one time, other than accepting the demands of terrorists, if any, and, thus surrendering and capitulating to their will. As a matter of fact, action for crisis resolution by military force can only be initiated by certain decisions taken at command level. After the commencement of action, however, situation evolves rapidly due to a complex interaction and unpredictable interplay of all human beings present inside stronghold but thinking and acting differently with different objectives in minds and simultaneously interacting with environmental constraints and physical disruptions based on their personal judgements. Decisions have to be, therefore, made continuously at all levels in order to adapt, respond, keep pace with, and control events occurring rapidly in space and time. Process of decision-making thus goes on at various levels well until after crisis is resolved by the elimination of threats and site has been declared safe for post-crisis actions. Therefore, all crisis decisions, in a way, are rather provisional and transient, other than, perhaps, that of going in for confrontation. What looms large in a crisis is uncertainty. And, uncertainty itself is an arresting force, a wellspring of friction. All the above realities of crisis paint an extremely complex, confusing, dynamic, uncertain, unstable, and event-driven scene. They also reveal a paradox of decision-making—decisions are made to control the very events that drive decision-making throughout crisis; events, decisions, and actions chase each other frenetically for the entire duration of crisis. They further indicate that decision-making in a crisis is an interactive exercise which continues, so long as a crisis lasts and has to be done in an intricate environment of uncertainty with an acute paucity of time and excessive psychological strain. How do we make decisions in such a profound situation? III Human beings have been facing and overcoming crises in the world since the very beginning. People somehow did it without knowing how. So, how did they do that, given all the constraints and adversities we have discussed above? It never became a subject of scientific research, for academic emphasis on rational or analytical decision was so complete that the fact and practice of realistic or naturalistic decision remained virtually obscure, perhaps, until American psychologists Gary Klein, Roberta Calderwood, and Anne Clinton-Cirocco embarked on a study of urban fire ground commanders and published their findings in mid-nineteen eighties. Since then, though,

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there has been a considerable research in this subject and, as a result, now we largely know how decisions are made in crisis. Something that we have been doing since time immemorial has now been revealed—that decisions in crisis are made intuitively, not analytically. Crisis decision-making process, therefore, is appropriately called intuitive decision-making. Crisis decision-makers begin with an assessment of situation, by observing the scene of crisis and gathering information from and about it, in order to understand and define their problem first. This is the most critical and absolutely essential step required to make purposeful decisions since without understanding what exactly is going on, no meaningful decisions can be made for controlling events. There is nothing special, however, about this step in intuitive decision-making, for analytical decisions are as well made only after gathering necessary information about a problem. What makes crisis decisions different and distinct from rational decisions is the compulsion of deciding under the crushing pressure of time and the challenge of making sense of information that is incomplete, inaccurate, ambiguous, contradictory, irrelevant, and ever-flowing, all at once. This is what makes it a complex problem right from the outset. In the middle of an overwhelming noise, the deep structure of crisis lies buried somewhere underneath and there is not much time either to discover it. A crisis decision-maker must make decisions swiftly but first and foremost, he must dig out the hidden deep structure of crisis, which leads to his understanding and definition of problem he is dealing with. Problem of crisis information cannot be overcome externally as the environmental constraints of crisis are beyond control. No more or better information can be obtained than what is available at the time for making decision. A crisis decision-maker, therefore, has to perforce take recourse to and rely on an internal world that resides in his brain. Here, he swiftly sifts the jumbled dots of picture through a mass of information for arranging them in a logical order and sweeps the irrelevant heap of data aside. If necessary, and often it is, he plots certain missing dots that he somehow knows could not be found, and also fixes certain dots which he somehow knows are faulty, by means of his imagination. He, then connects all the available dots in a right order, thereby discovering the big picture—the key to problem-solving—that is otherwise buried somewhere beneath the noise and fog of crisis. How does he actually see it, almost magically, if at all? Human brain quickly notices breaks in symmetry and also recognises patterns. A decision-maker, therefore, is inherently capable of noticing changes occurring



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in environment and recognising the other signs of problems too. And, given his rapidly retrievable memory of past experience and sharp intelligence, he is also capable of defining and solving these problems. How it is done, though, is not exactly clear but prevailing consensus is that he processes sensory inputs gathered from situational environment—a variety of signs and signals, cues and clues, features and characteristics, all collected by an exercise called situation assessment—in his brain, which is beyond the reach of consciousness. Memory cache of similar and relatable incidents buried somewhere in brain is scanned through with an inconceivable speed of an unknown mechanism to find a pattern match. It is certainly not serial processing done in a sequence but is this search akin to parallel processing or it has an altogether different mechanism and architecture is not known to us yet. Anyway, he is soon able to retrieve a pattern, derived and distilled from one or more past incidents stored in his memory, which is the best match to available situational information. The event of successfully finding a pattern match is truly epiphanic, for it gives a definition to situation and reveals its underlying structure, all in the mind of a problem solver. After pattern recognition, he is also able to ignore irrelevant information and get rid of much of his cognitive load. Some scholars refer to it as situation assessment but I prefer to call this process typification. Typification is an ascription of a type to a problem by matching its known features and imagined characteristics with some previous incident or incidents stored in memory as a part of an expert repertory acquired over time through experience, reflection, and imagination. It is an exercise in standardising an ill-structured problem. By typification, we solve the problem of knowledge by ignoring the irrelevant mass of information, shedding unwanted cognitive load, eliminating the uncertainty, vagueness, and ambiguity of context, and defining problem with a workable clarity. It is a first step towards charting a course of action or, in other words, making decisions to bring situation under control. It is relevant to note here that typification done by pattern match mechanism is a way of making sense of a vague situation quickly for rapid intervention to gain control and alter the course of events in a desirable direction for achieving a desired end. While problem gets defined, in a way, rather quickly by pattern recognition, the definition of problem essentially remains provisional and incomplete in a complex scenario with many an interdependent variable and countless possibilities. To put it differently, a definition of problem can never become definitive and permanent, given the complex and evolving nature of crisis. It is just good to get going without wasting time in understanding a situation reliably and, in turn, losing out further in a race against time and ongoing events. Decisions and actions

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which appear erroneous in hindsight are better seen and understood in the context of this difficult balancing act done by a crisis responder at the time. Typification of a crisis is not dependent on the presence of certain signs and signals alone. Its converse is equally useful and crucial, for an absence of certain signs and signals that should have been there also help in typification. When a decision-maker continues to find what he is looking for, he is able to form a coherent mental image flowing in time and space, which constructs perceptual symmetry in his mind. An absence of expected features and elements or a presence of those that should not have been there is instantly recognised due to a break in perceptual symmetry. An alert is sounded then, that something is wrong. Recognition of symmetry breaking is, thus, indispensable to intuitive decision-making. With the help of breaks in symmetry, a decision-maker is able to guard against misleading tracks and false indicators, which are there aplenty. It works as a course correction mechanism and keeps him from committing a blunder. Typification is a defining moment in problem-solving, for it enables a problem solver to make use of the greatest tool in his kit called mental model. It seems that there are many such models in his head built on the experience base of many years. Selection of a situational model from this repertory happens effortlessly after typification. What actually is a mental model is not known but it may be visualised as a set of mathematical algorithms written in neural language. It also seems that an experienced brain is in possession of a large number of schematic algorithms that can be cut and spliced for modelling a new situation rapidly. A mental model of situation, therefore, is not necessarily selected from an available stock, for it can also be constructed anew by combining two or more models or their parts into one. This ability of brain indicates that mental model has a flexible architecture and it can be quickly modified or reassembled as required by the ongoing events of an evolving situation. It is an adaptive problem-solving tool and human experience tells us that it indeed is. Having formulated a model around the structure of problem revealed by typification, a decision-maker is now able to simulate reality in his mind primarily for gaining the advantage of projecting and pre-empting the course of future events and regaining control over situation that had been lost at the beginning of crisis by suitable interventions. Mental simulation is an exercise of imagining a reality in mind and seeing the movement of people, things, events, and situation as a whole from the past to the present and from the present to the future or vice versa, for a model can work both ways, forwards or backwards, from any event or point in time.



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A plausible course of action for achieving a desired end state too is retrieved by decision-maker from the memory of his past experience soon after a pattern is recognised and the typification of situation is done. It then becomes the basis of constructing the broad contours of a course of action for present situation. Before its execution, however, he carries out a risk assessment by thought experiment. He mentally unrolls and runs this course of action in space and time and visualises how events are likely to unfold in the real world in order to critically assess how the intended course of action is going to actually fare in the real world. Interactions of various agents with each other and their interplay with physical environment are projected to find out where, when, how, and to what extent things can go wrong. Risks associated with the course of action are thus anticipated and assessed and the course of action is accordingly modified and fixed for risk mitigation. If, however, mental simulation reveals that the risks of action are unacceptable and unmanageable or outcome is likely to be incompatible with desired end state, the identified course of action is aborted. Search for an alternative course of action is recommenced and another plausible solution is retrieved from memory or mentally constructed from his experience base, which seems to be coherent with problem type and desired end state, and its consequences and associated risks are then assessed by mental simulation. This process in the end delivers a refined course of action ready for execution. And, it is delivered rather rapidly, which is the greatest strength of intuitive decisionmaking. After passing the scrutiny of mental simulation, a decision acquires finality which then makes way for the commencement of action. But intuitive decision-making does not end there; it merely enters another phase of rapid and distributed decision-making for continuous course correction until an end state is realised. We may call it the adaptive or lightning phase of intuitive decision-making. As the course of events evolves in space and time after action begins, continuous decisions at multiple levels are required to be taken in real time in order to control events and direct their course towards a desired end. In the specific context of this book, struggle between opposing human wills takes the complexity of crisis to its peak. Terrorists continuously adapt to altered situation on the strength of human intelligence, cooperation, and commitment after action to neutralise them commences. Battle of wits that ensues springs many a surprise for all and situation tends to acquire a state of absolute fluidity in which nothing seems to remain in anyone’s control and everything seems to exist for a fleeting moment and slip away the next. Many expectancies now turn out to be incorrect as a result of people adapting to challenges and new realities start to emerge

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on end that warrant new decisions interminably. Fluidity of situation is further magnified by the factor of human error. Quick recovery from errors is possible only when remedial decisions are instantly taken right there where errors have occurred; they cannot be rectified from a remote location against the breathtaking speed of deadly confrontation. Such random and barely controllable flow of events has potential for changing everything that is there in initial plan; a plan that once seemed everything may now seem to be nothing. With the rapid flow of events subsequent to the commencement of action, decision-making not only becomes ongoing in time but it is also forced to become decentralised and distributed in space. The initiative can be retained, manoeuvres can be defeated, and opportunities can be exploited only by adapting continuously at sharp edge that cuts problemscape. It is the only way a complex terrorist crisis can be resolved favourably. Those who fail to adapt rapidly by responding correctly to altered realities or, worse still, wait for someone else sitting somewhere else to decide for them cannot cope with the fast changing scenario of complex terrorist crisis and lose the tempo of charge as well as the initiative gained by it. What follows invariably is a disaster. A crisis decision-maker is surprisingly quick in choosing a course of action when he does it intuitively. His intuitive decision, however, does not come out of nowhere but derived methodically by typifying, modelling, and simulating problem in his mind through searching and linking information on the strength of his experience and intelligence. While its problem-solving tools are enigmatic and esoteric, inexpressible and indefinable, and it surely lacks the analytical rigour of rational decision-making, the intuitive method of decision-making is quite effective and empowering, for it enables a time deficient crisis responder to take swift actions by cutting the Gordian knot tied by the thoroughness of rational method. This, in short, is the story of intuitive decision-making employed to resolve a crisis. It, however, raises several fundamental questions of critical significance. IV Extreme shortage of time in crisis is managed by short cuts employed in intuitive method assisted by the lightning speed of information processing in human brain. Rapidity with which human brain processes information at various stages of intuitive decision-making is beyond comprehension and comparison. It indeed is so fast that it appears to be happening in real time. All the secrets and marvels of human brain have yet not been understood and we surely do not know well enough how our brain works.



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We can, nonetheless, assert that the speed of information processing in brain is inconceivably fast, it happens without us having any awareness of processes surging through our heads, and the problem of time in a crisis is somehow solved by our biological capabilities. If the problem of time is addressed biologically, how do we address the question of reliability and quality of intuitive decisions against the problem of information in a crisis? Even if a great deal more information is made available than what is normally available in a crisis, given the complexity of relationships between numerous variables, the future of crisis cannot be foreseen exactly. A crisis scenario is, therefore, rightly described as eventdriven scenario. Also, the role of chance cannot be ruled out, given the randomness and possibilities of events; their course is full of nodes, each having various branches, and from any node the course of events can branch off in any possible direction, depending on what happens before and at that juncture. Due to the element of uncertainty and the factor of chance in a crisis, outcome can be anything, serendipitous or catastrophic, irrespective of the method of decision-making employed to arrive at decisions. Rational method has an unbeatable advantage over its intuitive rival, though. Quality of analytical decisions can be ascertained by an appraisal of decision-making process, even if outcome is calamitous. In other words, we can find out if a bad outcome was due to chance factor or a result of bad decisions. If all efforts were made diligently by a decision-maker including the collection of information, the selection of options, and the evaluation of each option against certain logical criteria defined to achieve a stated goal, it can be said that decision-maker was logically coherent and did not leave much to be desired. His failure to control events, then, can be ascribed to the very nature of complexity, that is, randomness. A similar appraisal, however, cannot be made in the case of intuitive decisions due to a lack of transparency in this method that largely unrolls and remains inside the head of decision-maker and much of it also remains beyond his own knowledge and awareness. How, then, can we deal with the question of complexity versus agency and chance versus effort against a failure in crisis? While we cannot know the specific details of process, the risks of intuitive decisions are clearly known and cannot be discounted. For example, a decisionmaker can make an error of judgement in situation assessment and may discern a pattern where none exists. This pattern, in turn, becomes the basis of decisions which then cannot obviously be reliable. He can also fail to anticipate a hazard lying in wait and, resultantly, fails to fix the course of action in time. How do we deal with such hazards, and there are plenty

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of them? Here we get into a tight corner. A delay in action amounts to no action that may have an unacceptable cost, so it is not feasible always to defer a decision for want of a better decision. There is indeed no ‘best’ way or the ‘only’ way of dealing with event-driven scenarios. There is, in fact, no perfect solution that yields a guaranteed end state desired by all concerned. There is also no benefit of hindsight derived from a robust retrospective analysis that happens only after outcome is known, facts have been gathered, information gaps have been largely bridged, when uncertainties have disappeared and risks vanished, and there is enough time to think through events and their course. In retrospect, only a single course of events is seen so clearly and everything seems to fall in its place so logically—all the way back from the end right up to the very beginning of a crisis—that we forget that it was not so before it happened. Linearity of the past is so very convincing that we forget that the past, before the fact, was never a straight line but its future was unfolding through a tree of possibilities and it could have been anything before it actually happened. Constraints of crisis are ineluctable; we cannot escape them. Hazards of intuitive decision-making are professional hazards—a necessary evil of crisis resolution. There is no other way to deal with a crisis. An agent has to take a chance in the ocean of uncertainty and swim across through the countless vortices of unknown possibilities. A society facing crisis too has to accept risks that necessarily and unavoidably accompany crisis resolution—outcome might not happen to be desirable and satisfactory; it might instead be tragic and catastrophic, who knows. Uncertainty and randomness is the essence of complex crisis; no guarantees can be given—only sincere efforts can be made. That said, we cannot just leave the future of crisis to chance and we must find a way around it. Granted that there is no other way but to depend on intuitive decisions in a crisis, the question of reliability and quality of decisions remains all the same. Who should be relied upon for making decisions in a crisis? Whose decisions should carry more weight if there is a difference of opinion? Interestingly, the answer to these questions lies in the very mechanism of intuitive decision-making. Pattern recognition is a product of interaction between information received from environment and information stored in memory. Pattern recognition, therefore, can be as good as personal memory. Memory of a person is built over the years by knowledge and experience, practice and analysis, reflection and imagination. Someone who does not have enough information encoded and stored in his memory might just not find a pattern match for unfolding events and would, thus, fail to gain insightful leads for an effective course of action. If no match whatsoever, full or partial, is found, a person would



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most likely behave as one who is caught unawares in a situation with no preparedness and readiness to deal with it. He, then, would get bogged down in situation and either fail to act or act without a purpose, flummoxed and lost. Who can be such a person? Clearly, a novice who does not have enough knowledge and experience acquired from similar situations faced in the past. Novices have neither practiced enough nor thought through problems and reflected on solutions as much as veterans. They consequently all too often go blank and do not know exactly what to do in a complex situation. Obviously, then, novices cannot be decision-makers in crisis situations and only experts can be reliable in times of crisis. Only they can be expected to deliver effective crisis performance, for only experts, on the strength of their vast memory of past experience, have ability to discover the correlations and connections of dots scattered all around in a situation and also to decipher the deep structure of crisis buried beneath its overwhelming noise. While there is no certainty that an expert will deliver a desired end state without injurious consequences, given the random nature of complex crisis, the odds of succeeding in a complex situation are most certainly against laypersons, initiates, novices, beginners, apprentices, and journeymen, whatever name we give to non-experts, if serendipity is excluded from consideration. Reason for this is obvious—they do not have expertise to deal with a situation. But, strangely enough, an expert too is not the right answer. Why? An expert is, of course, able to deal with difficult situations and solve complex problems better than a layperson but he is not a god; even the best experts have the limits of knowledge and experience. Information handling is another problem, for the complexity of crisis and its information overload may be such that overwhelms an expert too and impairs his judgement eventually. Also, all human beings are susceptible to certain biases and prejudices and experts are no exception; personal biases and defence mechanisms may not let an expert see the reality unfolding in front of his eyes. And, all human beings are fallible, so everyone can make an error of judgement, experts included. As a result, our choice of relying on one man, however competent, for dealing with a crisis is fraught with danger. We also know that a complex crisis can only be resolved and managed by many different agents and agencies coming together to achieve a defined end state and the challenges of mobilisation, coordination, synchronisation, sequencing, and execution of a multitude of resources, events, and actions are beyond any one man. Not only that we have to have many men to deal with a complex situation but all of them have to be decision-makers too. Crisis response, moreover, has to be adaptive, especially while battling an intelligent and committed enemy, so a decentralised and distributed architecture of decision-making is an imperative to achieving

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desired end state with minimal negative distortion. These vulnerabilities, difficulties, and compulsions underline a need for many experts to pool their cognitive and skilled resources together in order to deal with a complex crisis. The best bet in such crises, and the greatest safeguard against failure, seems to be an expert team. Expert team, then, is the right answer. It is time to take a closer look at expert team performance. Gary Klein along with his colleagues, as we now know, has done pioneering work in decision-making in ill-structured situations. I recommend two of his books—Sources of Power and Streetlights and Shadows—as training material, not so much for theory as for real-life stories given aplenty in them about constraints and workarounds in complex situations. Their reading will also be useful to understanding expertise and experts that we will discuss now.

Chapter 4 Expertise, Expert Team, and Sustained Effective Performance I What is expertise? It is indeed not easy to define the notion of expertise but, surprisingly, it is not so difficult to define where it resides, manifests, and personified, that is, an expert. An expert is an individual who does one of three things in a specific domain—reproducibly delivers an excellent and superior performance of challenging tasks or consistently gives plausible and quick answers to difficult questions or repeatedly provides effective and efficient solutions to complex problems. Reliance of the above definitions on certain keywords such as ‘reproducibly,’ ‘consistently,’ and ‘repeatedly’ suggests that an individual can be judged as an expert only on the basis of reliability established over a period of time. An expert, then, cannot exist in the absence of an audience, clientele, or community of significant others which proclaims and recognises an individual as an expert after consistently experiencing the outcomes of his advanced knowledge and skills. Relationship and role of significant others also attach the values of certainty, truth, and trust to expert in social context. The question which naturally comes to mind is: What makes an expert perform reliably and earn a profound respect and trust of society? The answer is rather simple: Expertise. Expertise is embodied in expert and it actually resides in his head. Expertise, then, is a function of brain. In order to understand expertise, it is necessary to first know as to how human brain learns, how it organises and stores information, and how it retrieves and applies information stored in memory. This may also help us understand it better as to why and how an expert is different from a non-expert. For the purpose of this book, term ‘non-expert’ includes all frequently used words to contrast expert such as ‘layman,’ ‘novice,’ ‘initiate,’ ‘beginner,’ ‘learner,’ ‘apprentice,’ and ‘journeyman.’ 69

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Although not much is so far known about human brain, the broad contours of its organisation and function have now been deciphered and discovered by the combined efforts of scholars in the fields of molecular biology of memory, cognitive neuroscience, and cognitive psychology. While scientific description looks pretty impressive with its authoritative style and influential argot, we have to bear in mind that many aspects of our current understanding of brain organisation and function may change with new findings in times to come. In our times too, differing theoretical models and empirical evidences, sometimes conflicting and contradictory, only indicate that the structures and processes of human brain are far more complex than we generally think. The best way to understand whatever little is known today, I believe, is to follow an eclectic approach which combines all explanations that interpret the parts of a complex system and synthesises the independent perspectives of psychology and biology into a coherent framework. For there is little agreement and overwhelming divergence in memory research, I have relied on my own judgement based on my studies, experience, and reflection to present a cogent explanation of learning and relate it to the subject matter of this book. Description of molecular biology of memory given here is based on chapters written by Austrian-American neuroscientist Eric Kandel in his book Memory: From Mind to Molecules, co-authored with fellow American psychologist Larry Squire. There are two fundamentally distinct memory systems in our brain—declarative and nondeclarative—each of which has several subsystems. Declarative memory is the memory of information—events, sounds, odours, images, facts, ideas— anything learned by experience in the past which can be imagined, shared, expressed, described, or declared—verbally, vocally, or visually—on retrieval. Declarative memory constructs the world of our awareness and the universe of our consciousness. It is the original source of entire documented and shared knowledge possessed by humankind. It is the most critical, dominant, and effective memory system of human brain for successfully negotiating with the world created by our species. Nondeclarative memory, on the other hand, is the memory of information that has been learned by experience in the past but it can be retrieved and expressed only physically in the form of behaviour and performance. It cannot be imagined, visualised, verbalised, described, shared, or declared on recall. It is also called ‘muscle memory’ in the argot of training. It processes and controls emotional responses, habits, and skills—motor, perceptual, and cognitive. For it operates outside the world of our awareness, it is the unconscious memory system of our brain.



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Use of declarative memory is a conscious, reflective, and effortful exercise whereas the application of nondeclarative memory is an unconscious, reflexive, and autonomous process. Both memory systems are built by experiences and both are important for the survival and success of individual in the external world. It is, however, declarative memory system which conveys the sense of ‘memory’ in the common understanding of word because only this system is accessible to our awareness through recollection. Automaticity of nondeclarative memory keeps it beyond the reach and ability of conscious recollection. Before understanding the process of learning, let us learn about the anatomy and structure of memory. Our brain is made of nerve cells called neurons. It is estimated that each individual has about one hundred billion (1011) neurons. Each neuron is capable of relaying electrical signals caused by molecular activity happening inside a cell. Nerve cells have an inherent property of establishing connection with other cells. Their specialised connecting junctions are called synapses and, hence, these connections are referred to as synaptic connections. Each neuron in brain is capable of making one thousand (103) synaptic connections. It means that human brain has capacity to become a network of one hundred thousand billion or one hundred trillion (1014) synaptic connections. It is just impossible to imagine what all these numbers mean and how this network would look like. In plain language, it means that our brain is a phenomenally complex and hugely busy network of neurons. Nerve cells are able to divide. They begin to multiply at embryonic stage in life. But in adult lifetime, the production of new nerve cells declines significantly. As a result, a mature brain does not add a notable number of neurons in adulthood. The basis of our learning and memory, therefore, is not the ability of our brain to generate more neurons. It is a product of our ability to make and manipulate neuronal connections instead—limited only by a maximal memory storage capacity of 1014 synaptic junctions. Nucleus of a nerve cell is contained in a large globular body which sends out a number of fine threads with tree-like branches called dendrites and one long tubular structure called axon. Axon in the end branches out into a number of terminals called pre-synaptic terminals. Dendrites are receivers that gather input signals and axon is transmitter that relays output signals. Thus, the flow of signals in a nerve cell is unidirectional and irreversible, that is, from dendrites to cell body to axon to pre-synaptic terminals. Axonal presynaptic terminals contact the receptive regions of other cells found typically on dendrites but also on the surface of cell body. Neural circuit is completed

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by this junction called synapse and a neuron is thus able to communicate with other neurons and also with the other organs of body such as muscles, glands, kidneys, lungs, stomach, heart, liver, and much more besides. Due to an unequal distribution of ions such as sodium (Na+), potassium (K+), and others on nerve cell membrane, the inside of cell membrane remains negatively charged in relation to its outside. This difference produces a resting potential of −65 millivolts (mV) on cell membrane. There are specialised pores in cell membrane called ion channels through which ions flow in and out of cell. When the flow of ions to and from a cell reduces its membrane potential, cell gets depolarised. It thus creates condition for the generation and propagation of an electric potential across external cell membrane. A precisely regulated mechanism of opening and closing of ion channels in a sequence accurately changes potential along the path of signal and lets electric signal travel across nerve cell without disruption or distortion. This is called action potential which rapidly flows in a predictable direction with a constant value typically of about 110 mV at a conduction velocity ranging between 1 to 100 metres per second for a short duration of 1 to 10 milliseconds at one spot. Action potential, therefore, is a large, constant, rapid, and transient signal which travels down axon to its pre-synaptic terminals without fail after the depolarisation of neuron. Neural junction called synapse is formed when a pre-synaptic terminal of a neuron gets attached to a post-synaptic target—either dendrites or the body of cell. This junction is quite special. It is not a joint with complete physical integrity as a cell itself is from end to end. Instead, it is a tiny space of about 20 nanometres called synaptic cleft. For a nerve cell to communicate with a target cell, electric signal has to travel across synaptic cleft. Electric signal after reaching pre-synaptic terminal causes a release of a chemical substance called neurotransmitter. Neurotransmitters are specialised protein molecules which diffuse across synaptic cleft after release and captured by receptor molecules located on the surface of post-synaptic cell. This mechanism is called chemical signalling as a chemical messenger, that is, neurotransmitter is used to signal target cell. There are two types of molecular receptors found on cell surface. Receptors which increase the probability of initiating an action potential in cell are called excitatory receptors. On the other hand, those which inhibit the generation of an action potential are called inhibitory receptors. Interaction of neurotransmitters with post-synaptic receptors depolarises target region and causes a synaptic potential in cell. If synaptic potential is excitatory and



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large enough, it may trigger an action potential in target cell which then will flow without disruption or distortion through cell across axonal length to the pre-synaptic terminals of target cell. It thus completes a cycle which may go on and on, activating selective pathways in the neural network of brain. The most critical link in the activation of a neural pathway is synaptic connection. It is the strength of synaptic junction which eventually determines the flow of information in brain. Unlike action potential, synaptic potential is a muted electrical signal ranging from a fraction of a millivolt to a few tens of millivolts. Its strength depends on the number of active pre-synaptic terminals, the number of neurotransmitters released by pre-synaptic cell, the number of receptors on post-synaptic target surface, the number of transmitters that travel across synaptic space to target and eventually reach post-synaptic receptors, and the number of excitatory receptors that recognise and bind neurotransmitters. It is at synapse where signal is modified. It may fade and die out if an action potential is not initiated in post-synaptic cell. Hence, the flow of information across pathway may get disrupted at any synapse. Information is stored in neural pathways. It is interesting to know that neurons do not connect to other neurons randomly in order to make these pathways. Instead, the neural network of our brain has a defined architecture and it is hardwired precisely. In this framework, a particular neuron will always connect to certain neurons and never to certain others. The only modifiable structures in the neuronal network of brain are synaptic connections. And, the strength of synaptic junctions can be modified by neural activity. Synapses can either be strengthened or weakened by learning, which increases or decreases neural activity in a particular pathway. Changes caused by learning can be functional or structural or both. Functional modifications increase or decrease the release of neurotransmitters while structural changes alter cell anatomically by increasing or decreasing its branches that receive and transmit signals. Certain modifications can be persistent and permanent in nature while certain others may just be temporary and disappear after a period of time. Such changes essentially alter the quality of synaptic communication by manipulating the efficiency of transferring signal from one neuron to another via synapse. In this way, brain can be modified and shaped by an individual through experience in life and some alterations caused by experience may persist for a lifetime. This ability of our brain is called neural plasticity, or more appropriately, synaptic plasticity. It forms the basis of acquisition, organisation, storage, and retrieval of information—known as memory.

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We have understood the biology of learning. Let us now discuss learning, that is, how information is received, stored, and retrieved. In order to understand the process of learning, we have to delve into the realm of cognitive psychology, which has a different perspective and uses a different language. Receptors of sensory neurons on body surface sense the world and relay information to brain in the form of electric signal. After reaching brain, these signals are converted and brought to consciousness. Electrical signals thus acquire meaning that conveys a sense of the world around. Transmission of signals happens at high velocities. Due to a high speed of transmission, individual becomes aware of perceptual stimuli almost instantaneously and the time delay of event due to the latency of signal is imperceptible. Individual is thus enabled to make sense of events happening in environment in ‘real’ time. Information, after reaching brain, remains active and hot. It remains in our awareness. Our brain’s ability to retain the pieces of information in awareness is critical for making sense of rapidly unfolding events in a changing environment which continuously transmits signals. Sometimes, due to information overload, some pieces of information—usually less important—may be pushed to the fringes of awareness. Relevant information located at awareness horizon, however, can be immediately recalled and brought in awareness. It serves the purpose of comparing, matching, and linking to search the meaning of entire episode and see the big picture by manipulating and stitching trickling bits and pieces acquired with the passage of time. For we ‘work’ in real time with information actively held in awareness and arranged at the fringes of awareness, this capacity of our brain is called working memory. Without this ability, an individual cannot remain functional and successful in changing environments and may fail to act or react timely for ensuring his survival. Sensory neurons work autonomously and we have no conscious control over them, so they normally keep transmitting information received by their receptors on end for processing by brain. But brain on its part does not treat each piece of information in the same manner. Certain signals may receive preferential treatment while others may be graded low on priority. Information relayed to brain is attended to differentially, based on bodily needs, personal interests, individual preferences, and person’s intent. Those stimuli which are given higher preferences get priority, allocated greater attention, and processed minutely. Such information, resultantly, is rich in detail and held more actively and vividly in awareness in comparison to the competing information of lesser preference and lower priority. Also, interesting and



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important information remains in awareness for longer duration. Information which is not so interesting or important is quickly or directly transferred to the fringes of awareness. This ability of brain makes an individual functional and successful in the world and it ensures his survival in dynamic and busy environments, transmitting information unremittingly. For everything cannot be held in awareness as attentional resource is limited, priority has to be given to more important matters in life. But for our limited attention and its preferential allocation, we would be overwhelmed by worldly information and submerged in a chaotic madness. Attention is evidently an efficient learning tool. While they are two distinct factors, role played by both interest and intent is decisive in learning. Interest allocates attention spontaneously and intent directs it effortfully but once allocated, attention has the same effect on the quality of understanding, storage, and recall of a piece of information. Bits and bytes of information in working memory are somehow placed and arranged anatomically in the neural pathways of brain. This process is called encoding in psychology. These codes represent a specific sound, image, event, episode, or its meaning in awareness when activated and decoded on recall. Neural codes of brain, therefore, are the representations of perceived reality of the outside world—or its meaning—as sensed and understood by an individual. The richer the information, the more elaborate and detailed the codes. Also, in its spontaneous or effortful search for meaning, brain is able to compare, relate, and connect new codes with other relevant representations encoded earlier and stored in memory. I will discuss the post-encoding reorganisation and consolidation of information in brain later. Let us first learn about a critical element in the mechanism of recall. An interesting development happens during the processes of encoding and organisation of information that has a profound influence on the recall of memory. A separate family of codes is generated for the purpose of searching, linking, and activating elaborate codes stored in memory. These are very short codes called cues in psychology and used in the literal sense of word ‘cue’—a sign or signal to do something. Cues are stored at the fringes of awareness and held in a state of readiness without us being aware of them. Perceptual stimuli after reaching brain first interact with these cues. Normally, a matching cue is brought in awareness immediately which gives an early lead in sense-making. At back end, matched cue simultaneously works to search, link up, and activate relevant structures in memory, holding elaborate codes which then bring detailed information in awareness after a time delay. A cue thus gives an early lead about event—much before elaborate processing in brain is able to present a clearer and more meaningful picture.

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This signalling ability of brain plays a critical role of timely alerting in lifethreatening emergencies. By alerting in time and enabling an individual to infer and make some sense of event before its confirmation by a complete match of information, it increases the chances of his survival and makes up for the latency of definitive recall of information. Cues, then, seem to have a dual function of anticipation and confirmation. Even more interestingly, sometimes it may just happen that a cue bypasses awareness altogether and directly activates relevant memory structures which then lets one realise something correctly, almost mysteriously, without knowing about it in the absence of any alert signal or effortful recall. In ambiguous situations and rapid scenarios, a right conclusion may thus manifest in our awareness, without us knowing how we got it right, by means of an ‘invisible’ cue. This might be one of several mechanisms behind our inferential ability called intuition. Cues may form spontaneously or created effortfully. In the process of integration of new codes with related and relevant stored contents in memory, associated cues may also combine to form a cue complex linked to a specialised structural complex of memory holding a family of information. Activation of a first cue in a cue complex, then, may set in motion a cascade of cues that eventually retrieves target information or relevant meaning and much more besides from the greater depths of brain. Also, cues may be reformed, refined, and conflated during a recall to facilitate subsequent recollections. We have seen the critical role of cues in recall. Let us also learn about the integrity and reliability of recalled information. When certain information is recalled, it has to be searched in brain and brought in awareness. Signals received from sensory neurons undergo a transformation in the process of encoding and consolidation of information for storage. Different pieces of information may be located at different places in brain which have to be located, linked, retrieved, stitched together, and decoded on a recall. A retrieved information, therefore, is a reconstruction—not a replay—of actual events. It is quite possible that a recollection of an event or an episode may contain errors in the form of missing or creatively added contents. How do such errors creep into memory? Firstly, the process of memory consolidation by integrating new codes with pre-existing relevant codes normally enriches semantic content but impairs the perceptual content of experience. Irrelevant details are forgotten while the crux and abstraction is retained. Details, then, may not be recalled when required. Secondly, natural interest or directed efforts play a critical role in the storage of information after its occurrence and reception. Information of interest and importance



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is recalled, brought in awareness, and attended to repeatedly. It has been found that the reorganisation of active information continues even during sleep. In the process, codes are made stronger and integrated with previously stored relevant memory structures existing in greater depths. On the other hand, a lack of interest or effort may introduce errors and faults as a result of a limited neural activity. Inattention-induced errors and faults may occur at any stage—during encoding, linking and integration, and reorganisation for retrieval. These weaknesses manifest in different ways. For instance, if smart cues are not formed, they may fail to target and retrieve specific codes representing desired information. If deeper relationships with existing memory structures are not established, retrieved information may not form the big picture and find deep meaning. If new information is not fully integrated with relevant information complex, representation may have limited utility and information may not be manipulated to discover the underlying structure of a problem in ambiguous situation and to make intelligent projection based on it. Such errors and faults thus degrade the quality of memory and the capability of brain. Worst of all, information may not be recalled at all after a period of time. Story of interest and effort reveals the temporal dimensions of memory in terms of productive life of acquired information, which forms the basis of a meaningful classification. Information which can be successfully recalled only for a short period of time is believed to have been stored in short-term memory in psychology. On the other hand, information which can be successfully recalled, even after a long period of time is believed to have been stored in long-term memory. It is the degree of interest, the force of intent, the intensity of attention, and the frequency of recall which eventually determine if information enters long-term memory or remains in short-term memory. Information held in short-term memory is ‘lost’ or ‘disappears’ only for the purpose of recall as it is believed that somewhere in a virtually unlimited storage of brain, these information codes continue to linger. Our discussion so far has been focussed on declarative memory. However, information stored in long-term memory may either get into declarative memory or nondeclarative memory. It has been found that the processing of information for storage in long-term declarative memory is mediated by a specialised region of brain called medial temporal lobe system. If this system suffers a bilateral damage, the flow of information to and from long-term declarative memory gets blocked or restricted. As a result, new information does not enter declarative memory and stored information may not be retrieved successfully. Impairment, however, is more in recent memory and

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remote memory remains less affected somehow. Interestingly, nondeclarative memory does not undergo any impairment consequent upon damage to medial temporal lobe. These findings suggest indirectly that the processing of nondeclarative memory bypasses a critical system of brain for long-term declarative memory. Let us quickly see if there is any relationship between these two memory systems before coming back to our predominant faculty of declarative memory. Process of skill development in the early stages of learning is scaffolded by attention. Scaffolding of attentional resource starts to disconnect on the way as learning progresses and eventually it disengages completely. This separation frees information codes from the declarative regions and processes of brain. These codes now enter long-term nondeclarative memory and become autonomous. Hereafter, skill execution is fully independent of attention and does not reflect in awareness when codes are activated and retrieved from storage. At this point, a skill achieves coveted automaticity. Ironically, if procedure is brought to attention, the quality of skill is compromised in terms of its speed, accuracy, and fluidity. It, then, seems to suggest that skill impairment happens because declarative memory system somehow clashes and interferes with nondeclarative memory system. Both memory systems also appear to share the same mental resources but at some point in the processing and consolidation of information, these systems bifurcate and become independent of each other. This is an interesting arrangement of our brain which gives us ability to adapt to new environment by modifying our old behaviours, habits, and skills. Our will, expressed by a conscious intervention, can indeed liberate us from the slavery of automaticity of behaviour and inflexibility of nondeclarative memory. We have read earlier that new information is reorganised and integrated with the existing information of similar nature. Let us see how it happens. Our brain has the inherent ability of finding meaning of an event by searching stored information. Our search engine specialises in matching patterns and determining relationships between similar kinds of information. In addition to understanding the implications of events, meaning distilled from events makes the storage and recall of information more organised, efficient, and intelligent. In its quest for finding meaning, brain filters noise, discards details, preserves the crux, and integrates concepts. Such processing keeps system relatively simple and light, which imparts it high fidelity and reliability. It promotes the survival of individual by making the essence of previous experience timely available to deal with a new problem. A family of information encoded in different neural pathways thus gets connected autonomously.



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Spontaneous process of linking and networking creates a large integrated structural complex in brain made of numerous neuronal pathways which are relevant and related to each other but may be distributed all over. This specialised information complex representing a family of information within a universe of neuronal web inside brain is called schema in psychology. If new information codes related to the same family are generated frequently and stored information related to this family is recalled repeatedly, the specialised structural complex of neurons holding this family of information goes through a recurring neural activity. Over a period of time, continuous neural activity induces neurons to effect functional and structural changes. These neurons undergo adaptive transformations—release more transmitters and grow more branches which, in turn, make more synaptic connections. As a result of these chemical and anatomical changes, not only the strength of synaptic junctions increases throughout pathway but new pathways are also generated within this complex. A more active specialised complex thus continues to evolve and goes on to grow larger and more intricate with time. Eventually, this specialised structural complex becomes a complex subsystem containing a complexity of higher order in comparison to other specialised information complexes in brain. Let us now draw upon the theory of complexity discussed in second chapter and apply it in the context of learning. It can be argued that related and relevant neuronal pathways in brain are integrated as a result of self-organisation active in complex systems, which our brain indeed is one. We also know that a complex system builds on itself and its complexity might increase exponentially with time as a result of self-organisation. If this process continues for long, it might eventually reach the tipping point too. Past this event, system, in no time, gets metamorphosed by emergence. It suddenly becomes far greater than the sum total of its constituents and acquires radically different and totally distinct properties. In a similar manner, a schema too can become a complex system in its own right, self-organise to become increasingly more complex, cross the tipping point, and acquire new holistic characteristics after emergence. Now, this specialised neural complex is not only abuzz with activity, richer in contents, superior in speed, and greater in efficiency as an information storage system, it also becomes a system of production of knowledge which has profound implications. Formation of new ideas and the generation of fresh insights inside this specialised information complex give entirely different dimensions to the quality of imagination, projection, and anticipation. Brain now acquires superior interpretive, inferential, and creative capabilities. New perspectives are drawn from the same facts and new

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meanings are attributed to the same events. Newer and hitherto unknown relationships are discovered with a greater possibility of flashbulb ideas for solving novel problems in ambiguous situations. Knowledge now available for use is greater, different, and distinct from the sum of all learning and information acquired by experience and stored in brain. Content of semantic, conceptual, inferential, intuitive, implicit, and tacit knowledge in this schema overtakes factual information, which may even recede and atrophy. In short, brain now becomes highly intelligent, inventive, and innovative. Welcome to the world of expertise. This was the story of emergence of expertise. Let us now understand the making of an expert. But before that, this is what I have to say in defence of my theory. Memory, we can say, is made of strings of thoughts and information, each thought and information being complete in its meaning and making sense. Activation key for retrieval of such a string of neurons is somehow lodged in the region of consciousness called working memory. If its key fails to lodge itself securely in working memory, the string of thought or information may not be retrieved and idea or information might just be lost in a fathomless abyss and immense expanse of neuronal ocean of human brain. Emergence of new ideas might as well be seen as a consequence of self-organisation and auto-cross-fertilisation of many such strings criss-crossing a brain and forming a complex web in a deep region beyond the reach of consciousness. Also, a lost memory can conceivably be retrieved and brought to consciousness accidentally as a result of this involuntary marrying and uncontrolled networking of countless different strings and their linkages to keys held at the fringes of awareness. A person with the greater numbers of strings concerning a field of knowledge can also be said to possess a greater probability of conceiving new ideas related to that field than otherwise due to a higher density of relatable strings, a greater possibility of network formation by self-organisation, and a richer variety and diversity of these structures. Such a person is also more likely to recognise the importance of a new idea early and secure its activation code in working memory one way or another for future retrieval and further refinement. But, then, nothing prevents a person from suddenly hitting on a brilliant idea as a result of neuronal self-organisation, giving birth to a prodigy of humankind so very rare in existence. For chances of such a serendipitous event are rare, so are such geniuses among us. You cannot make Einsteins and Mozarts at the drop of a hat, for what happens inside brain is not in our control. But you can certainly make an expert by saturating a brain with similar and relatable ideas and information, who might occasionally also stumble on a brilliant idea or two, after many years of association with a field. It also



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explains why creativity surges in phases and creative ideas surface untimely: Because that phase and point of time is the active phase of meaningful self-organisation of neuronal strings of ideas and information in brain. All these propositions seem to make sense and relate to the reality too. Given its simplicity, it can also be argued that theory is dependable, even if this is not what actually happens inside brain. All theories, for that matter, however time tested they might be, are merely the representations of the reality; they are not the reality per se. All that they do is to able to successfully interpret and explain the reality. II How long does it take for an individual to become an expert? Way back in 1899, American psychologist William Lowe Bryan and his expert railroad telegrapher associate and graduate student Noble Harter published a paper in Psychological Review based on their research on the acquisition of expertise in telegraphic language. In this study, they suggested that ten years are required to become an expert in telegraphy. They wrote, “Our evidence is that it requires ten years to make a thoroughly seasoned press despatcher.” Several expertise researchers investigating various fields of expertise have since found that it indeed takes at least ten years of aggregated experience to acquire expertise and to be recognised as an expert. This is known as ten-year rule in expertise literature. In fact, in several domains, it takes far greater time to acquire mastery over all the nuances of profession. A few exceptions on lower side highlighted by some scholars in certain fields are so close to the period of ten years that ten-year rule is widely accepted in expertise scholarship. There is nothing magical about number ten. It is merely indicative of a long gestation period for the evolution of an individual into an expert from a start. In fact, it may take even more time, depending on the field of activity and a variety of enabling factors essential for the acquisition of expertise. It is, then, a valid question to ask: Why does it take so much of time to become an expert? While it is not clear why it is so, the sciences of biology and complexity offer some explanation for this extended formative period of expertise. It is believed that the fixation and stabilisation of memory happens in multiple stages. It may take several years of reorganisation processed by medial temporal lobe or the other systems of brain for a memory to acquire a permanent form. Anatomical alterations that strengthen synaptic connections and make new neural pathways may take considerable period to form and mature. An extended time frame is necessary from the perspective of complexity as well. Residual information in brain is much less than received

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information, for noise and irrelevant details are filtered and forgotten and only semantic and conceptual contents are normally retained at the end of memory consolidation. Mass of information, therefore, builds up only gradually and it takes a very long period for a system to self-organise into a complex system and reach a critical mass of complexity that tips it into emergence. It is at this event that expertise manifests and it may take a decade or more for emergence to occur. Some other characteristics displayed by experts that are discussed below also indicate that this journey is necessarily long and arduous. Will anybody become an expert in ten years or so if his association with a field continues, environment remains conducive, and social conditions are encouraging? Not indeed. For in addition to an extended period of time, an enabling environment, and a stimulating culture, which are no doubt indispensable for expertise acquisition, we also need certain personal qualities and abilities scaffolded by a sustained positive approach to learning and life for the acquisition of expertise. All of us know the fact that only a few individuals are able to excel in life while the mass of practitioners in each domain remains mediocre. There has to be an explanation for this general observation. Why should someone endure so much pain for so many years in life to become an expert? A plausible reason for this perseverance could be rewards given to experts by a society and the desire of individuals to collect such rewards in a culture that values success measured by wealth, power, and fame. It certainly seems an inspiring and attractive proposition on the face of it but it loses its superficial attraction against the fact that extrinsic recognition and rewards come much later in life while journey to that end remains uncertain, hard, and harsh and benefits gained along the line might not be commensurate with efforts made. Moreover, if extrinsic motivation works for one, it should work for all and everybody who wants the rewards of expertise should logically strive to become an expert. But that does not seem to happen in life, so the argument of external rewards becomes weak and untenable. We must, then, look inwards to find out what is it that drives an aspiring expert unremittingly on an arduous and seemingly interminable path to an epiphanic destination called expertise. Expertise research has invariably found that intrinsic factors such as interest and motivation are central forces that propel an aspiring expert towards expertise. These intrinsic factors are connected to feelings and have emotional implications. Inherent interest in a field makes it naturally attractive to an individual. It determines preferences and assigns priorities in life. It draws attention effortlessly and makes learning easier because of curiosity



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and inquisitiveness. Path of learning, then, is full of joy and satisfaction, pleasure and contentment. Interest also generates the positive emotions of elation, eagerness, wonder, and excitement throughout journey. It as well brings the factors of volition and ownership into play and makes one responsible in matters of learning. Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, boosts morale and controls the negative emotions of frustration, sadness, and dejection in the moments of difficulties and failures. It ensures the survival of desire and goal both through a long and arduous journey. It is the source of higher levels of aspiration, positive attitude, and self-belief. It produces positive mental imagery portraying success in life which gives encouragement, keeps commitment, and sustains hope. Intrinsic motivation maintains a continuous engagement with a field. It helps continue struggle for mastery against all odds and obstacles, setbacks and fiascos. It underpins persistence, perseverance, and determination in the face of problems and hardships and helps turn adversities into opportunities in trying times. It facilitates return after interruption and resumption after disruption and puts an aspirant back on track every time after his derailment. Intrinsic motivation is a force that sustains effortful learning and practice for many years even without extrinsic motivation and rewards which are hardly there before a person is recognised as an expert. Acquisition of expertise by maintaining continuous and consistent mental and physical engagement and efforts for over a decade is just not possible without these key intrinsic drivers, for it is largely a personal journey of aspirant. All through this journey, no one accompanies and supports an aspirant as his intrinsic motivation and interest do. Together, they generate unending attraction for something new and challenging and make one’s curiosity and inquisitiveness almost boundless. Under their influence, a person cannot but shows the unmistakable signs of neophilia and risk-taking. Such is his inner force that an aspirant is not afraid of making mistakes, and still more interestingly, he ends up learning many a valuable lesson from each of his mistakes. It can be said, then, that no one can become an expert without having a profound intrinsic interest and motivation in a field; merely prolonged association, enabling environment, and supportive culture are not enough. Whereas inherent interest and intrinsic motivation are necessary for an individual to become an expert, they do not on their own constitute expertise and while the making of an expert is essentially a journey of knowledge and skill acquisition, it is not a simple learning and gathering of experience in a field that happens automatically as time goes by. An entirely different set of abilities are imperative to achieving expert-level knowledge and skills. These are the abilities of higher order acquired by an aspirant over time which

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launch him on a path very different from and beyond the accumulation of routine domain experience. Since these are the abilities of ‘higher order,’ they are described by prefixing a combining form ‘meta’ to base words. These metacomponents of learning are constituted of strategic awareness, knowledge, and skills for understanding and modifying the process of learning itself. These are distinct from the intended learning of knowledge and performance reflected in outcomes. These are instead the intelligent tools and smart catalysts of learning process, which act collectively also as a capable guide and adviser throughout journey. Due to the intervention of metacognitive abilities, routine learning and practice is transformed and elevated to a higherorder process of self-regulated learning and practice. Self-regulated process has a different trajectory of learning and its divergence from the curve of routine process increases rapidly as time progresses. Let us see in what ways learning experience becomes different due to self-regulation. In the journey of an individual towards expertise, the initial phase of development is limited to the acquisition of foundational knowledge and basic skills confined to subject matter. This phase is absolutely necessary for the achievement of end goal, for on the strength of his basal knowledge and skills, an aspirant continues to grow more and become better over time. Such improvement is a natural outcome of engagement with a field and endeavours made by him to learn more. A turning point in the making of an expert, however, comes much later when metacognitive abilities form and develop after several years of continued association and sustained efforts. Hereupon, the self-intervention of aspirant in the process of learning becomes radically different. He graduates from being a routine learner to becoming a reflective learner and gains independence from external feedback and assistance. And, in due course, he accomplishes near complete self-reliance in learning. First critical factor that transforms a person in his metalearning phase is self-realisation, which brings to him knowledge about his real strengths and true weaknesses. It happens because an aspirant now possesses a powerful tool called metaknowledge—knowledge about knowledge—and by means of it he gets to know what does he know and does not know or what he can do and cannot do. His self-evaluation now becomes realistic and it also keeps him humble and focussed on the future. Errors, weaknesses, and failures are now attributed to controllable sources which can be influenced by interventions instead of uncontrollable sources which are beyond him. His approach to learning becomes positively self-critical which makes him adaptive rather than defensive. He readily accepts and admits his shortcomings and limitations and does not overlook or deny them any longer. Interestingly, such



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positively critical self-focus does not bring any disadvantage, discouragement, despondency, or dejection to a practitioner. For his self-efficacy also strikes a good balance between his desire, hope, and the reality. He is able to shield himself from a negative self-blaming attitude that could develop as a result of his self-critical perspective to learning. By perceiving his errors and failures as the outcomes of deficiency of method, not man, an aspiring expert is able to make a fine distinction between personal inability and technical inadequacy and shows resilience in the face of failures. His failure analysis leaves scope for personal improvement and sustains hope in a controllable future. His self-focus is benign, not malignant in nature; it is progressive, not regressive in effect. It only helps him to become better. A practitioner’s self-evaluation is not limited only to spotting and understanding his errors and weaknesses correctly but he is also able to find out how to deal with them effectively. An aspiring expert in this phase of learning develops an uncanny strategic understanding of dynamics of progress. He is able to differentiate between process and outcome and follow an optimised, flexible, and step-by-step strategic approach to sustain progress and development for a long period of time. His learning programme has an underlying structure having successive stages that guide overall progression. For each stage, there are specific stage linked goals guiding gradual progression in a desirable direction. His understanding of goal dynamics is strategic and his goal setting is intelligent. He now sets a combination of process goals and outcome goals and he is somehow able to smartly switch goals on the way to maximise gains, for gains are limited if he were to stay only with one type of goals. For an all-round improvement, he sets approach goals to achieve what is desirable and avoidance goals to get rid of what is undesirable. His goals are categorised by importance and they carry different weights that makes it easy for him to deal with temporary setbacks. His goal setting is such that challenges remain moderate, risks are optimal, and gains are incremental. Goals, moreover, are grounded in realism—neither very easy nor very hard. His goals are clear in his mind, even if not defined clearly and cannot be verbalised coherently. An aspirant with his small-scale goal pursuit strategy thus continues on a prolonged journey towards excellence and expertise. An aspiring expert all too often displays amazing resourcefulness in his journey. He is able to mobilise resources one way or another and allocate them wisely in furtherance of his goal. Time is a critical resource in life and an aspirant has a remarkable ability for time management. He also manages to reorganise his environment to support his pursuit of expertise

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and exploit everything available and everyone accessible in a way that furthers his progress towards end goal. He has strategic awareness of when to seek help and from where and he knows exactly what to learn from whom. In sum, he knows where to look for solutions after he has defined a problem and prepared a strategic plan in his mind. He does not need a guide to progress on path to expertise; his course of journey instead is self-guided. Plan implementation phase of self-regulated learning is mediated by selfmonitoring and self-control. An aspiring expert develops action-feedback loop and avoids a mindless pursuit of a plan. He is not only able to selfgenerate feedback but also seeks and welcomes external feedback. Feedback is both positive and negative and it is also continuous. Feedback is, moreover, received by him with a positive mindset and all seriousness. He mentally tracks or physically records progress and is aware of his path of development. By reviewing goals as well as methods wherever necessary, he is able to control both process and outcomes. His monitoring and control abilities now enable him to adjust and adapt continuously all along the way. He realises rather early if something is not working or not going to work in the future. He is thus able to modify and correct his plan as and when required and continues on the trajectory of progress. His monitoring and control abilities also play a vital role in his evolution as an expert over the long haul. These metacognitive faculties tell him when to speed up and when to slow down—to continue, modify, or terminate. They do valuable optimisation to avoid stagnation and recession due to excessive rest and discontinuation on the one hand and prevent burnout and injuries as a result of overdoing and overtraining on the other. They help find a balance and equilibrium necessary to steer through a difficult and extended journey an aspiring expert embarks on. They tell him why must he hang on and inform him when should he let go. A person is thus able to routinely self-correct on his way and move in on his end goal, slowly but surely. Self-regulated learning has a cyclic structure. A plan is intended to produce certain outcomes—defined exactly or understood mentally. An aspiring expert, at the end of its current phase of implementation, evaluates outcomes, recognises shortfalls, errors, and problems, identifies and defines problems, finds solutions, amasses resources, and modifies or alters his plan to deal with them. Cycle of learning is thus turned by self-evaluation and the wheel of self-regulated learning keeps moving interminably. A person riding on it thus continues on the course of self-improvement leading to the end goal of expertise acquisition.



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I want to highlight a few essential aspects of self-regulated learning here in order to differentiate it from routine learning. Knowledge of distinction between these two methods and techniques of learning is imperative to this discussion, for self-regulated learning is a necessary tool for achieving expertise while routine learning yields nothing more than average and mediocre competence. Method of self-regulated learning is a method of self-instruction. It is self-directed, self-observed, and self-controlled by self-awareness and self-reflection. An individual who utilises this has to be self-disciplined and has to have self-confidence and self-focus. He relies on self-talk to remind, correct, and motivate. He creates self-challenging settings that expect more from him. He drives himself to do more and do better. Use of prefix ‘self’ in conjunction with words which otherwise are sufficient to convey their meaning is done here only to emphasise the overwhelming role of learner in the process of learning. This is, therefore, an entirely different phenomenon from routine learning in which the efforts and contributions of individual do not go beyond an average level. Secondly, self-regulation is founded on the problem-solving ability of a person. It has several strategic and analytical components—the metacomponents of thinking—which exert greater cognitive control over process for achieving desired outcomes and make all actions purposive in the course of accomplishing defined targets. Metacognitive interventions are not based on sweeping generalisations and superficial analysis that encompass everything and explain nothing as in the case of routine learning. Instead, metacognitive abilities make problem-solving specific and clear in focus and detail. Self-regulation, therefore, is systematic, methodical, structured, organised, intelligent, and ingenious for its practitioner, even if it is not visible to others. It successfully overcomes or circumvents all kinds of barriers and bottlenecks—psychological, physiological, environmental, and social—on the way to achieving end goal. Thirdly, it is a slow, gradual, incremental, and long-drawn process. It takes a lot of time, efforts, and continuous domain association to develop metacognitive abilities in the first place. Thereupon, it requires sustained engagement with the field of learning, extended over many years to accomplish excellence and expertise by employing and utilising metacognition. Routine learning, on the other hand, is faster and easier but it does not take one’s performance beyond a mediocre level and average quality. Fourthly, a practitioner of self-regulation carries a selfefficacious image in his mind. His self-perception is more competent and he exudes greater self-confidence. His motivation is intrinsic and focus is internal. He races and competes against himself and harbours a positive attitude towards problem-solving. He is able to stretch his aspirations beyond current capabilities and able to see incremental gains and the desired direction of

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progress even in the absence of tangible outcomes. He perceives his ability to gain feedback internally and recognise problems independently as achievement and reward by itself. It increases his mastery and control over the process of learning which brings pleasure, joy, elation, and fulfilment to him as his reward and makes him see a failure as a challenge and an opportunity for improvement. Process thus gains a greater importance—not only technically but also emotionally—in self-regulated learning. In contrast, routine learners lack such robust emotional and attitudinal qualities and fail to show resilience and sustain interest and engagement in the face of disappointing outcomes. Lastly, a practitioner of self-regulated learning reflects greater intellectual integrity in comparison to a routine learner. He is more accurate in judging the difficulty of a problem. He owns up his mistakes and readily admits his limitations without any pretence. His journey is solitary and his efforts are independent of a supervisory oversight, a threat of punitive action, or a promise of external reward, for he remains under the influence and spell of self-regulation. I will briefly discuss a distinct characteristic of an aspiring expert which gives him tremendous advantage in becoming an expert and ever after. It is his uncanny ability of unconscious goal pursuit which is effective in the extreme in achieving end goal. Goals in his mind are represented as cues and reside in working memory at the fringes of awareness. These cues are instrumental in recognising and exploiting opportunities which present themselves all of a sudden in his environment and which might have been overlooked otherwise for want of attention. In such situations, goal linked cues are able to immediately allocate attention and activate memory and actions on priority to achieve these goals when attention is allocated elsewhere at a particular moment and the process of conscious learning is turned off. In consequence, therefore, the unconscious pursuit of goals has the same effect as the conscious pursuit of goals. It promotes automatic learning by allowing the extraction of relevant knowledge from every aspect of life, even without any apparent link to or intention of deliberate learning. I will close this section by commenting on the central theme of hostage rescue, for conclusion drawn here will shape the organisation and structure of hostage rescue force that I will propose later. My own experience confirms the applicability of ten-year rule of expertise acquisition. I have also seen that technological support and pedagogical guidance do help in crossing certain barriers and bottlenecks in the process of learning but they do not shortcircuit the process of making of an expert. I believe that expertise in hostage rescue is largely the ability of making correct judgements and quick decisions



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in life-threatening fast moving ambiguous situations. For decision-making in such fleeting, confusing, uncertain, runaway, and dangerous situations, a reliance on cognitive resources is absolutely essential and young guns cannot do this job reliably howsoever precise and capable they may be in skill execution and physical performance. Cognitive resources necessary for crisis decision-making can only be amassed by human beings over a prolonged period of time. They can only be distilled from a valuable experience gained through the investment of personal energy, directed behaviour, unquenchable inquisitiveness, and continuous reflection done for a considerable period in one’s life. Much as we like to become experts early, expertise is such that does not and cannot come quickly to anyone and it also has no short cuts. Expertise, in truth, has a very long gestation period before it manifests. Its journey is rather lonely, its quest largely personal. III I have so far discussed human memory and how a human being becomes an expert. In this section, I will discuss the strengths and vulnerabilities of experts. Most of concepts discussed in this section have already been introduced in third chapter, for they form the basis of crisis decision-making. Readers are advised to refer to the relevant paragraphs of previous chapter yet again for greater clarity of these intricate concepts. True strength of an expert lies in his skilled anticipation in a dynamic domain environment, which enables him to be in right place at right time with right response. In his area of expertise, an expert knows in advance where to look for and what to look for. He is able to sense—see, hear, and feel—and extract relevant and useful information from information rich surroundings. Everything that has an effect and influence on the course of events is considered relevant. Anything which conveys a sense and meaning about the big picture is treated as important. Something that can be connected to the past and the future of events is regarded as significant. These are critical cues which are exploited by expert to understand situation, define problem, and suggest solution. On the other hand, an expert is able to successfully deal with information overload caused by the overwhelming and relentless bombardment of information. He manages it by deftly filtering out noise and ignoring the irrelevant mass of information having no interpretive and predictive value. He masterly exploits leading information available early in an ongoing situation to turn the course of events in a desired direction. He draws useful inferences from this proto-information and makes an accurate projection of events and a correct anticipation of their course. It keeps him

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ahead of developments taking place in the world and makes him fast and accurate to pre-empt and react. And, he does it by relying on his credible domain experience amassed over many years of learning and knowledge distilled out of it. An expert employs a simple rule-based strategy to solve simple problems quickly and he seems always prepared to solve problems. In his brain is stored a phenomenal bank of relational information organised intelligently in the form of ‘if-then,’ ‘what-if,’ ‘stimulus-response,’ and ‘condition-action’ pairing. These pairings or rules are used in this problem-solving strategy. His success, however, is not determined only by a rich bank of information held in memory. It equally depends on his ability to instantly access and activate relevant rules—consciously or autonomously—from his memory. By successfully employing rule-based strategy, he avoids friction, time delay, and confusion and exhibits a faster reaction time. In addition to rules and their application in time, the processing efficiency of expert is also determined by his superior perceptual abilities. Researchers have found the evidence of a larger field of view of experts and other more developed sensory faculties relevant to expertise. An expert exploits his anatomical advantages still better by developing and employing intelligent scan patterns and strategies for information gathering, which give him a perceptual head start. Rulebased strategy of experts thus generates an intriguing phenomenon that has been termed by Australian cognitive psychologist Bruce Abernethy as time paradox—even in the conditions of “extreme time constraints,” experts seem to have “all the time in the world.” Rule-based strategy is not enough to solve complex problems in ambiguous domain environments where situation is not only evolving but available information is always partial, incomplete, and uncertain. In such situations, an expert employs a simulation-based strategy. He possesses and utilises a highly evolved and sophisticated computing tool called mental model in cognitive psychology for the simulation of the reality. A mental model resides in his head and uses the resources of specialised information complex or schema of expert memory. A mental model can be defined as a rich body of intricate rules and protocols held in memory which represents a situation type. These rules define the relationships of situational variables with each other and they can be applied repeatedly to determine the progression of events in time and space. These rules are acquired by experience and refined, collated, and combined by selforganisation based on the logic of underlying rhythms and patterns found



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in similar situations encountered in the past. A mental model exists in the realm of unconscious and its processing largely remains outside the reach of awareness. Resultantly, only outputs manifest in awareness after inputs are fed into a model, information is processed through it, and the anatomical representation of outputs is decoded to make sense of the reality. A mental model by means of its algorithms can be manipulated to work backwards and forwards with a set of variables in hand. It is also capable of supplying matching and useful variables from its bank of information to compensate for missing variables which are necessary for computing. It is, thus, not only a tool of information processing but also a tool for researching, repairing, and refreshing information required for processing. After computing dynamical relationships between these variables based on the logic of underlying rhythms and patterns represented by a model, it makes intelligent projection on the future course of events. Because of its mathematical structure, a model-based processing can continue as long as needed. Adjustments and modifications too can be made all along based on feedback and the new pieces of information made available with the passage of time. A mental model is, therefore, adaptive and additive in character, in addition to being reversible and repeatable in application. It has a tremendous flexibility and enough room for manoeuvring to accommodate a complex reality. Modelling ability of an expert is a consequence of the emergence of expertise through the process of self-organisation of information stored in neural network. For self-organisation is a property of complex systems, a model cannot be developed without a phenomenal amount and rich variety of semantic and conceptual information acquired from many years of generative and meaningful engagement with a field. While it takes a considerable period of time to emerge, it continues to evolve, improve, and become better after emergence, for the process of self-organisation continues and it keeps building upon itself. A more challenging and demanding experience acquired subsequently makes a mental model more robust, sophisticated, and capable. It can also be refined, expanded, and made superior by the internal processes of imagination and visualisation. We have discussed two problem-solving strategies deployed by experts. A highly efficient and accurate processing of rule-based decision-making seen in expert performance is not possible without a rich bank of cues held at the fringes of awareness. These cues are used to access right rules instantly from a specific specialised information complex stored in memory. On the other hand, the amount, variety, and range of information required to be held, updated, and manipulated constantly in awareness for a complex

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model-based dynamical analysis cannot be managed without a large pool of attentional resource at the disposal of a person. It can be argued, therefore, that the success of experts in both problem-solving strategies is determined by working memory. It has also been found that experts have an expanded working memory and a widened span of attention. An enlarged working memory of experts can be attributed to anatomical alterations caused by neural plasticity as a result of continuous practice and application. While an expert has a larger working memory and a greater attentional resource, they have no or little general-purpose application all the same. It is so because the fringes of awareness only store cues which are domain specific and they target only specific information stored in specialised information complex. We know that personal interests and preferences determine the importance and priority of perceptual information transmitted to one’s brain. In the absence of such powerful inclinations, one’s attention might not be allocated to signals which are not domain specific despite a large pool of attentional resource available for use and for want of attention, many unfamiliar signals received from environment might just fail to manifest in awareness and slip through the net. Even if noticed, there is pretty much nothing in one’s brain to process them with—rules or models or specialised information complex— which actually solve the problems of the world. Superior working memory of an expert and his lifetime of experience, therefore, hardly work outside his specialised domain and expert advantage remains ineluctably limited to the field of expertise. An expanded working memory of a person has profound effects in the domain of expertise, though. In addition to the speed and accuracy of rulebased reaction and cognitive modelling for the extrapolation of events in the future to see a situation before it actually occurs, that is, skilled anticipation, there are several other critical advantages of an expanded working memory and an enlarged span of attention. Expert advantage is invariably noticed in what is called situation awareness. An expert is typically aware of things that are happening in the present and also what has happened in the past. He is as well able to project and predict how things are going to look like in the future and retain this information in his mind too for immediate recall when required. Situation awareness, then, can be defined as a total awareness of an ongoing situation with its meaning and an ability to track the course of events on call from any point in backwards or forwards direction to know its past, present, and future. Due to an expanded working memory and a widened span of attention, an expert displays far superior situation awareness in a fast changing information rich environment and does not become overwhelmed and befuddled by information overload. Experts are



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known to survive and shine in the face of dynamic challenges of ongoing scenarios unlike non-experts who invariably trip over and crash when faced with rapid-fire changes in complex situations. Also, a reliable expert performance is not only a result of one’s ability to discriminate what is useful from what is not and ignore unnecessary and useless details but an expert’s success is equally brought about by his capacity to cognitively hold and process a large amount of information at any given time. An expanded working memory and a widened span of attention evidently enable and allow an expert to do several tasks at the same time. This ability is called multitasking. It is the hallmark of expert performance which too distinguishes an expert from non-experts. In the mind of an expert, several processes can run parallel to each other without interfering with each other or degrading their outcomes. In contrast, multitasking is certainly not a good idea for laypersons as it all too often impairs performance by generating friction and producing errors. In fact, multitasking is so risky that it could also become a pitfall for experts. Multitasking is also facilitated by another expert characteristic called automaticity. It has been discussed earlier that nondeclarative memory for behaviour and physical performance is autonomous in nature and does not manifest in awareness on recall. While the process of learning does require cognitive scaffolding in initial stages, attentional resource is gradually released as the course of learning progresses. Once consolidated after a prolonged period of repeated practice, it becomes fully automatic and independent of cognitive capacity and its support. In our world, experts thus display a very high degree of automaticity in their behaviour and performance. Automaticity, however, is not limited to learned behaviours, habits, emotional responses, and skilled performance. It is also relevant and applicable to cognitive functions. As a result of a long-term engagement and repeated practice, any cognitive task may gain a degree of autonomy and need less or little attentional resource. A task specific controlled processing efficiency results in the savings of attentional resource. Freed cognitive resource, then, is made available to process other stimuli and tasks. An expert is thus able to run several automatic and controlled processes at a time and meet the multitask demands of high-workload situations. He, on the other hand, does not show the symptoms of overload, clashes, or disruption caused by a reduced or impaired attention due to the advantages of automaticity as well as an expanded working memory and a widened span of attention. Automaticity together with an expanded working memory and a large pool of attentional resource also ensures that information and processing in working memory is shielded from distraction, disruption, and distortion produced by a hightempo high-risk high-stress operational environment. Interestingly, an expert

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does not have to learn doing all this; it all comes to him spontaneously on his becoming an expert. In addition to expanded working memory, extra attentional resource, and automaticity, expert advantage in processing efficiency is also obtained from distributed processing in brain. Human brain has different specialised regions for doing different tasks. These specialised regions are distributed in space from front to back and also from left to right and organised in a hierarchical order. Researchers in the discipline of cognitive neuroscience have found that the problem-solving strategies of experts are different from those of non-experts. Overreliance of non-experts on a few processing regions of brain overload their cognitive system quickly. On the other hand, experts employ a flexible decentralised strategy to solve problems as against the more centralised strategy of non-experts. They invoke different specialised systems of brain for doing different tasks which also support each other in the process. Expert strategy, therefore, is more efficient in the utilisation of total available computing resources and does not exhaust a few types of brain systems from overuse. Emergence of distributed processing, moreover, is not a result of a conscious design but a consequence of self-organisation. Experts just happen to acquire this ability after many years of effortful engagement and many thousand hours of generative and additive learning experience. A hugely advantageous characteristic of experts is unconscious goal pursuit which has the same function and effect in a busy and stressful operational environment of crisis resolution as in the normal times of expertise acquisition. As a result of his unconscious goal pursuit, an expert is always alert and active ‘unconsciously’ for achieving his end goal. He, then, is able to keep a constant engagement with his intermediate crisis resolution goals too rather effortlessly by retaining them in awareness or close to it and bring them to bear on the world without allocating much of his scarce attentional resource. An expert, without keeping many a goal in his attention, is able to recognise and exploit opportunities presented unexpectedly in his environment just the same by immediately activating his goals in awareness, linking them with events happening around him, and realising the usefulness of an opportunity for achieving them, which non-experts might just let go and fall through the net for want of attention. Expert advantage is also obtained from another dimension of learning called tacit knowledge. How do I define what is tacit knowledge when it resists definition? Perhaps, a better way to understand it is by comparison and by knowing what it is not. So, let us first define its opposite, that is, explicit



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knowledge. Explicit knowledge is formal, based on facts and rules, routines and procedures; it is known, knowable, reproducible, explicable, definable, and documentable. It can, therefore, be organised and transferred, taught and learned. A contrarian indefinable companion to it is what we call tacit knowledge; it nevertheless is knowledge, for it is acquired over time, stored and self-organised somewhere in brain, and it is usable and can be used for sense-making and problem-solving in the world. While it can be easily used by its owner, it cannot be so easily taught and transferred to others and it, thus, largely remains one’s closely personal strength and a very private asset. Tacit knowledge is distilled from everyday common sense learning experience which may be incidental and unintended and picked up for storage as it comes across. It remains largely ‘unorganised’ and “not readily articulated by the individual or widely shared within the performance domain,” as American psychologists Jennifer Hedlund, John Antonakis, and Robert Sternberg note. It gives an expert what is called practical intelligence which makes him a kind of streetwise in his domain and supplies an unconventional problem-solving toolkit to him. Tacit knowledge is quite personal and subjective as it is derived from personal experience. As an expert has many years of meaningful experience, his bank of tacit knowledge is also quite rich. Non-experts do not have this advantage with their little or limited experience in a domain. A phenomenal amount of accumulated and aggregated information stored in the brain of an expert is what produces that X factor, his uncanny insight, his enigmatic intuition, that intriguing sixth sense, his amazing mind’s eye, curious gut feeling, and incredible foresight, which are always abundant, easily accessible, and often reliable. It can be argued, then, that a person needs to necessarily work for many years in a field before he is able to acquire those unusual and fantastic judgemental abilities derived from tacit knowledge and practical intelligence which experts are generally known for—hence expertise remains in gestation for a very long time. Let us also see the emotional side of expert advantage. There is a subtle relationship between stress, anxiety, control, and expertise which is expressed through emotional reactions and has an effect on cognitive functions. In addition to its effects on cognition, anxiety about losing control also has the potential of affecting automatic performance. Due to their familiarity and knowledge, experts often have a perceived sense of control over a situation. This sense of control may not be real but in its effects, it works as if it is real and makes an expert believe that he is in actual control. A sense of control brings feelings of comfort and confidence. It considerably wanes anxiety about the uncertainty and loss of control. An expert, therefore, may appear quite calm and self-assured in a difficult situation that makes a non-

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expert waver and unsure of himself. At worst, a layperson might just be paralysed by anxiety in the moments of crisis. Such behaviour arises from a primeval psychological need for survival and self-preservation in human beings and it may override all other considerations. I would like to make a very important point on expert advantage before finishing this discussion. It can be said that age is also on the side of experts. Improvement in perceptual and cognitive capacities continues during entire adulthood only if an expert is able to sustain active engagement with his domain. A sustained deliberate practice has also been found to delay the onset of age related retardation in physical performance. Wherever a decline in performance has been observed, it has been found that individual had decided to reduce or discontinue his structured deliberate practice. Evidence also suggests that experts are capable of devising new strategies and methods to circumvent, arrest, and slow down age related decline in performance for a considerable period of time. It is safe to suggest, then, that a very high degree of physical performance can be maintained for a longer period in life than it is generally believed—if self-regulated practice is maintained. On the other hand, the perceptual and cognitive abilities of an expert continue to grow and sharpen his judgement and decision-making ability if he maintains active engagement with his field. Hence, even if physical abilities start to taper down from their peak, a superior performance is delivered with the passage of time on the strength of improved skilled anticipation. In sum, expertise can not only be maintained but also improved for a considerable period of time after its acquisition and the reliability of an expert increases as he matures over time. There is no debate on the fact that eventually the sheen and sharpness of an expert wanes and withers as his abilities do not and cannot last forever. Age does ultimately catch up and clinch victory— physical abilities are affected first although cognitive abilities last much longer in life. But it happens much after we think it does and that is the point here. As before, this conclusion will have a bearing on the organisation, structure, and manpower management of a hostage rescue force that I will propose later in this book. I have elucidated the strengths and advantages of experts. Let us now focus on their limitations and vulnerabilities. At its most basic level, the limitation of an expert lies in the fact that his expertise does not have a universal role and application, for expertise is not context neutral. Expert performance is derived from acquired knowledge and skills stored in the specialised information complex or schema of an individual’s memory. Expert advantage, therefore, cannot transcend the experience and memory



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of a person and it has little or no utility outside his domain. It is veritably specific and largely non-transferable—so much so that we can confidently assert that the specificity of expertise is the most basic limitation of an expert. He can neither understand a problem nor solve it in a different field. He just cannot deliver excellent and skilful performance outside his domain. And his intuition and anticipation are limited only to his field of specialisation. This fact is well known to all and universally accepted by society. For example, no one would expect or ask an acclaimed surgeon or an accomplished chef travelling as passengers to give any meaningful advice to flight crew struggling to control a mid-air technical snag in aircraft. The only set of cognitive skills that may have a general-purpose application in life is a methodical and organised approach to problem-solving followed by experts; a high degree of specific physical fitness may too have general benefits in life. But experts are known for their remarkable skilled excellence and not for some good performance alone and, hence, such spin-offs are not enough. Also, expertise cannot exist without a perceived guarantee of success derived from a shared experience of reliability. For it is as much a social phenomenon as an individual pursuit, personal accomplishment must be recognised by society for an individual to become an expert. Paradoxically, a second problem of an expert working in an uncertain and ambiguous environment for solving problems emerges from his greatest asset and strength—modelling. Experts might develop a fixation with and a tendency for overreliance on their models without recognising their limits. An expert might, then, fail to see or use any or all of atypical, anomalous, contrarian, and disconfirming signs, signals, cues, and clues transmitted by the real world. An expert might also be tempted to distort and alter inputs to fit a model to finding a meaning and explaining certain events. If he changes input contents majorly, stretches a model beyond its limits of validity, or fails to properly adapt it to a new situation, then his success would only depend on chance and not on his expertise. Modelling is not an exclusive preserve of experts. Not only all humans but also all animals model the world, how else would a child catch a ball or a falcon a canary. When we face a problem in the real world, we try to make sense of it, and even prepare for it, by making a model of the reality in mind. Such modelling lets us simulate and see in our mind’s eye events leading to the present and also events going to unfold in the future. There are three possibilities here. Our mental model can be right, wrong, or partially right. Even if we could see events accurately ahead of time and our reality model in the end turns out to be consistent with the reality, we must not confuse it with the reality itself, for it was just a theoretical model, a speculative exercise in our head

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and never was the reality per se. It was never real; it instead only mimicked the reality successfully this time, for the reality cannot occur before the fact. Our child and falcon may not catch a ball and a canary next time. Our success, then, does not mean that we were able to see the reality before it happened but instead what we thought the world to be did match and coincide with the real world eventually. And, when our modelling fails us, we can take consolation in the fact that it was not real in the first place. Not all experts have humility, though, to accept this simple fact of life. We will discuss more on this in subsequent chapters. Other problems of expertise may originate from automaticity and multitasking. A lack or narrowing of attention and a factor of presumption can adversely affect outcomes. Those experts who do not guard against such vulnerabilities by consciously developing and employing better strategies and procedures for multitasking, record keeping, record tracking, and cross-checking may fail at any time. Consequences of their actions can be counterproductive due to the errors of action and omission if such steps are not taken timely and effectively. It is clear from the above discussion that sometimes the strengths of an expert may also create pitfalls for him. In the next section, I will discuss how to deal with this paradox. IV Problems of narrow specificity and personal fallibility of an expert are neither ineluctable nor immutable. They only make it mandatory that in a crisis in general and particularly in a complex situation where risks are huge and stakes are high, we rely on a team of experts instead. An expert team is more capable of dealing with a complex problem because an individual expert can neither have a diversified set of knowledge and skills nor the range of perceptual, cognitive, and physical abilities necessary to comprehend and control complexity. A team of individuals coming and working together also minimises scope for error in the point of view and judgement of any one individual. A team, therefore, becomes an absolute necessity in situations where the lives of people are involved and a society can ill afford human errors and resultant failures. A team is the answer and a necessity to safeguard against the limitations of an individual, even if he is an expert. However, merely a collection of individuals coming and working together does not make a team. Human history is full of examples where an apparently sufficient pool of knowledge and skills of experts working together to solve a problem did not prove enough in the end and they failed together disastrously. A



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team is surely more than a group of individuals and an expert team is still more than a simple team. But an expert team necessary for the resolution of a complex terrorist crisis has to be a highest order of team that can be realised by human beings. Subsequent discussion in this section, therefore, is centred on such an expert team. Expert team theory proposed below is developed around the theory of complexity. Let us start with the indivisible constituent of an expert team, that is, an expert. An expert, as discussed above, is a master of his field of expertise. He, therefore, can work and operate independently in his domain. Each member of an expert team has a defined role derived from his expertise which is supposed to be performed independently. Specialised processes which all expert members of a team carry out inside their own areas of responsibility can be called isolated special functions. As we know it, a team is a result of a cooperative arrangement between several individuals who come together to overcome the limitations of one individual in solving a complex problem or achieving a desired goal in a complex situation. Hence, all members of a team must work together to accomplish such goal for which their team exists. For this, the goal of team has to be defined categorically and also understood clearly by all team members. Team goal, moreover, must not only be shared by all but it must be valued equally by all members of team. There cannot be any ambiguity or divergence on the definition and primacy of team goal. This is the very first step that a team must take to be effective. Let us presume that all individual expert members of an expert team work for a defined team goal. Also, team members have different areas of expertise and team is designed in a way that it has a full and complete range of expertise required to achieve its defined goal. Ideally, if the entire range of expertise could be vested in one individual, he could have then achieved team goal all by himself. But since that is humanly impossible due to the nature of complexity, all members are now required to work collectively in unison—so much so that where one leaves another takes over, backing each other up through and through until team goal is realised. In order for a team to be effective and successful, it has to work as a cohesive unit, which is possible only when all the members of team collaborate and cooperate uncompromisingly with each other. Such interdependent collaborative and cooperative processes as required for achieving the coordination and synchronisation of different specialised functions carried out by individual team members can be called interactive general functions.

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So long as all expert members successfully carry out their special functions as well as general functions, an expert team remains functional and effective in achieving its goal. In order to avoid confusion and attain order in various processes, the roles and responsibilities of all members are defined and understood clearly. We may presume that its members being experts in their respective domains do not face any problems in independently carrying out their isolated special processes. However, in order to facilitate the interactive general processes of team, their interdependent roles and responsibilities too are defined in terms of transferring inputs and outputs related to and required by various events and actions to other fellow team members who then, on their part, take necessary actions for coordination in the shared interest of team and this exchange goes on in a cycle until the end of operation. Transfer of such information between team members is effected and controlled by communication. In order to be useful and effective, inter-member communication has to be timely and meaningful. It also has to effectively flow in all desired directions. Rules and protocols of communication are, therefore, structured for effective team coordination and team members learn as well as follow the formats and templates of formal communication system, which is primarily based on verbal communication and only rarely relies on written reports and structured signals in an operational milieu. An effective command and control component too is embedded in it, which constantly monitors the interactive processes of team. It is given necessary authority over others to keep all team constituents on a desired course. Command and control mechanism, it can be said, is a key component that in effect turns a group into a team. These are the nuts and bolts of an expert team. Once designed correctly and fixed properly in place, a team becomes and behaves like a single cohesive unit. It is now fully functional and ready to roll out. An expert team such as this has a great many strengths. But it also has a built-in flaw for want of something special. In a high-tempo ongoing ambiguous situation where the lives of people are at stake and risks are very high, an expert team has to constantly work against the tremendous pressures of time and outcomes of their decisions and those of their opponents. Crisis situation changes so fast that a series of critical decisions have to be made and decisive actions have to be taken in a rapid succession. Team members individually, collectively, and continuously have to contend with dynamically shifting high workloads and forced to do the fast processing of both isolated and interactive functions. This, along with a constant fear of failure, generates unbearable stress and produces immense friction in teamwork. Worse still, its command and control component is no longer



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a catalyst of team function now but instead becomes its nemesis by slowing its cutting edge down and arresting its spontaneous response to the changing reality. Complexity of an ongoing crisis, thus, has a potential of crippling and debilitating individual team members and their mutual coordination. Ripples of local setbacks also rapidly spread globally and infect others. If expert team fails to contain these pressures, recover from errors, deal with uncertainties, maintain its coordination, and dominate situation, crisis soon overwhelms and incapacitates entire team. Team suffers an irrecoverable breakdown of effective communication and a complete collapse of synchronised function in less than no time. It, then, quickly falls apart and ceases to exist as a cohesive unit. All hopes are lost and trust vanishes into thin air. Failure now becomes a foregone conclusion in the face of a complex crisis. In order to self-preserve and survive a dreadful scenario like this, an expert team must possess adaptive self-organising properties; it must become an adaptive expert team in place of a controlled expert team. I have explained earlier in this chapter as to how an expert deals with and defeat the ambiguities, uncertainties, and incompleteness of information as well as the speed and tempo of evolving events in a crisis situation. For such problems, he has recourse to a mental model of situation that allows him to make an accurate projection in the future based on early and partial information. It thus lets him anticipate and decide the course of action and also successfully pre-empt events as they unfold in the real world and lets him control situation. Similarly, an adaptive expert team and its members possess, share, and work with mental models. While working as a team member in a crisis situation, each expert member of an expert team invokes two different mental models in tandem and operates both of them in parallel. We can call a primary base-level model run by an expert member as cognitive model of situation which provides him a full range of situation awareness in space and time. It is employed by him for unravelling the underlying structure of situation and seeing the big picture hidden in the noise of fleeting events. It is an expert tool for predicting, anticipating, and pre-empting events occurring in external domain environment. It is the basis of domain expertise and central to all expert interventions. It resides inside and runs with the support of specialised information complex formed in his brain over the years of dealing with such situations. A second model is a higher-order group consolidation and conflation model. We may call this secondary model as metacognitive model of team which provides a full range of team awareness in space and time. It is employed by a team member for coordinating and synchronising

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various team functions and also for tuning up his own actions with those of several different team members taken individually. All actions of all the team members, then, are stitched together by collective recourse to this shared team model in such a manner that they have the same effect as if they are carried out not by many different individuals but by a single cohesive person to achieve a defined goal. It is derived from the metaknowledge of interactive processes of team that an expert is a member of. It resides inside and runs with the support of a separate higher-order specialised information complex in his brain formed over the years of working in his team. It is an expert team tool for predicting, anticipating, and coordinating events occurring in internal team environment. It is the basis of team expertise and central to all team interventions. Each member of an adaptive team, therefore, must have dual expertise to control events occurring in external domain environment and also in internal team environment. I will further elaborate as to how the members of an adaptive expert team use these select instruments and mechanics thereof for solving the problem of coordination. Members of an adaptive expert team do not possess identical situation models but shared situation models. Let us understand this proposition. Cognitive situation models of team members are not identical, even if their fields of expertise are the same. They cannot be identical, for each individual has a slightly different experience in each crisis situation and different personal experiences progressively build unique information complexes in the brains of different individuals. They should also, ideally, not be identical, for in that case the richness and power of team diversity will be lost, its synergies will vanish, and a team will be as good as any one of its members. Even the same complex model will not give identical outputs when used by different persons in the same situation, for perceptual inputs gathered from ambiguous external environment and matching inputs borrowed from specialised information complex are bound to be slightly different in the case of each individual and we know that in complex non-linear functions, tiny initial differences may yield vastly different results. We can, thus, say that the cognitive situation models of team members are not identical but similar models, in that they are the logical representations of underlying rhythms and patterns found in similar situations. Such diversity is not dysfunctional, though, for all team members are able to talk, interact, and understand each other very well all the same due to an underlying similarity of their crisis models. Members of an adaptive expert team possess shared situation models derived from similar and shared experiences, for they have been working together as a team in crisis situations for a long period of time. Shared situation models are the instruments of base-level cooperation between team members.



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All members of an expert team also possess what we call metacognitive team model for interpersonal coordination. Unlike variable situation models, it has a greater integrity due to a lesser complexity of higher-order knowledge of team dynamics and for this reason, I believe, it is near identical, if not identical for each team member. Higher-order integrity is absolutely necessary to avoid confusion and friction, clashes and conflicts in interactive team processes. To convey its integrity, I will use a singular form and call it metacognitive team model both for a team as a whole as well as for its constituent members, one and the same. In its function, a metacognitive team model scaffolds, connects, combines, conflates, and reinforces the shared situation models of all team members while operating as a team. It makes multiple cognitive situation models to interact with each other and work cooperatively. It is the language, highway, carrier, and processor of cognitive situation models. It is what bridges gaps between all team members and makes them work as a cohesive unit while preserving the functional diversity of team and the personality of each team member at the same time. It is a higher-order shared cognitive tool for team coordination. A multi-level collaborative interaction between many cognitive situation models—on their own at base level and also by means of a metacognitive team model at higher levels—initiates the process of further self-organisation of information. It is important to bear in mind that since a model can exist only in the brain of an individual, the process of such self-organisation too occurs inside the heads of team members. Evidently, self-organisation will increase the complexity of system rapidly by building repeatedly on itself. If enough time and right catalytic conditions are available, the selforganised system of individual cognitive models will cross the tipping point of complexity and cause a sudden emergence of a super situation model of expert team. It is at this point of emergence, a veritably epiphanic moment for all its members, that an expert team becomes truly adaptive. Yet again, I must reiterate, the super situation model of expert team will exist only in the minds of its individual members and not anywhere else. A super situation model is a self-organised post-emergence phenomenon. It has several highly specialised computing algorithms residing in the minds of individual members supported by the specialised information complexes of their memories. It is a super computing system backed up by a colossal memory bank, storing a full range of specialised information concerning a crisis type and problems a team is called out to solve. This system is self-supervised and self-controlled by a very effective higher-order shared metacognitive model. Complexity of this system is far greater than the sum

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of its parts but not limited to yielding synergies only, for new system is also totally different and entirely distinct from its constituents and possesses radical global properties. New and distinct characteristics and features possessed by this system are team property, though, which make a collection of individuals behave like a single super organism of multi-domain expertise. All postemergence mechanisms and resources are owned by team as a whole and none of these properties can exist and survive in isolation, for they are the emergent properties of shared resources. Team now becomes a collective individual and a single expert while individual experts are reduced to the status of functional components and specialised parts of adaptive team. Each member of this adaptive team now becomes a veritable wizard who can do wonders, but only as a team member and never as an individual working in isolation from his team. It is a necessary sacrifice that each individual member committed to the team goal must make. Implications of shared metacognitive team model in an adaptive expert team are far-reaching. All networked and interconnected constituent units of a super organic unit interact and communicate with each other by means of an omnidirectional, spontaneous, and continuous flow of information. Also, information exchange is no longer dependent on a formal communication system controlled by a command oversight. Its communication system becomes adaptive too and uses all forms of communication as required by situation—verbal and nonverbal, structured and subtle, protocol-based and cue-based. Role of implicit and silent communication in team now assumes a far greater significance and gains critical importance in its operations. Its members evolve to a higher stage from the previous stage of understanding each other well, which was brought about by their shared situation models. All members are now able to accurately predict and anticipate the behaviours and needs of each other and also self-transfer resources as, when, and where required by employing metacognitive team model and without being told by a dedicated command and control element. All told, the automaticity of team processes now pervades all functions, interpersonal communication becomes spontaneous, team coordination becomes autonomous, and the role of command and control component becomes extraneous; it is reduced to its core competence of a torch-bearer and a tiebreaker. On the strength of its distributed computing units, an adaptive expert team acquires and processes information much faster. Owing to its collective computing capacity, it is more capable and robust both in the speed and accuracy of situation assessment and decision-making. It not only makes more accurate projections but also makes faster corrections. It self-monitors,



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self-evaluates, and self-corrects by a continuous system-wide collection and dissemination of perceptual inputs extracted from external operational environment and matching inputs retrieved from internal memory complexes. All units spontaneously and constantly receive and transmit feedback to each other as situation evolves and events unfold. Team is able to redefine its priorities, revise its intermediate goals, and reallocate its resources and functions as necessary to keep collective response in sync with end goal. In response to a fast changing situation, team thus adapts rapidly and reorganise spontaneously. It undergoes a self-organised shift in roles and responsibilities to effectively meet the demands of situation. It autonomously reinforces units under severe pressure and self-repairs losses suffered by constituent units. It reassesses, redefines, reformulates, and regroups continuously and spontaneously to effectively respond to challenges thrown by ongoing situation. It thus becomes a self-believing, self-controlling, self-correcting, self-repairing, and self-healing super system in all individual and team aspects—perceptual, cognitive, psychological, and physical. A highly evolved self-organised property of an expert team is what makes it adaptive and keeps it functional in a highly complex operational environment. Its adaptive property makes an expert team resistant to disruptions caused by uncontrollable factors by empowering itself to effectively counter and neutralise the negative play of uncertainty and surprise on its structure and function. In sum, it is the adaptive ability of an expert team that guarantees a sustained effective performance in complex dynamic operational environments. V We need to understand the serendipitous role of chance too in excellent performance and outstanding results. An individual or a group that has delivered impressive performance for a few times in the beginning or occasionally thereafter cannot be called expert, for it can be explained by a positive play of chance. Proof of expertise lies in a consistent performance delivered over a long period of time, which creates a general and shared belief in the success of an individual or a team in the minds of significant others. Expertise, therefore, is inseparably entwined with and invariably derived from its dual resultant indicators of reliability and certainty—so much so that expert performance cannot depend on the role of chance in the eyes of others. Factor of chance might play a role at times in diminishing or enhancing desirable outcomes, and occasionally even failing an expert or an expert team, but expertise is known to have a robust and resilient support of extensive domain knowledge, a relationship-based organisation of knowledge, strategic problem-solving skills, and adaptive self-organisation

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to beat it most of the time. It is not for nothing, then, that experts are seen to overcome disruptions caused by a negative play of chance and able to deliver a sustained effective performance just the same time and time again. Elegance of method and the finesse of approach displayed by experts, and even more so by an adaptive expert team, is profoundly remarkable. Coordinated fluidity and automaticity of complex operations coupled with a sense of total control demonstrated by an expert adaptive team, even in the most difficult and dangerous situations, is absolutely incredible. In a rare situation when such a team of experts fails, it fails gracefully, much unlike an ensemble of novices that miserably and hopelessly crashes each time in complex environments. VI I have avoided the grading of experts and the use of words such as ‘exceptional expert’ or ‘ordinary expert’ in the above discussion. It has a purpose. I believe that expertise for the rescue of hostages from a deadly custody of terrorists has to be full and complete and must be perceived and appraised in black and white terms—it is either there or not. Since the lives of hundreds of people are at stake in a complex terrorist crisis, the profound risks of rescue operation cannot be further inflated and situation exacerbated by relying on those who do not know their job fully and entirely. So, men assigned to undertake this mission must be absolutely reliable. But how do we judge their reliability? We get in a bind on this point and the question defies the whole construct of expertise discussed here, for their reliability cannot be proclaimed by experiencing a consistent performance over time—the hallmark of expertise in other domains. For the occurrence of such crises is extremely rare and men we rely on may get just one chance in a lifetime to prove their worth, the process and product of expertise acquisition for hostage rescue remains the only guarantee of their reliability. If expertise is a social construct and if it must accompany with certainty and trust, then, the responsibility of State and men chosen for task assumes monumental proportions in the context of hostage rescue. They get just one chance to live up to trust reposed by society in them. A complex terrorist crisis produces a hostage rescue problem of unimaginable proportions. In order to achieve this mission, a large, organised, and entrenched force of intelligent enemy committed to die for a cause must be defeated with speed and certainty. It is risky in the extreme, for the scores of psychological and physical battles against unknown and distributed terrorists must be fought and won in a rapid succession on their terrain and all terrorists



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must be decisively neutralised before they are able to inflict bodily harm on hostages. To make it worse, informational ambiguity and uncertainty in such a crisis is quite unlike other complex crises, for information here is actively denied by human intelligence and rescuers must be able to see through the smokescreen of misinformation and disinformation spread deliberately by enemy for diversion and deception. Also, they must make correct decisions and take precise actions in such nerve-racking conditions with a tempo that exceeds the speed of enemy decisions and actions, which effectively means, they must decide and act in a sub-second time frame with no delay or disruption from the beginning to the end. Above all, they must act counter-intuitively in the face of death for the sake of unknown others and all along, they must also fight and win an inner war decisively against the indestructible instinct of self-preservation. Each operational decision of a rescuer taken during a complex terrorist crisis carries a profound burden of obligation and responsibility, even if the question of personal accountability is largely silent. Here comes the role of moral character of a rescuer, of his moral constitution and moral fibre he is made of. Bold decisions must be made and greatest risks must be taken in a dangerously uncertain and fiercely hostile environment of a complex terrorist crisis. Not everyone can do that, even if there is no dearth of knowledge, skills, and experience when death is staring in the eye. Execution and resolution of a complex terrorist crisis is a world of superlative dimensions. In this world, the ability of a man to become an expert is not enough. The man must have extraordinary qualities and exceptional character.

Chapter 5 The Man

I Nazis, during their entire existence as the rulers of Germany and especially in the last six years of their rule until 1945, were killing people on several fronts with a sense of pride and mission, full of hatred and brutality. Ideology and politics of Nazism together with the emotional and intellectual makeup of its leaders and followers glorified the death and murder, slavery and subjugation of various groups of people for the good and domination of a single group they called Aryan race. Among their murderous and violent programmes was a systematic wholesale slaughter of mentally ill and challenged as well as physically handicapped people—children and adults alike who were also the citizens of Germany and belonged to their own Aryan race—which began with war and continued for a few years until about one hundred thousand patients and invalids were killed brutally and mercilessly. Victims were killed by starvation, lethal injections, and exposure to carbon monoxide in gas chambers. This mass murder programme called Action T-4 was planned and directed by Leader’s Chancellery, the highest centre of power in Nazi State, and killings were done inside healthcare institutions and carried out by the healthcare professionals of Nazi Germany. For the purpose of exterminating what they called ‘life unworthy of life,’ the gas chambers of Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hartheim, and Hadamar were built in former hospitals while those of Bernburg and Sonnenstein were opened in hospitals which continued to function as hospitals besides extermination centres. About Action T-4, British historian Richard Evans writes, “By the time the main killing programme had ended, in August 1941, a large part of the medical and caring professions had been brought in to operate the machinery of murder. From an initially small group of committed physicians, the circle of those involved had grown inexorably wider, until general practitioners, psychiatrists, social workers, asylum staff, 109

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orderlies, nurses and managers, drivers and many others had become involved, through a mixture of bureaucratic routine, peer pressure, propaganda and inducements and rewards of one kind or another. The machinery of mass murder developed in the course of Action T-4, from the selection of victims to the economic exploitation of their remains, had operated with grim efficiency.” Evans also narrates an inspiring story of moral courage linked to Action T-4. He tells, “Some judicial officials began to notice the unusual frequency of deaths among the inmates of institutions and some prosecutors even considered asking the Gestapo to investigate the killings. However, none went so far as Lothar Kreyssig, a judge in Brandenburg who specialized in matters of wardship and adoption. A war veteran and a member of the Confessing Church, Kreyssig became suspicious when psychiatric patients who were wards of court and therefore fell within his area of responsibility began to be transferred from their institutions and were shortly afterwards reported to have died suddenly. Kreyssig wrote to Justice Minister Gürtner to protest against what he described as an illegal and immoral programme of mass murder. The Justice Minister’s response to this and other, similar, queries from local law officers was to try once more to draft a law giving effective immunity to the murderers, only to have it vetoed by Hitler on the grounds that the publicity would give dangerous ammunition to Allied propaganda. Late in April 1941 the Justice Ministry organized a briefing of senior judges and prosecutors by Brack and Heyde, to try to set their minds at rest. In the meantime, Kreyssig was summoned to an interview with the Ministry’s top official, State Secretary Roland Freisler, who informed him that the killings were being carried out on Hitler’s orders. Refusing to accept this explanation, Kreyssig wrote to the directors of psychiatric hospitals in his district informing them that transfers to killing centres were illegal, and threatening legal action should they transport any of their patients who came within his jurisdiction. It was his legal duty, he proclaimed, to protect the interests and indeed the lives of his charges. A further interview with Gürtner failed to persuade him that he was wrong to do this, and he was compulsorily retired in December 1941. . . . Kreyssig was a lone figure in the persistence of his attempts to stop the campaign.” All told, there was no resistance to Nazi rule in Germany. Germans remained silent spectators at best to Nazi crimes, a disturbing account of which is given in Victoria Barnett’s Bystanders. Scholars of Nazi Germany too with the benefit of hindsight seem to unanimously agree that there indeed was no room for resistance and opposition in a perfect totalitarian State ruled by Adolf Hitler. But the story of Kreyssig suggests that their



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agreement may not be entirely true and it was indeed possible to openly resist and oppose Nazis, individually at least, only if someone had moral courage for it. Another example of personal resistance was Wilm Hosenfeld, an officer of German army stationed in Poland, who was a Nazi himself but over time, he regained his moral sight to see the truth and mustered sufficient courage to act for what indeed was right. Evans quotes from his diary written on June 16, 1943, “With this terrible murder of the Jews, we have lost the war. We have brought upon ourselves an indelible disgrace, a curse that can never be lifted. We deserve no mercy, we are all guilty.” His rekindled conscience not only led him to see and sense the unspeakable acts of fellow Germans done all over the place with visceral hatred for vanquished, especially Jews, but also gave him courage to save several Polish people from the murderous actions of Nazis, including those who were Jewish such as Władysław Szpilman, the protagonist of 2002 movie The Pianist. Organised resistance too was possible as proved by so-called ‘Red Orchestra,’ League, and a student resistance group called White Rose. With a handful of members and meagre means, White Rose rose to challenge the all-powerful ideology and all-pervasive propaganda of Nazis by distributing thousands of subversive leaflets in Germany, although with no effect, for Germans still believed in Nazi ideology and Hitler’s cult. These courageous young men and women surely knew the risks of their actions—before long most of them were arrested and executed or incarcerated—but they resisted Nazis all the same. There was a reason why the likes of Kreyssig and those who organised White Rose, League, and ‘Red Orchestra’ were all but missing from Germany. What, in truth, was missing from German society then was a belief in moral values. Not that resistance to Nazi State was not possible; it did not actually happen much because German people did not want to resist. They were the beneficiaries of Nazi rule; they shared and enjoyed the loot and plunder of Nazis as argued by German historian Götz Aly in his book Hitler’s Beneficiaries. Above all, Germans did not resist Nazis, for they had become morally degenerate and depraved by their total belief in nationalism, racism, antisemitism, and Hitler—so much so that many of them, especially in West Germany, remained unrepentant long after Hitler and his Third Reich had been destroyed and the absolute horrors of his evil rule had been accounted for and were no longer hidden from the public gaze. The question of possibility of resistance to a mighty and vengeful adversary, then, deflects a more meaningful question, which not many are willing to ask: Who would resist immorality if there is no morality? And its corollary: Is there anything more motivating than morality?

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II I ended discussion on expertise with an assertion that occupational competence and operational expertise is not enough for hostage rescue, for only a man of extraordinary qualities and exceptional character can act resolutely in a complex terrorist crisis. It, then, pins all our hopes on the personal character of man. By man’s character I mean his moral character. Then, what do I mean by the moral character of man? Moral character of man can be imagined as a welded framework, an integrated structure made of constituents called moral virtues. A moral virtue is the behavioural translation and physical expression of an ideal called moral value. A moral value is a condition or a state—something that is believed to be intrinsically good and desirable and determines what is right; its negation or subversion is always bad, undesirable, and wrong. It is the matrix of moral values which constitutes what we call morality. Morality is a way of thinking, feeling, and doing; it is altruistic in constitution and effect. An easy way to understand morality is by contrasting it with the much acclaimed and widely approved notion of rationality. Morality is unlike and antagonistic to rationality which is essentially selfish and selfserving—operated by a cost-benefit reasoning intended and carried out to reduce personal costs and raise personal benefits. In marked contrast to this, morality is operated by moral reasoning that motivates a man to choose good over bad, desirable over undesirable, right over wrong, irrespective of costs. In short, moral behaviour is necessarily selfless while rational behaviour is essentially selfish. A moral value becomes a moral virtue when practiced and manifested through the deeds and actions of man in the real world but a man does not become virtuous unless he fulfils certain conditions. He has to necessarily acquire and display a three-dimensional integrity of feelings and emotions, thoughts and beliefs, actions and behaviours. While only direct and positive actions prove the character of man and merely thoughts and emotions, beliefs and feelings are not enough, they are absolutely necessary to scaffold actions all the way from beginning to end by eliminating self-doubt and resultant vacillation. Also, a man has to be virtuous in all situations and at all times, for he ought to pass the tests of consistency, repeatability, and predictability of his moral reasoning and behaviour throughout his existence as a virtuous man. Not only that a man who desires and chooses to possess moral virtues—a man of character—must display virtuous behaviour at each opportunity but his virtuous behaviour must also be observed in and by the world outside,



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if there is anyone to see it. A virtuous act, moreover, ought to bring joy and pleasure to self and it should bring joy and pleasure to others too who happen to experience it—accompanied mostly with elation, wonder, and awe. It is lauded by others but it does not depend on extrinsic motivators, for a virtuous act is self-rewarding and fulfilling through and through. In other words, both the process and outcomes of virtuous actions are intrinsically rewarding and fulfilling. A man becomes virtuous only after fulfilling these conditions. We know that a moral value is believed, experienced, and exercised by a man and expressed in his thoughts and beliefs, emotions and feelings, and behaviours and actions in the form of a moral virtue. Also, a man of character characteristically and habitually practices moral values in his life, thereby leading a virtuous life. A virtue, then, can be said to be that inner strength or internal force of man which autonomously provides the resolution of free will to him for practicing a value with a complete integrity of thoughts, feelings, and actions. Moral virtue can also be said to be a corrective force to a temptation to compromise a moral value. For making him a creature of habit, a virtue can be called a disposition of man that can be sensed and experienced by others. It is a trait of a person that predetermines his intellectual, emotional, attitudinal, and behavioural response to stimuli and situations involving moral questions. A value may be advocated by a collective but a virtue is always exercised by an individual. If a man cannot be expected to behave in any way other than being purely selfish as genes would want him to be, then, his behaviour, arguably, cannot be controlled without there being a controlling agency or corrective mechanism. A man of character, thus, would not but need a regulator for his virtuous behaviour. But virtuous behaviour cannot be enforced from outside by external means. It has to be imposed and enforced internally by self, for the control of external agency is limited to the actions and behaviours of man and it cannot indeed control his beliefs and thoughts, feelings and emotions residing deep in his self, which too must be controlled and integrated with actions for him to become virtuous. Morality, thus, cannot have an external regulator. What is it, then, which regulates a man of character? A man of moral character who leads a virtuous life eventually comes to possess a general property and an aggregate force of moral virtues called conscience. It gives him the ability of moral reasoning and self-judgement. His conscience keeps a self-vigil on his acts, thoughts, and feelings in order to determine

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if they are in consonance with his moral commitments and convictions. It self-censures and self-sanctions his undesirable behaviours and beliefs, feelings and attitudes. It not only controls ends but also checks means, thus making him do right things in right ways for right reasons. Conscience is inner moral overseer that self-monitors and self-corrects its owner; it has a moral sight that prevents the moral blindness of its possessor. It establishes the supremacy of moral reason over other competing and countervailing reasons. Once there, it becomes his self-regulator ever after and more so in adversity, trauma, and trying times. Conscience of a man is the enforcer of morality. While a virtue is lauded by society, a virtuous man needs no approval of others nor does he seek recognition from others. He is intrinsically motivated to promote good and prevent evil and his satisfaction and reward come from self-approval and self-recognition. Leading a virtuous life is an expression and extension of his free will. Such a choiceworthy life is flourishing and fulfilling not only in realising moral goals but also while working for them. It is flourishing and fulfilling in both cognitive and affective terms. In this sense, elation is a product of virtue. If that is so, can this conclusion be reversed to say that all beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and acts that cause elation are virtuous? In my belief not, for virtues cannot be located outside the framework of morality, though some philosophers might argue otherwise. Values, as we know, are the constituent elements of morality. While discussing the notion of value, I have deliberately and thoughtfully omitted all references to a particular group of people such as society, community, and more besides, which is a common and accepted way of defining values in anthropology, sociology, and even philosophy. For values which are dependent on the approval of a group make a mockery of morality by sapping the very essence and soul of morality. What good, then, is morality if it is good only for some? While an ideal that is valued by an individual, group, or society can be semantically called a value of that individual or collective, it is not and it cannot be a moral value unless it passes the test of universality. Also, moral values may reside and propagate in a collective but they cannot be decided arbitrarily and unilaterally by a group. In the absence of a universal perspective, the idea of value can bring enormous pain and suffering and nullify the very existence of life, as it has done everywhere. Catastrophic events orchestrated by the beliefs of Germans under the spell of Nazi value system are just one example. Given their dangers, stringent philosophical restraints are absolutely essential on the ideas of value and morality. Moral values and moral reasoning must be such that cannot be confined to certain limits drawn by a community, nation, race, or even species. For it to be moral, a value



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must be unfettered and unencumbered, all-inclusive and all-encompassing, limitless and universal in the first place. Morality is an absolute notion which knows no bounds, altruism follows the principle of all or nothing, selectivity is the surest sign of immorality, and the practitioners of morality have no choice. I also insist that principles which construct the framework of morality must not only have the character of universality but they must also have the property of timelessness. Our relationships with things, living and non-living, will, of course, change with time as our knowledge and realisation of the world becomes greater and better but principles on which the construct of morality rests remain unaltered and unalterable with time as well as the creation of knowledge. For morality is a matter of belief, not awareness or knowledge. With these philosophical injunctions, we can define the notion of moral value with greater clarity and certainty. A moral value must bring joy and pleasure to one and all. Nothing that negates this fundamental principle can be called a moral value. In this philosophical sense, a moral value has a property of universality and nothing becomes a moral value just because a group of people believes it to be an ideal—at the expense of others and by causing pain and suffering to them. A moral value cannot be good for some; it has to be good for all. A moral value that is good today ought to remain good forever. And, a moral value is not only good but also right; it is the opposite of bad and wrong. For being a product of morality, character, its presence and pursuit, is good and it does right things. Its absence and negation, on the other hand, can be bad and do wrong things. As a reflection of morality, it is praiseworthy, admirable, and laudable; its negation is blameworthy, reprehensible, and culpable, in consequences. In moral terms, there cannot be a ‘bad character’ as there cannot be an ‘evil value.’ However, a person who lacks a moral character can display bad thoughts, ill feelings, and evil actions. A value when exercised consistently makes a man virtuous; it makes him vicious when negated habitually. Virtue, whose opposite is vice, is not an idea but an applied value having consequences in life. Character is, thus, consequential in nature; it brings joy and pleasure and a lack of it may bring pain and suffering. And, it has shared consequences. Practice of morality has irrevocable and inescapable obligations to others unlike a materialist or spiritual pursuit of personal well-being. For being altruistic, a virtue must yield greater joy and pleasure than what is experienced personally by a virtuous man; with him, others too must share the experience of joy and pleasure directly, and also vicariously.

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Otherwise limitless scope of morality is limited in its applicability in one sense, though. Needless to say, one has to have a capacity for reasoning and judgement that allows one to make considered choices in life in order to fit into this moral framework. To those who are incapable of making and modifying choices for want of innate capacity for moral reasoning and judgement, humans or animals alike, the idea of character does not apply. We can draw interesting comparisons here with expertise. Acquisition of virtues, I believe, is a matter of conscious choices and deliberate efforts made by a man. And, by the process of self-regulation, a man can modify his thoughts, feelings, and actions and, in turn, build his moral character. In its process, therefore, character building is no different from expertise building, although its domain is altogether different. Moral character is similarly built each day by a man himself. It may take a self-reflective journey of ten years or more for a man to crystallise his conscience and become a master of morality as it does for him to become an expert of occupational domain. Nature of virtue too is similar to expertise; it has to be demonstrated in the physical world repeatedly, consistently, and habitually by a virtuous man across time, space, and situations. Though I believe that character can be built by the conscious efforts of human will, it really does not matter in the end if virtues are merely the expression of personality traits of a man or if virtuous behaviour is acquired by him from his experiences and efforts. All that matters is that certain virtues are there in a man called out to rescue hostages, for they are absolutely essential and indispensable for a successful action. In the absence of these intrinsic constituents of character of rescuers—dispositional and constitutional or learned and acquired—it is not possible, I believe, for a rescue team or organisation to effectively and reliably deal with a complex terrorist crisis. Talking about moral character has become old-fashioned, unattractive, and even offensive today especially in liberal, progressive, and leftist circles. What is so hurtful and resentful in the idea of moral character? Is it because it puts restraints on individual choices, thus undermining the notions of freedom and autonomy in our individualistic culture or is it also because morality is usually considered a domain of religion, thus getting associated with the bondage of humanity to certain unalterable and stifling ideas that religions are made of? Be that as it may, I endorse the idea most emphatically, for the moral character of men involved in hostage rescue operation decides the outcome of a complex terrorist crisis in ways that nothing else does.



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Although each moral virtue is different and distinct in nature and can be defined and understood independently, a moral virtue is not likely to operate meaningfully in isolation from some other cooperative virtues that scaffold and back it up in real life. A search for these linkages is not my goal, for my limited purpose is to define the character of man who is entrusted with the job of rescuing hostages in a complex terrorist crisis. In other words, I am not compiling a catalogue or writing a manual of virtues. Purpose of this discussion is limited to solving the problem of hostage rescue in the context of complex terrorist crisis. As a result, I have selected and elaborated only those virtues which, I believe, are absolutely essential and indispensable for rescuers. Since these virtues would certainly require and bring into play scores of other cooperative virtues, the actual character of man would indeed be far richer and variegated comprising many more virtues than those listed in this chapter. With this introduction, I am ready to define the character of my man. I will discuss one virtue in each subsequent section. Taken together, these virtues would constitute the moral character of the man who is sent in to rescue hostages and resolve a complex terrorist crisis. III About two and a half millennia ago in ancient Greece, philosopher Socrates had an interesting dialogue with two Athenian generals Laches and Nicias to find an answer to an apparently simple problem of defining courage. Socrates asked, “Then, Laches, we may presume that we know the nature of virtue? . . . And that which we know we must surely be able to tell? . . . Then, Laches, . . . tell me, if you can, what is courage.” This dialogue was recorded by Plato in Laches. The answer remained inconclusive then and it has not been convincingly answered since. It continues to puzzle philosophers and psychologists in addition to those who need it most. So, what is courage? It seems that every man has to find his own answer to the baffling question of courage if an agreement on its nature and purpose could not be reached during tens of hundreds of years. I see courage both as a moral value and a moral virtue. When it is desired in individuals and remains an idea, it is a value; when it is practiced in life by an individual and becomes a way of life with consequences in the world, it is a virtue. However, the question asked by Socrates remains: What is courage? First of all, courage manifests in a behaviour caused by certain thoughts and emotions of an agent. In other words, an act of courage is a consequence

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of a courageous decision, though preceding thoughts and feelings in and of themselves cannot be courageous if not followed by and translated into actions. For example, a bullied adolescent who repeatedly plans and decides to challenge a neighbourhood boy next time when he is intimidated but does not confront when that boy actually bullies him cannot be called courageous. While thoughts and emotions are not courageous in themselves, the cognitive and affective responses of a man are imperative and necessary to his courageous actions. A capacity for the realisation of consequences of an act coupled with a reasonable realisation of risks and dangers of an act are essential preconditions for an act to be called courageous. In my usage here, ‘realisation’ is not merely an awareness of self and the world but it also has an affective dimension besides a dominant cognitive dimension; it is a blend of knowledge with feelings and emotions triggered by a stimulus. To reiterate, without a reasonable realisation of consequences, there can be no courage. For example, the act of an infant toddling up to a deadly snake without hesitation after spotting it cannot be called courageous. Neither can we call the attack dog of a counterterrorist unit courageous if he attacks a terrorist without realising that terrorist can kill or wound him mortally. We just cannot decouple and isolate an act of courage from causative thoughts and emotions, for all three are intertwined inseparably and fused together. We have noted above that the presence of risks and dangers in a situation and the awareness of personal cost of action in it in the mind of agent is an essential condition for an act of courage. What follows from it is that the existence of an emotion called fear in the mind of agent is a necessary dimension of courageous action and courage can be meaningfully understood in the backdrop of fear too. Fear is an emotion experienced by a being that is produced by an awareness of impending pain and suffering to that being, death being the worst case. Anticipated pain and suffering can be physical or mental or both and it may or may not lead to the death of being. In a situation, however, the perceived nature and quantum of harmful consequences may be different for different individuals, for apprehension is based on an individual’s assessment and judgement of situation. Fear, then, is a very personal experience—so much so that it can even be irrational. While its intensity and effects are subjective, fear as such is quite natural to living beings and it is not experienced by human beings alone; higher-order animals are definitively known to experience fear and our knowledge about lower-order animals and plants is mostly indeterminate while whatever little that we know do seem to suggest that they might too experience fear. It also seems without much being there to contradict that fear has played a decisive role in the survival of many species through the evolutionary journey



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of their individuals; the more a species is capable of experiencing fear, the more critical role fear has played in its survival. For human beings have survived thus far in the course of evolutionary struggle, it can be argued that fear has indubitably played a significant role in our survival as a species that claims the pinnacle of life at this juncture with an unmatched capacity for feeling emotions. Given the way natural selection works, a man must, then, be hardwired to experience fear naturally if there is no defect in his neurological wiring; arguably, those who were genetically fearless among us, if at all they truly were, were selected out in the course of evolution, for they were the ones who would be killed early and thus removed from the chain of heredity. Besides, we are living proof that fear is vital to man; we know, it is natural to experience fear and its total absence is but a deficient condition. If it is instinctive to experience fear, it will manifest in a man, come what may. And, if fear must manifest, courage cannot be something that removes and gets rid of fear in a way that it stops occurring altogether or disappears completely from the mind of man. Thus, courage cannot be called the terminator of fear. What, then, is courage and how do we relate it to fear? Let us first understand the mechanics of fear. On receiving stimuli from environment, a person first makes sense of a dangerous situation by a subjective assessment of the world. Fear is then induced subjectively and experienced by person in terms of certain psychological and physiological reactions. Finally, under the effect of fear, certain decisions and actions are taken by person to escape or engage. While some individuals might just freeze and become immobilised, most people would take physical action of one kind or another when faced with a threatening situation. In other words, fear-induced dominant behavioural responses in a frightening situation are either of avoiding and taking flight or confronting and fighting it out; psychological numbness and physical incapacitation are rather rare. For studying its effects, we can break fear into its three in-line components, that is, subjective experience, psychophysiological reactions, and behavioural response. By invoking this ‘three-system’ model of fear put forward by British psychologist Stanley Rachman, we can better understand courage. Courage is a property of man that controls the third or behavioural dimension of fear by overcoming the odds of immobilisation and avoidance in a dangerous situation. In other words, courage is that quality of man which does not let him freeze or flee when faced with a danger; instead, it enables him to advance, engage, confront, and fight a danger, despite fear. This definition not only makes it easier to understand courage but also resolves a contradiction between the intuitive nature of fear and the validated role of courage in

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beating it—how something which is instinctive and, therefore, incurable can be cured? It cannot be and it is indeed not. Courage does not kill it, for fear cannot be extinguished; it only manages fear in the last leg so that a man ends up confronting all the same—afraid but brave. A courageous man experiences fear and suffers its psychophysiological effects but still acts decisively to confront threat. For greater clarity, let us discuss some examples in the light of necessary conditions for an act to be called courageous as defined above. In a circus, performers routinely display breathtaking feats involving high risks and danger to life and limbs. Field of adventure sports is similarly full of risks and dangers. There are people who walk across a valley on a tensioned wire suspended at great heights, without any safety. There are people who climb skyscrapers and high cliffs solo, without any support or lifeline. All such feats fulfil the conditions necessary for courage—these are acts and not merely thoughts or verbal claims, acts are performed in risky and dangerous situations that cause fear, and agents are aware of consequences of their actions including personal cost. Should we, then, call them the acts of courage? Apparently they are, though a careful analysis reveals something interesting. It can be argued that these are technical actions based on skills, experience, belief in equipment and environment, self-confidence, and trust in the intentions and behaviours of teammates and opponents, if any. Also, all events in such undertakings are believed to be in control during a performance and a harmless outcome is at least assured in the mind of agent due to his mastery of skill. And, there is a presumed certainty of events and outcomes too due to the absence of adversarial external forces and hostile human will. All such reassuring factors, arguably, control the sense of risk and check the play of fear in the mind of performers and adventurists and we can say that these actions are not as impossible for performers as they seem to their spectators. Let us still assume that all these examples are the acts of courage and since they are consistently performed, practitioners are courageous too. And, if courage is a moral virtue, which it surely is, and cowardice being its opposite is a vice, should we, then, conclude that those who cannot perform these daring acts are cowards and, therefore, vicious? Who in his right mind can call a person vicious for not being able to climb a towering cliff or drive fast as a Formula One driver? And, do we not endanger the standing of courage as a moral value if we declare such risk-takers as courageous, for what is so virtuous about scaling a rock face without safety or breaking the speed record on a dry salt lake bed? The fact that such acts are lauded by society and bring joy and pleasure to performers and their viewers notwithstanding, I am not willing to concede that these are the acts of courage. What, then,



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are these awesome acts and what defines the daring spirit of these bold and breathtaking acts? We must concede that there indeed is some exceptional quality in them that keeps these people going, for not everyone can do things they do. I propose we call it bravery; they all are brave people and all their acts are the acts of bravery. But I also propose that we refrain from using ‘courage’ and ‘bravery’ interchangeably as most writers do. I must, then, explain as to how courage is different from bravery and why both cannot be used synonymously? Let us deal with this problem. For necessary conditions of courage are also present in bravery—it has to be an act and not merely a thought, it should be done in the backdrop of fear due to the existence of real risks and dangers, and agent should have a reasonable realisation of consequences of his actions in terms of personal cost—a man of courage has to be a brave man but he has to have something more than bravery. In other words, bravery is necessary for courage but it is not sufficient for courage. Courage is a virtue only if seen in the framework of morality. For being a virtuous man, a man of courage must undertake and endure risks and dangers for realising a morally valued altruistic goal and not for any selfish and self-serving goal. A man of courage cannot be inspired to act for personal gratification or worldly recognition, for gaining wealth or fame, for he must act for the sake of his personal commitment to certain moral values. If we see brave acts as morally neutral acts, we cannot call a man coward who is a wimp and repeatedly fails a test of bravery; we may appreciate and applaud his brave acts without necessarily seeing a brave man as a virtuous man. For the opposite of virtue is vice and cowardice surely is a vice, a man can be called coward only if he fails to be courageous. Those who are not comfortable with this treatment of ‘bravery’ can find their own terms but they cannot dislocate and dislodge courage from its moral setting, for the virtuous property of courage ought to have a moral purpose. This distinction between courage and bravery solves many puzzling questions. For example, death defying terrorist acts can be called brave but not courageous. Similarly, secret military actions termed black ops, done at considerable personal risks and dangers but cannot be defended morally, can be called brave but not courageous. By invoking this distinction, we can fairly proclaim certain actions and agents as brave without having to justify, defend, or approve them and without having to explain when we condemn them as bad or evil in the next breath. On the other hand, bravery remains fully and firmly embedded in the notion of courage and does not question our perception either that a courageous man is brave. It only suggests that courage

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is something more than bravery and implies that while all brave acts may deserve appreciation, open or discreet, not all brave men are virtuous. Can courage wear out like clothes when used repeatedly against fear? Drawing upon his experiences of trench warfare of First World War, British physician Lord Moran reflected on the question of courage and published a book on courage at the end of Second World War. He likened courage to a commodity, discussed extensively “how courage is spent,” and concluded that “men wear out in war like clothes.” By employing our theoretical framework of locating courage in moral setting, we can try to answer this question. I propose that it is not courage but the self-confidence of man that is spent in action and that courage and self-confidence, which is merely a functional factor that influences courageous behaviour, are not one and the same. Three-system analysis of fear suggests that knowledge and skills acquired by education and training, practice and experience to deal with dangerous situations may gradually alter the subjective experience and other components of fear of a practitioner in these situations. This shift is effected by the accrued competence of a man that gives him a sense of control and mastery over events and environment and crystallises his self-confidence. His self-confidence and the imagined sense of security, in turn, assist him in acting bravely in situations which are otherwise dangerous. Interestingly, contrary to this observable phenomenon, evidence and experience also indicate that people can develop cold feet at any time, however competent, strong, and robust they may appear before that moment. Moran witnessed and wrote about this turnaround. It may happen, for self-confidence may erode gradually or suddenly and after its withdrawal, the primal instinct of survival propelled by fear may resurrect and take over yet again. It is likely to happen especially when a man witnesses casualties in action around him or somehow, in the face of the reality, realises the fragility of his confidence resting on his imagined sense of control and mastery over the world. I agree that self-confidence can wear thin but insist that courage cannot. While courage is a quality which can be acquired by the same processes that build self-confidence, it is a distinct property, for it does not let a man stop and back off, even if his confidence is shaken badly. Courage is about doing good and not about how good a man is in doing it. Courage is a consequence of moral commitment that a man has consciously made to himself and practiced it in life autonomously by the force of his free will. For being an expression of moral conviction of man, its force is intrinsic and courage has no external driver. It cannot wither away, so long as the moral reasoning of man prevails. When it does, the whole morality of man is blown to smithereens.



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How should we view and regard a man who has done an isolated act of courage or, still baffling, a man who has been coaxed or coerced to act courageously? Can such a man be called a courageous man? The bottom line is that if it fulfils necessary conditions for courage, it surely is an act of courage and such man must be acknowledged and applauded for acting courageously. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that an isolated act of courage does not make him a man of courage, for only a man who possesses the virtue of courage can be called a man of courage and such a man repeatedly, consistently, and habitually demonstrates his courageous behaviour across time, space, and situations. Similarly, a man who has been coaxed or compelled to act courageously does not become a courageous man, though his acts are courageous and, therefore, praiseworthy. A man of courage acts courageously out of his free will and his acts are caused by his moral convictions. A courageous man who at any moment ceases to have a moral conviction to act in order to defend and uphold certain moral values ceases to be a man of courage at that moment. He has to pass the test of courage at each moment in his life by bringing the intrinsic force of his commitment to moral values to bear on the world. Why must a courageous man take a courageous action if the chances of his success are nil and his cause seems to have been lost before his action commences? On the face of it, the virtue of courage seems to be a means to an end—to alter certain outcome in the world by means of courageous action. But the whole notion of virtue is thrown into a problem if we accept this view of courage: If a man of courage retains a rational choice in a situation to act or not to act, determined solely by the perceived outcome of his actions, then, how courage can be constitutional and dispositional, temperamental and habitual in nature, which it has to be to qualify as a virtue? In essence, therefore, courage is not a means to an end. Courage is instead an end in itself. Success may not be elusive and his desire and hope for success may not be extinguished until the very end but a courageous man does not actually act to succeed in the end. To achieve or to succeed is not his true motivation. A courageous man acts courageously essentially because he cannot live otherwise—so much so that to act courageously is not a moral choice but a moral compulsion of a courageous man. A courageous man, then, shall act courageously, even if the chances of his success are nil and his cause seems to have been lost before he begins to act. And, while a courageous man might seem to have failed, his courage itself is fail-safe, which can never fail. It does not fail, even if nothing actually changes in the world after doing all that a courageous person can as shown in 2010

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movie The Whistleblower. Courage does not fail, for it succeeds in achieving its end once a courageous act has been executed in the world regardless of its effects on the world. Are there different types and forms of courage such as physical and moral or it is just a singular property after all? It is generally believed that there are different and distinct forms of courage. Still interesting, they are also compared in a hierarchical fashion often to establish the superiority of any one form of courage. For instance, Dutch philosopher Peter Olsthoorn refers to authors such as American jurist William Ian Miller and psychologist Carl Andrew Castro to highlight the view of a school which believes that “moral courage ranks somewhat lower than physical courage, and that it is more easily attained because it is not one’s life and limbs that are at stake, but ‘only’ one’s reputation or ‘popularity.’” On the other hand, German psychologist Silvia Osswald and her colleagues cite German writer Kurt Tucholsky to make a contrarian point, “Nothing demands more courage and character than to be in open opposition to time and mainstream, to stand up and to say aloud: No!” Robert F. Kennedy, an American politician and lawyer, too seems to espouse this view in his 1966 speech made in South Africa against the backdrop of apartheid, “Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence.” First of all, in my view, this hierarchical approach as such is meaningless and uncalled for, for both moral and physical courage are morally well grounded and choiceworthy and both are equally desirable and laudable in life. There is absolutely no need to set various forms of courage in opposition to each other when all they do is to oppose evil and promote good in their own ways. Secondly, the boundaries of these two forms of courage oftentimes overlap as shown in 1989 movie A Dry White Season and 2009 movie The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, which portray the theme of moral courage but underscore the physical dangers of losing life and limbs throughout the journey of moral courage. But above all, courage is a property that intrinsically motivates people to act for a moral purpose in the face of impending pain and suffering to self. Pain and suffering of agent can be physical or psychological or both and its duration and intensity may also vary in different cases. Be that as it may, the fact remains that it is personal cost in terms of pain and suffering that a man who decides to act courageously must be prepared to accept. And, in this sense, the underlying spirit of courage remains the same—readiness for enduring pain and suffering brought about by moral choices. It only manifests differently in different persons and situations. I, therefore, believe that both physical



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and moral courage are different facets of the same quality—two sides of the same coin—and a man who possesses any one form can successfully develop the other by resolutely exploring and exploiting the underlying unity of courage. To put it differently, while the tree of courage may branch off in different shapes and directions, its roots giving life support to all its offshoots are the same and its different branches bear and yield the same fruits—so much so that we can say that the virtue of courage is fully integrated at its both ends of morality and suffering. And, though it may take time to crystallise, I have no doubt that a man whose free will makes him to accept and endure pain and suffering in his life for defending and upholding his moral values can become a wholly courageous man possessing all forms of courage near the end of his evolutionary journey only if he has a strong desire to do it. How otherwise can we call a man to possess the virtue of courage who, though fights like a tiger to save lives, remains meek and mild in the face of injustice and oppression, wrongdoing and unfairness? Let us not place physical courage above moral courage, for in the forceful words of American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “To sin by silence, when we should protest, makes cowards out of men.” Nor should a courageous man be hesitant to act physically if it is not enough to protest verbally, for courageous men stop at nothing for the espousal of a moral cause. We know that the isolated acts of courage are not sufficient for a man who aspires to possess the virtue of courage; he has to demonstrate courage repeatedly and consistently, temperamentally and habitually in life at each opportunity. Courage becomes his virtue only when his beliefs and thoughts, emotions and actions are fully integrated and his will for courage is transformed into his constitution and disposition. It can be similarly argued that a single dimension or form of courage is not enough for a man who aspires to possess the virtue of courage; he has to demonstrate courage in each context and situation of courage that comes his way. It is necessary for him, therefore, to experiment with courage in all forms and situations and exploit all opportunities, big or small, moral or physical, to test, consolidate, and nurture his will for living courageously. Near the end of his journey, all different streams of courage merge into one indivisible and holistic form of courage, and at this juncture a man proclaims freedom from situational response and demonstrates the universality of courageous response in any situation or form, at any time and place. Now he becomes worthy of complete reliability and total trust; his beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and actions can be predicted accurately and explained promptly. It is this transformation that finally turns a man into a wholly courageous man.

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Nature of courage is truly enigmatic and it for a reason has eluded definition ever since its existence was realised by humankind thousands of years ago. What, then, can I tell Socrates other than that some things are better explained and understood broadly and it is, perhaps, not wise to strive for a crisp and precise definition always? For my own experience tells that however hard I may try to grasp it, true to its nature, it resists coherence and rebounds, throwing back challenges and contradictions yet again. Despite whatever I have said, I must admit that I cannot say I am not baffled by its nature. How can I not call a man virtuous who repeatedly raises his voice against injustice and oppression by society and system but lets his adversaries beat bash, and batter him, and others too in front of him, without a fight? What do we, then, call Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and countless such people who have existed in the world, the finest of humanity? I said that moral and physical courage are two sides of the same coin. I must say it too that at any given moment, one can see completely only one side of a real coin. A man, thus, can be morally courageous without being wholly courageous for want of physical courage, which he somehow could not bring to the fore. While I do not contest the virtuousness of such a man, for the purpose of my problem, I am interested in exploring a higher order of courage which has a holistic nature and combines both the moral and physical forms of courage. I see it as a question of progression, of personal evolution of a man, of his will to be something more, of his desire to do more, of his perpetual reflection and practice, of his prolonged journey and time. Journey of courage too comes to an end at its final destination where a wholly courageous man acquires sacrificial courage by securing a concretised will, fully set, cured, and hardened to make the supreme sacrifice for a moral cause; he is now ready for what is called suicidal altruism. A moral traveller stops here for there is nothing left for him to gain and there is nowhere to go. For there is nothing more to lose personally, sacrificial courage arguably might as well have favourable effect on all three components of fear of a man, that is, subjective perception, internal reaction, and external response instead of managing behavioural response alone that courage otherwise does. If it does that, then, sacrificial courage is likely to give a man control over his psychological and physiological responses to fear too, which courage otherwise does not, and that, in turn, will evidently keep him calm and composed both outwardly as well as inwardly in life-threatening moments. He will uncommonly remain sharp in impossible situations and keep his judgement, speed, and accuracy of decision and action in the face of death. Undeniably, this is the most exceptional and desirable quality of a rescuer—



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so much so that such a man will be a game changer in a complex terrorist crisis situation. Can a man possess the virtue of sacrificial courage without first acquiring holistic courage? I believe yes, but there is no way to ascertain this before the fact. So, how do we find a right man for rescuing hostages from a complex terrorist stronghold? Who is the safest bet for such impossible mission? That merely professional expertise is not enough is settled, then, how can we be sure of the game changing disposition of our man? In my belief, we can resolve this conundrum and break this logjam only by using the theory of progression of courage outlined above and betting on a professional expert who has the virtue of holistic courage. Only by observing his way of life as a whole and witnessing courageous actions, both physical and moral, taken by a man wherever a need arose can we predict if he will act courageously all the way in a rescue operation undertaken to resolve a complex terrorist crisis. His physically courageous conduct demonstrated in training and in a few simpler hostage situations is necessary but it is not a sufficient indicator for predicting his sacrificially courageous behaviour in a complex terrorist crisis. While his exemplary performance in training and simple crises exuding physical courage is reassuring, he has to be judged at each step and moral event for his morally courageous behaviour too in order to ascertain his trustworthiness and reliability in a complex crisis. This is a crucial practical application that we can deduce from the philosophical understanding of courage presented above. It also sends a strong message to an organisation which expects its members to be courageous and be prepared to sacrifice their lives—be prepared to see them stand up against all things immoral. Sacrificial courage is one of several virtues that build the moral character of man who aspires to rescue hostages caught in a complex terrorist crisis. Exercising sacrificial courage must be a considered choice of man himself made via moral reasoning and the force of his free will; it must be firmly rooted in his intellectual and emotional commitment to his moral values. He must strive all the time to regulate his thoughts, emotions, and actions in order to overcome the selfish instinct of survival and intuitive aversion to pain and suffering. He must experiment with all forms of courage at each opportunity that crosses path and comes his way. He must follow his conscience to guard against his failings and use guilt as a corrective to prevent moral breakdowns in future. He must exercise his free will to live courageously and sacrifice his life for a moral purpose he believes in when necessary. A lifelong unswerving and indefatigable pursuit of holistic sacrificial courage in the realms of cognition, emotion, and action kept afloat

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by free will is absolutely imperative, for the fault lines of survival are so deep, unfathomable, and unknowable that even a courageous man can sink and disappear in them all of a sudden. Only the invincible sacrificial courage of man can rule out the possibility of a numbed will in the face of death. Only a man who has prepared through his life for meeting a morally purposeful death can own such unconquerable courage. IV Moral character of a man who can rescue hostages from a complex terrorist stronghold is constituted of several virtues and responsibility is one of them. We are concerned with the personal responsibility of man here; organisational responsibility will be discussed in the next chapter. We will examine the meaning and purpose of responsibility and understand why a rescuer must be a responsible man. Responsibility is a moral value that makes it incumbent on a man to keep his promises and agreements. When it is practiced repeatedly and consistently, habitually and temperamentally by a man, it becomes a moral virtue—a constituent of his moral character. Virtue of responsibility is a necessary condition for trustworthiness, for trust is an outcome of predictable behaviour of a man, which is a result of his commitment to responsibility that makes a man the man of his word. A man who is not responsible cannot be trusted, for he may not be able to fulfil his commitments and obligations. Such a man, then, cannot be entrusted with the task of hostage rescue. There are two sides of responsibility—prospective and retrospective. When a man promises, agrees, or accepts to do or not to do something, it becomes his obligation and duty. Hereafter, he must do everything to fulfil his commitment, for it is now his responsibility. In this sense, responsibility is prospective in nature and generates expectations from a man to behave in a certain way in a certain situation. Test of prospective responsibility lies in the future and passed by the actions and behaviours of man. So long as a man carries out promised actions or omissions and meets expectations, he remains a responsible man. But how do we know if he is a responsible man? What if a man does not do what he had promised? To ascertain if a man is responsible or not, each situation and event associated with promise and commitment made by him is assessed and judged retrospectively. Examination of past actions and omissions of a man falls within the ambit of retrospective responsibility. Conventional notion of retrospective responsibility is negative in nature, for it is typically invoked to attribute blame after a man has evidently failed to behave responsibly.



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In both senses, prospective and retrospective, the notion of responsibility seems to be limited to the actions and behaviours of a man; his thoughts and emotions are left out of ambit and scope of responsibility. It also appears as if the responsibility of a man exists with reference to others—their expectations in prospective responsibility and judgements in retrospective responsibility. Such a narrow abstraction of responsibility runs into the philosophical construct of morality I have elaborated above, for a three-dimensional integration—of intellectual, emotional, and behavioural—is a must for a value to become a virtue. But for his moral beliefs and conscience, a man’s behaviour remains instinctively selfish as nature has not been kind to altruistic behaviours, thus rendering the idea of responsibility without meaning in the evolutionary world. Interestingly, though, the external regulation of behaviour does not depend on or need the support of thoughts and feelings and can be realised without intellectual and emotional underpinning. But external control poses a serious problem to the idea of responsibility as a moral value. While in the same way as animals a man can be coerced or enticed to behave in a way until, of course, coercion or inducement remains in place and effective, moral behaviour, in contrast, flows from within and regulated internally by conscience. For the self-regulation of behaviour, it is imperative to integrate beliefs and thoughts, feelings and emotions with actions and behaviours. There is no other way and no short cut to morality. Also, in the context of hostage rescue, such a limited conceptualisation of responsibility—the externalisation of responsibility—is not enough, for it must work, even when there is no one to watch or supervise a rescuer inside a terrorist stronghold and his actions or their consequences are not fully known to others. But the opacity of information with regards to a promise kept or compromised by a man is just one problem of the externalised notion of responsibility. Another problem is that of completeness and integrity of information, for others can only access, experience, and judge the behaviours of a man; they cannot accurately and directly sense the inner world of his thoughts and feelings, unless expressed behaviourally. Inner conflicts and contradictions, when they are there, make the external consistency of man precarious and his fall precipitous, when it happens. Ambivalence, then, becomes antithetical to trustworthiness and defeats the very purpose of this value. To put it differently, only desirable, good, and right actions are not enough for being responsible as they do not disclose the inner moral failings of a man. For the incongruence of feeling, thinking, and doing may introduce a factor of uncertainty and cause a person to diverge from his personal and professed commitments at any moment and more so in trying times, the notion of responsibility is required to envelop thoughts and feelings as well. I, therefore, propose to widen the scope of responsibility, for if the behaviour of a man is shaped

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and influenced by his thoughts and emotions, it is necessary to incorporate this inaccessible inner world into the framework of responsibility. It can be done only by acknowledging and embracing the role and relevance of self in the making of a responsible man. In other words, for responsibility can only be retrospectively appraised by man himself in a true and complete sense that evaluates all three dimensions of actions, thoughts, and emotions, the idea of retrospective responsibility cannot be brought into full force without incorporating the mechanism of self-appraisal. A well rounded abstraction of responsibility necessitates that retrospective responsibility is appraised personally by an agent always, even when institutional and social appraisal by others is not done due to a presumptive compliance of obligation in the backdrop of opaque and scarce information. A man is answerable to others only for failing to act responsibly, for others can only observe and appraise his behaviours. But he is answerable to self always, for only he can have an access to and the knowledge of his inner world of thoughts and feelings and his secret moral failings. Self-appraisal, I believe, plays a greater role in bringing about corrective effects than social and institutional appraisal. It is more important for a man to acknowledge his failures to self than to others in his journey of becoming a responsible person. To understand the role of self more clearly, let us go back to the basic definition of responsibility as a moral value that makes it incumbent on a man to keep his promises and agreements. We know it well that commitments and promises can not only be made with others but also with self. In fact, there is a possibility of making a promise to self and not to others but there cannot be a promise that is made only to others without at the same time being made to self unless the man is a liar. A man must, then, be mindful of expectations of self as well in addition to the expectations of others. As the combined expectations of others and self become a force behind his responsibility, the reliability of man increases vertiginously. This transformation happens mainly due to a continuous and complete self-appraisal of actions, thoughts, and emotions carried out by man himself. I call this appraisal by self a moral appraisal for it takes account of and accounts for the inner moral failings of a man hidden from the sight of the external world and solves both the problems of opacity and scarcity of information available to others. Moral appraisal is, thus, far greater and more comprehensive in scope than behavioural appraisal done by society or institutions. On account of a moral appraisal by self, a man committed to his responsibility strives continuously to align his thinking and feelings with promised behaviours. He effortfully deals with inner divergences causing distractions and gradually creates a three-dimensional convergence of self that yields the power of



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intellectual, emotional, and behavioural concentration, which is vital for keeping promises against hardships and temptations. Eventually, he achieves a harmony between his thoughts, emotions, and actions by the force of human will. At this moment in his evolutionary journey of becoming a responsible man, he becomes a truly and completely responsible man. Only such a man can be considered trustworthy and reliable, for a man caught in doubts and dilemmas is more likely to fail the test of responsibility in the eyes of others than a man who has a completely congruous and harmonious self. Only a man who has achieved a harmony of feeling, thinking, and doing can be truly responsible across time, space, and situations, for he has no internal conflict and inner contradiction that cause people to flutter, falter, and fail in the face of adversities and temptations. Role of self in behaving responsibly and being responsible is also underlined by the affective consequences of responsibility. Human experience of responsibility is known to produce emotional reactions. Feelings of indignation and dismay are experienced and expressed for irresponsible acts done by a man who is expected to behave responsibly while a sense of gratitude and admiration is felt and conveyed for his responsible acts. A man, thus, faces sanction and rebuke or receives reward and recognition from others who are affected by his responsibility in some manner. These others make the realm of honour and shame for a man who is affected by the feelings of others and shapes himself for their eyes. However, he might, it is possible, learn to escape, avoid, or deceive others to solve the emotional problem caused by them. Corrective role of emotions generated by the external world, therefore, is limited in scope and effect. But, if the affective structure of responsibility simultaneously creates a subterranean realm by making one’s self feel indignant and dejected on failing to be responsible and experience joy and pleasure on behaving responsibly, it becomes more probable that a man is able to review and correct himself. Self creates the realm of pride and guilt for a man. No one can escape from these feelings, if they are there, and no one can defeat or deflect the force of self-correction unleashed by them. Only those who overcome their guilt quickly or do not feel guilt can deceive themselves and manage to stay unaffected by the transformational might of self-review and self-correction. But, then, such men can never be responsible, for they have no morality. For others, the force of self-reflection inevitably causes self-correction. Notions and emotions induced by extrinsic and intrinsic mechanisms, that is, honour, shame, pride, and guilt associated with responsibility, act at the level of a person and affect him in the end although they manifest on forking paths winding through two different terrains of self-accountability and accountability to others. While both types of accountability work, personal

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accountability to my mind is so critical that in the absence of internal emotional repercussions and a feeling of guilt after each moral failure, a man cannot become a responsible man. Journey to become a responsible man is an unsettling, arduous, and long-drawn-out reflective journey that questions, dents, and modifies one’s self-concept all the way. Reflective deliberations incrementally build a moral capacity for behaving responsibly and eventually being a responsible man who fulfils his personal, social, and professional obligations without fail. It is a transformational journey that converts the commitments of a man into his convictions. While the role of self is corrective, its intervention is essentially constructive. Informal moral appraisal done by self is different from the formal institutional appraisal of responsibility that pronounces someone guilty and prescribes a punitive action—administrative or legal—commensurate to the acts or omissions of a person. Penalty of self-appraisal is delivered in the form of a reformative guilt, not a shattering shame, for the latter is induced by the eyes of others and comes into being as a consequence of social appraisal. Moral appraisal is decisively corrective without being brutal, coercive, or punitive. Its intercession is positive and creative; not negative and destructive. It manifests internally and reforms a person from within. In a nutshell, it builds and does not destroy a man. While promise is the basis of responsibility, the construction of promise itself needs a critical examination. First of all, for responsibility to be a virtue, a promise has to uphold and realise a moral value. In other words, only a promise that upholds and achieves a moral value falls within the ambit and scope of responsibility. A promise that undermines and injures a moral value is bad in nature and behaviour resulting from keeping such a promise is evil in effect. A promise has to be good and right for a resultant behaviour to be virtuous. An official of Third Reich cannot claim to have behaved responsibly by carrying out orders given by his superiors, for his actions and promise to act the way he did were evil and vicious, not virtuous, although he was doing his duty as a member of Nazi State. He was obedient, not responsible. Value of responsibility cannot be invoked in his case because if it is done and accepted, then responsibility will no longer remain a moral value. Argument of professional ethics, duty, and responsibility advanced to defend actions which cannot be sanctioned by morality is bogus. A man is responsible for what he does; others cannot be responsible for his actions. Responsibility cannot be diffused or displaced in moral settings. It is not a man’s commitment to responsibility but his loyalty to his tribe which makes him do immoral acts sanctioned by questionable social norms and



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laws. People who are loyal remain with their tribes, irrespective of their tribe indulging in immoral acts. Behaviours of those who live in a doubt but still side with their tribe can be better explained by a combined play of selfishness, loyalty, cowardice, conformity, and shared view of the world devoid of morality. Let us save the notion of responsibility for behaviours sanctioned by morality. A promise may not stand alone and exist in isolation in order to be meaningful. In a complex world that we have assembled for ourselves, we have to be mindful that with each promise comes a bundle of associated and auxiliary promises made implicitly by the principle of corollary. In other words, when a man makes a promise, it actually becomes a bunch of promises and he happens to assume a far greater responsibility than what it appears prima facie. Then, there are certain norms of behaviour and codes of conduct embedded in the world we have organised to live together—recognised by societies in general and legal systems in particular. Consequently, there are certain duties and obligations on every member of a collective wherein certain agreements and promises remain implicit and tacit and no one can make an excuse of having not made any commitment to do or not to do certain things. For example, a man who owns or handles a gun has an obligation to follow certain safety procedures; it does not matter if he has made a promise to keep and handle his gun safely or not or if he is aware of firearm safety protocol or not. Needless to say, social norms and laws in conflict with morality cannot be but evil in nature and effect and cannot invoke the moral abstraction of responsibility. A group of people cannot arbitrarily define a moral value for itself and force its members to follow it in the name of their responsibility without considering its implications and effects on others—individuals, communities, species, and life as a whole. If certain notion is made desirable at the expense and to the injury of others, it is a vicious bias or evil prejudice, not a moral value and falls outside the framework of responsibility. An explicit or implied duty or obligation must be logically justified as good and right after a rigorous intellectual scrutiny to validate its moral soundness in cross-cultural and universal settings before we call people to question on their responsibility. If we do not accept this restraint, there can be no morality, for a phenomenal range of dark ‘morals’ have been preached and practiced and all kinds of evils and monstrosities have been celebrated by human societies in different times and places. A never-ending cycle of wilful torture and deliberate destruction of life that our species started after breaking free from the shackles of nature upon learning to imagine, cooperate, plan, and organise unlike other animals too is a result of a narrow and convenient definition of morality.

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It is also necessary to know under what circumstances and how a man has made a promise to do or not to do something. A frivolous promise counts for nothing and a promise extracted under duress or unfairly has no substance. A man who has been coaxed, cajoled, coerced, compelled, lured, or tricked to do or not to do something cannot be truly responsible because his thoughts and emotions will not support his actions for long and he will always be vulnerable to a compromise. A man who does not have intellectual, emotional, and behavioural autonomy and integrity cannot exercise free will and such a man cannot be trusted as a responsible man, even if he has made a promise. Only a man who has promised or agreed to do or not to do something freely, voluntarily, willingly, and independently—without deceiving self and others—can be trusted to behave responsibly. While the choice of free will is necessary for responsibility, it is not sufficient because the question of capacity is equally critical. How a man who has although made a choice to do something by exercising free will but lacks necessary and sufficient means, information, knowledge, skills, authority, and time to fulfil his obligation can be responsible in the complex human world? There are risks related to the notion of personal responsibility which must be borne in mind by a man who makes a promise and by others who expect him to keep his promise. Being responsible is about taking a full and complete ownership of self including mind and body. Being responsible is about having capacity and capability to do what has been promised. For want of any one of these two necessary conditions, the notion of personal responsibility in both prospective and retrospective senses cannot be practiced and applied. Personal failure, then, becomes a valid question of institutional and social responsibility. Conventional notion of retrospective responsibility is negative. Almost everyone would sense what it means to fix responsibility. It is tantamount to calling someone to account for failing to do something, which means the attribution of blame and the imposition of penalty associated with an act or omission. Eighth edition of Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary captures this sense when it defines ‘responsibility’ as “blame for something bad that has happened.” I believe that we need to extend the scope of retrospective responsibility beyond its function of determining culpability. If retrospective responsibility requires that an assessment of actions and behaviours of a man after the fact is carried out, it must be done each time to determine not only if an act is culpable but also if it is laudable. And, we should learn to habitually attribute moral credit and praise after the fact for keeping a promise and the good effects of an act or omission. A well rounded,



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balanced, and complete abstraction of retrospective responsibility can generate enormous creative and constructive potential for behaviour modification and character building. Otherwise, it would remain a lopsided negative construct with the sole purpose of finding fault and ascribing blame, fail to foster and nurture the moral development and growth of people, and its consequences would be no different from those of legal system. For a virtuous behaviour is praiseworthy, the acts of responsibility deserve praise each time; it is practiced in life anyway as we do often praise responsible people, so why not formally make it a part of retrospective responsibility. Let it become our responsibility to recognise and cheer those who have behaved responsibly. If we fail to do it, we compromise and negate our responsibility. And, let our responsibility not be limited to praising certain stellar and spectacular events alone; it should also recognise the mundane affairs of everyday life which are either taken for granted or rubbished from the perspective of remunerative deontology—one is paid to do it. Some thinkers and commentators argue that the responsibility of a man for his action is greater than his omission. I see it differently and would tend to morally judge my act or omission by its consequences in addition to my failure to keep a promise. Given the risks and dangers of hostage rescue, moral appraisal should treat both action and omission with parity. We cannot allow conceptual disparity in the moral assessment of action and omission in this occupation. When the lives of people are at stake, no leeway can be given to those who choose to save them and a strictest moral probity should be applied by rescuers in their self-assessment without making a distinction between action and omission. Similarly, external appraisal should be equally comprehensive and inclusive and it should look into all aspects of action and omission without drawing a distinction between them. When a man fails in his obligation, does it matter if he fails to act or failed by his action? What about his failure to keep a promise and its consequences? Intention, being an outcome of thoughts and emotions, certainly has a relevance to responsibility but can it override action or omission and their effect in determining a man’s responsibility? In other words, is good intention enough to absolve a man of his responsibility for bad actions and harmful consequences? It is an important question for rescuers, for there is a tendency in military ethics to hide behind intention. Olsthoorn wonders “why in a military context the intention should matter that much, especially since it is difficult to draw the exact boundary between a foreseeable death and an intended killing, even though they are not the same.” He believes that “there is no truth in the idea . . . that unintentional deaths do not amount to

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an evil that should be avoided, if at all possible. For who gets killed, the intention makes no difference.” I agree with him entirely and believe that both the intention and effect of action have to be good and right in the case of hostage rescue. If consequences are bad, good intention counts for nothing and a man cannot escape the reach of responsibility, for he has caused them. If intention is not good, which may be reflected in inaction or casual, rash, or reckless behaviours, good consequences are a sheer fluke brought about by the factor of chance and a man cannot elude the clutches of responsibility, for what if the dice had rolled otherwise—as they say, they have just been lucky this time. An act is the mechanics of intention and the cause of its effect. An act, therefore, can be fully judged only by understanding it at its both ends—what caused it and what followed it, that is, intention and effect. What is morally wrong cannot be overlooked or condoned. What is morally right and permissible should precede and follow an act to pass the test of responsibility. Personal moral appraisal is a three-dimensional appraisal of intention, action, and effect—of mind, body, and the world. Nothing can escape its reach; no social, legal, or institutional waivers and concessions and qualifications and conditions are enough to save a man from its penalty. If the death of innocent hostages is foreseeable and unavoidable, its moral consequence of guilt has to be nonetheless borne and suffered by those who still move in to save hostages. Inaction or omission too is fraught with moral punishment, for it may lead to the death of hostages by terrorists who could have been saved by action. It is a moral trap and the bane of those who choose to save others. Moral appraisal, however, does not cause pain and suffering alone; it also delivers the goodness of responsibility and makes a man virtuous, for such moral self-review forces and compels rescuers to be absolutely responsible and behave with utmost responsibility in the first place to avoid moral penalty later. What if both the intention and consequences of action are good but success is unexpected and disproportionate to the efforts of an agent? In such a case, I believe, agent does not deserve a full moral credit for a serendipitous outcome. If it is ascribed to him by others unknowingly or knowingly, he should humbly decline it by telling the truth. How a man can accept undeserving credit silently if he has a capacity for moral self-evaluation? Responsibility and morality clash with loyalty in certain situations and become antithetical. While loyalty is a much trumpeted military virtue, it is actually not a moral virtue, for it suppresses moral reasoning and moral action when the immoral acts of a man’s leader, mate, organisation, or tribe are called to question. Why demand or depend on it if loyalty cannot be sustained by



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moral reasoning in all situations and when responsibility can deliver all the positive benefits of loyalty without accompanying risks and compromises? I would surely want rescuers to be responsible, not loyal, and that would be sufficient for rescue. Moral character of a man is made of several moral virtues that reinforce each other and collectively preserve personal integrity. Responsibility too needs the support of other moral virtues. For example, self-discipline and ability to delay or avoid personal gratification guard against temptations and scaffold responsibility while in a testing time responsibility is scaffolded by courage in its different forms. It is difficult to imagine the existence of a sole moral virtue standing alone in the absence of its cooperative moral virtues. Trust is the product and proof of responsibility and both vanish together when they do. In 1999 movie The Insider, producer Lowell Bergman quits his popular television show in the end, even when everyone thought he had won his fight against management about the suppression of a whistleblower’s disclosure—so much so that his colleague Mike Wallace is taken aback by his decision and tells, “Come on. It all worked out. You came out okay in the end.” Bergman asks him percipiently, “I did? What do I tell a source on the next tough story? ‘Hang in with us. You’ll be fine. May be.’ No. What got broken here doesn’t go back together again.” He left CBS News, for Bergman had worked responsibly throughout and built his reputation as a reliable and responsible journalist but he realised rightly that after this incident he would no longer have the trust of his sources. It takes a long time to gain trust. All efforts must be made not to lose it. Once lost, it may be very difficult and sometimes impossible to regain. Trust is the essence and outcome of responsibility. It is true for a person and true for an organisation. V A third essential constituent of moral character of a rescuer is the moral virtue of respect, which is acquired by practicing the moral value of respect. Respect is an overarching notion in terms of its implications and it is unparalleled in its consequences. Its ramifications are so wide, deep, and crucial that I see respect as the quintessence of morality—so much so that in the absence of respect, there can be no morality and nor there can be a man of moral character without the virtue of respect. Moral value of respect is rooted in and formed from the notion of dignity; there cannot be respect without dignity, for it is the outcome of dignity.

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Respect, on its part, generates a fitting human response to dignity by shaping the emotions, thoughts, and behaviours of a man appropriately in relation to others and also for self. So, let us understand the construct of dignity first. While it was not so in pre-modern unstratified egalitarian societies lacking private property, money, king, aristocrats, bureaucrats, and businessmen, an interesting account of which is told in The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, dignity in the hierarchical hegemonic world ruled by kings and monarchs was believed to be a possession of a few powerful people called dignitaries who were respectable in a society. It was so until eighteenth century German philosopher Immanuel Kant expanded the scope of dignity and respect in a way it had not hitherto been done in moral philosophy. For Kant, to quote American philosopher Robin Dillon, dignity is “a kind of intrinsic worth, which is worth that something has insofar as it has value not for someone or some purpose, but in and of itself. Dignity is absolute, incomparable, unconditional worth—the supreme moral value. It contrasts with price, which is relative or conditional worth. . . . And respect (Achtung) is the appropriate response to dignity.” Owing to a rational nature of human beings and their capacity for reasoning, Kantian ethics comes to a revolutionary conclusion, she writes, that “all persons have equal dignity—and so are worthy of equal respect—regardless of social status, natural characteristics, or personal merit; in particular, morally bad individuals have the same dignity as the most virtuous.” Kant radically altered the notion of dignity thus and accorded it to entire humanity. Dignity hereafter would no longer be an exclusive preserve of a few ‘dignitaries,’ for all members of a species had been declared as equals in terms of dignity. I firmly believe in the Kantian view of dignity as an absolute notion of intrinsic worth—the worth of an individual, which is immutable, indivisible, indestructible, interminable, inalienable, inviolable, incomparable, and unconditional and such worth of an individual is not what we call ‘price,’ which can be negotiated, traded, replaced, increased, or decreased. But I do not believe in its narrow application and extension limited to humankind. I do not dispute that all human beings possess dignity, which is identical in nature and equal for all. Kant, however, believed that it is our rational nature and capacity to reason that gives us dignity and he, therefore, chose to deprive all other living beings of dignity for want of such a rational capacity. This is where I differ from him, for if not patently false, I find the rational view of dignity as a purely prejudiced, grossly immodest, unabashedly selfish, and entirely self-centric view of the world—proposed, propagated, and popularised without dispassionately asking some uncomfortable questions



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about humanity, which I am going to do to examine so-called rational human conduct and behaviour. Let us pause for a moment and shrug our human bias aside for a while, then look around and see what we have done to nature and planet. At the time of writing, a new global survey on the state of nature published by United Nations’ Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warns that “nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history — and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating.” This report is prepared by 150 leading international experts from 50 countries, balancing representation from natural and social sciences, with additional contributions from a further 250 experts. Key statistics and facts from this report are given below: 1. 8 million: total estimated number of animal and plant species on Earth (including 5.5 million insect species) 2. Tens to hundreds of times: the extent to which the current rate of global species extinction is higher compared to average over the last 10 million years, and the rate is accelerating 3. Up to 1 million: species threatened with extinction, many within decades 4. >500,000 (+/–9%): share of the world’s estimated 5.9 million terrestrial species with insufficient habitat for long term survival without habitat restoration 5. >40%: amphibian species threatened with extinction 6. Almost 33%: reef forming corals, sharks and shark relatives, and >33% marine mammals threatened with extinction 7. 25%: average proportion of species threatened with extinction across terrestrial, freshwater and marine vertebrate, invertebrate and plant groups that have been studied in sufficient detail 8. At least 680: vertebrate species driven to extinction by human actions since the 16th century 9. +/–10%: tentative estimate of proportion of insect species threatened with extinction

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10. >20%: decline in average abundance of native species in most major terrestrial biomes, mostly since 1900 11. +/–560 (+/–10%): domesticated breeds of mammals were extinct by 2016, with at least 1,000 more threatened 12. 3.5%: domesticated breed of birds extinct by 2016 13. 70%: increase since 1970 in numbers of invasive alien species across 21 countries with detailed records 14. 30%: reduction in global terrestrial habitat integrity caused by habitat loss and deterioration 15. 47%: proportion of terrestrial flightless mammals and 23% of threatened birds whose distributions may have been negatively impacted by climate change already 16. >6: species of ungulate (hoofed mammals) would likely be extinct or surviving only in captivity today without conservation measures Much alarming as it may seem, the above assessments are more likely to be conservative, given a profound hostility of governments, businesses, and societies to the very idea of curtailing their extractivist, consumerist, and wasteful way of life today to save nature for tomorrow. This idea and its disruptive implications generate a barrage of invective against all confirming scientific findings, which put involved and associated individuals and institutions on the defensive—they are always conscious of how their disclosures would be viewed at large and work under a tremendous invisible pressure at all times. The reality might just be much grimmer and graver, therefore, known to many but not disclosed in full. Also, for Gaia—global life system on earth—is such a complex system that you cannot know exactly what is happening to it and where it may lead to in the future once its equilibrium is significantly disturbed. So, what is happening here and why? What is happening on earth is entirely of our own making. Welcome to Anthropocene. So far-reaching and extensive is the impact of human species on the geology, ecosystems, and climate of earth that at the time of writing, an academic proposal is being actively considered to pronounce the end of current geological epoch called Holocene and recognise a new geological epoch called Anthropocene. Debate now is centred not so much on if we are living in Anthropocene but when should be mark its beginning and break



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from Holocene, for the destruction of life and environment by humans is not a new phenomenon. Anthropocene, which is proposed to be a distinct geological epoch—the present time interval—marked by a stratigraphic record of far-reaching changes wrought by Homo sapiens on the surface of earth, also coincides with another mega extinction event in the history of life on earth called Sixth Extinction. Individual species keep going extinct in a routine manner due to normal evolutionary pressures. But only on five earlier occasions it has so happened that a large number of species died en masse and disappeared all of a sudden—in geological time frame—from the face of earth—so much so that they changed the course of subsequent evolution radically. A sixth such extinction event in most likelihood is occurring right now and our species is the sole agency causing it. Never before in the history of earth did a single species wreak such ecological devastation and disruption on a planetary scale. To give a glimpse of an unimaginable and incalculable havoc that our species has wreaked on planet since long, I quote Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari. If we combine the mass extinctions in Australia and America, and add the smaller-scale extinctions that took place as Homo sapiens spread over Afro-Asia – such as the extinction of all other human species – and the extinctions that occurred when ancient foragers settled remote islands such as Cuba, the inevitable conclusion is that the first wave of Sapiens colonisation was one of the biggest and swiftest ecological disasters to befall the animal kingdom. Hardest hit were the large furry creatures. At the time of the Cognitive Revolution, the planet was home to about 200 genera of large terrestrial mammals weighing over fifty kilograms. At the time of the Agricultural Revolution, only about a hundred remained. Homo sapiens drove to extinction about half of the planet’s big beasts long before humans invented the wheel, writing or iron tools. This ecological tragedy was restaged in miniature countless times after the Agricultural Revolution. The archaeological record of island after island tells the same sad story. The tragedy opens with a scene showing a rich and varied population of large animals, without any trace of humans. In scene two, Sapiens appear, evidenced by a human bone, a spear point, or perhaps a potsherd. Scene three quickly follows, in which men and women occupy centre stage and most large animals, along with many smaller ones, are gone.

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Dignity of Life The First Wave Extinction, which accompanied the spread of the foragers, was followed by the Second Wave Extinction, which accompanied the spread of the farmers, and gives us an important perspective on the Third Wave Extinction, which industrial activity is causing today. Don’t believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology.

A detailed account of one such episode of our destructive past leading to the extinction of Neanderthals and other contemporary megafauna is given in The Invaders by Pat Shipman and a glimpse into a cataclysmic future likely to result due to an inexorable anthropogenic destruction of life on a planetary scale is provided in Silent Earth by Dave Goulson and The Insect Crisis by Oliver Milman. Mindless killing and suffering of plants and animals is just one side of the story of human greed and cruelty. We do not even spare the members of our own species and kill, maim, and torture them as ruthlessly and mercilessly. On humanity’s love for war, Canadian historian Cathal Nolan writes, “War remains the most expensive, complex, physically, emotionally and morally demanding enterprise that humans collectively undertake. No great art or music, no cathedral or temple or mosque, no intercontinental transport net or particle collider or space program, no research for a cure for a mass killing disease receives even a fraction of the resources and effort humanity devotes to making war. Or to recovery from war, and to preparations for future wars that are invested over years and even decades of always tentative peace.” And, we never seem to learn. “After every war we also write more heroic poetry and books preaching ‘the old lie.’ We bury the dead while neglecting survivors. We mourn awhile, . . . then write more war songs and speak of ‘pouring out the sweet red wine of youth’ to another generation of boys breathlessly eager for war. We bury more dead, erect more granite statues, and write lists of soon-forgotten foreign place-names scored with acid in brass on stone. We admire oiled images of oafish, mounted generals in silk and lace who led armies to slaughter in endless wars over where to mark off a king’s stone borders. Perhaps most of all, we watch films with reassuring characters and outcomes which glorify war even while supposedly denouncing it.” We do all this without “a critical look at the societies and cultures that produced mass armies and sent them off to fight in faraway fields for causes about which the average soldier knew nothing.”



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American historian Norman Naimark opens his book Genocide: A World History with these unsettling words: “Genocide has been a part of human history from its very beginnings. There is little reason to think that our prehistoric forebears were either more or less civilized than ourselves when confronting and eliminating other peoples and suspected enemies. Extended families, clans, and tribes routinely engaged in genocidal actions against their rivals, just as ancient empires and modern nation-states enacted their murderous hatred for imagined or real enemies in mass killing. Over the ages, genocide has had both internal and external dimensions. Political leaders of societies small and large, primitive and modern, have turned against internal groups—tribal, ethnic, religious, social—and sought their elimination as a way to preserve privilege, avoid dissidence, consolidate power, and accumulate wealth. They have also conquered and dominated neighboring (or distant) territories for a variety of imperial purposes and have killed and suppressed, as well as co-opted, native peoples of those regions in order to dominate them and seize their land and resources.” And, he concludes his survey with these terrifying words: “There are many similarities in the cases of genocide over the past three millennia. War, above all, serves as the seedbed for genocide. The activity of military confrontation and destruction frequently ‘bleeds’ into genocide. The dehumanization of alleged enemies, external in the case of war or potential war, or internal in the case of the struggle to assert political supremacy, predates and accompanies genocidal campaigns. The rape of women, which includes the forcible abduction of females into the perpetrators’ families as slaves and wives, also figures into many cases of genocide over its history. The attempt of empires to spread their territories and consolidate their gains through colonization and settlement involves the removal of indigenous peoples, which too frequently culminates in genocide. The admixture of imperialism and racism has proven particularly lethal over time for those peoples who originally lived in territories subjected to colonial rule. It also has had a combustible half-life in the post-colonial period, influencing outbreaks of genocidal violence even after independence. Religion and ideology, like race thinking, often have framed campaigns of genocide, providing convenient stereotypes of the victims and justifications for the perpetrators.” There is no evidence that humanity has now changed and there are no signs that it will ever change. South African philosopher David Benatar writes, “Homo sapiens  is  the  most destructive species. . . . More than 63 billion terrestrial animals and, by very conservative estimates, more than 103 billion aquatic animals are killed for human consumption  every year. The amount of death and suffering is simply

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staggering. . . . All this is caused by the human appetite for animal flesh and products, an appetite shared by the great majority of humans. Using very conservative estimates, every human (who is not a vegetarian or vegan) is, on average, responsible for the death of 27 animals per year, or 1,690 animals over the course of a lifetime.” Vegetarians and vegans cannot claim the moral high ground either. Much as we want to believe that agriculture is a noble, benign, and productive human enterprise, the fact is that it is a wholesale and nonstop killing operation exterminating plants and animals especially insects and birds on a planetary scale—the greatest and deadliest war waged by humanity against life for the sustenance and indulgence of its pestilential overpopulation, now a perfect chemical and biological warfare, which we otherwise inveigh against so much. Writing about the tragedy of farmed animals, American neuroscientist and biopsychologist Lori Marino informs, “In 2012, The Economist reported that, based on 2007 data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, meat consumption since 1961 has risen from about 48 to 88 pounds per person per year worldwide. The numbers of individual farmed animals slaughtered for meat annually around the world also showed a staggering increase from 1961 to 2014: we’ve gone from 6.6 billion to 62 billion chickens; from 376 million to 1.5 billion pigs; from 331 million to 545 million sheep; from 173 million to 300 million cows; from 142 million to 649 million turkeys; and from 103 million to 444 million goats. These statistics do not take into account eggs, dairy and seafood.”  All this is not enough, for humanity is still hungry. Three American authors Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset with a Mexican geographer Luis Esparza wrote World Hunger: 12 Myths at the turn of twentieth century. They told, “Almost 800 million people suffer” from “dayin-day-out hunger. . . . Every day this largely invisible hunger, and its related preventable diseases, kill as many as thirty-four thousand children under the age of five. That’s 12 million children per year—more than the total number of people who died each year during World War II. This death toll is equivalent to the number killed instantly by a Hiroshima bomb every three days.” They further informed, “For over twenty-five years we have sought to understand why there is hunger in a world of plenty” and “we arrived at some surprising findings. . . . The world today produces enough grain alone to provide every human being on the planet with thirty-five hundred calories a day. That’s enough to make most people fat! And this estimate does not even count many other commonly eaten foods—vegetables, beans, nuts, root



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crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. In fact, if all foods are considered together, enough is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day. That includes two and a half pounds of grain, beans, and nuts; about a pound of fruits and vegetables; and nearly another pound of meat, milk, and eggs. . . . Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the supply of food in the world today. . . . No country in the world is a hopeless case. Even countries many people think of as impossibly overcrowded have the resources necessary for people to free themselves from hunger. . . . Even most ‘hungry countries’ have enough food for all their people right now.” Unbelievable but true and our world has not become much different since. This story can go on and on with no end, so I am recommending some notable works of credible scholarship for readers to explore this subject further. A chilling story of widespread and wanton destruction of nature and environment and reckless killing of plants and animals by humanity is told in The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert, The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, and Losing Earth by Nathaniel Rich, to name just a few. Horrific stories of conspecific killing and torture by humanity are told in Less Than Human and The Most Dangerous Animal by David Livingstone Smith, War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat, War Before Civilization by Lawrence Keeley, The Second World War and An Intimate History of Killing by Joanna Bourke, Blood and Ruins by Richard Overy, Our Bodies, Their Battlefields by Christina Lamb, War Without Mercy by John Dower, The History and Sociology of Genocide by Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies edited by Donald Bloxham and Anthony Dirk Moses, Empire, Colony, Genocide edited by Anthony Dirk Moses, The Massacre in History edited by Mark Levene and Penny Roberts, Theatres of Violence edited by Philip G. Dwyer and Lyndall Ryan, Fields of Blood by Karen Armstrong, Land by Simon Winchester, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Indigenous Continent by Pekka Hämäläinen, Legacy of Violence by Caroline Elkins, Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis, A Continent Erupts by Ronald Spector, A People’s Tragedy and The Whisperers by Orlando Figes, The Great Terror by Robert Conquest, Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum, The Tragedy of Liberation, Mao’s Great Famine, and The Cultural Revolution by Frank Dikötter, The Roots of Evil by Ervin Staub, The Vanquished by Robert Gerwarth, The Diaries of Victor Klemperer by Victor Klemperer, Bloodlands and Black Earth by Timothy Snyder, To Hell and Back by Ian Kershaw, KL by Nikolaus Wachsmann, Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning, Europe Against the Jews by Götz Aly, and The Origins

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of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt and there are scores of thousands of works on human tragedy. Eternal Treblinka by Charles Patterson is a remarkable exploration of both types of killings, of humans and animals, done side by side. Animal Liberation and Animal Liberation Now by Peter Singer recount the suffering of farm animals. A 2015 documentary film Racing Extinction tells a tale of wanton destruction of animal species by humanity. Our sadistic violence and boundless cruelty against animals is vividly recorded in 2005 documentary film Earthlings while 2009 six-part documentary film Apocalypse: The Second World War created by editing the original recordings of war glances through our indescribable madness and limitless internecine killing. A 2007 documentary film India Untouched: Stories of a People Apart gives a glimpse of caste system practiced in modern India. Viewers are advised to bear it in mind that this is a very diluted and diminutive form of caste system, for the efforts of State and the forces of modernity have worked in tandem for tens of years and eroded much of its structure and blunted its edge. It is left to your imagination how very brutal and oppressive it must have been in its heydays. These are mentioned just by way of example; there are endless cinematic accounts of human cruelty in each language. Endless and shameless are games that we play to encourage killing and suffering in the world. Political writings of American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky are quite revealing of lies that are told and games that are played by rich and powerful among us who control humanity more than others. And, while Chomsky writes primarily in the context of United States of America, the story of power is no different anywhere. Some of his writings and interviews such as Because We Say So, Failed States, Hegemony or Survival, How the World Works, Imperial Ambitions, Interventions, Masters of Mankind, Who Rules the World, World Orders Old and New, and Understanding Power along with Beyond Belief by Deborah Lipstadt, Looking for the Good War by Elizabeth Samet, To Start a War by Robert Draper, Weapons of Mass Deception by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Spencer Ackerman’s Reign of Terror, Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything, and On Fire, Jane Mayer’s Dark Money, Robert Reich’s The System, Jennifer Taub’s Big Dirty Money, Kurt Andersen’s Evil Geniuses, Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen, Margaret Burnham’s By Hands Now Known, James Whitman’s Hitler’s American Model, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, Carol Anderson’s The Second, Adam Cohen’s Supreme Inequality, Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, Angela Saini’s Superior, Katharina Pistor’s The Code of Capital, The Panama Papers by Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, Backstabbing for Beginners by Michael Soussan, Secrecy World by Jake Bernstein, Climate Cover-Up by James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore, and Slaves for Peanuts



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by Jori Lewis would surely help readers see beyond prevalent myths and influential propaganda and realise the way the human world actually works. A whiff of our unquenchable hunger for blood and power can also be caught in 1995 movie Hiroshima. Even if certain details given in these works are disputed, they still tell human story most openly and bluntly. If killing by humanity is immense, suffering caused by it is boundless. There is a reason why Benatar is compelled to say, “The question is not  whether  humans will become extinct, but rather  when  they will. . . . It would be better, all things being equal, if this happened sooner rather than later for, the sooner it happens, the more suffering and misfortune will be avoided.” I wish the same. That we are a noble species is clearly a myth. It surely has a capacity for noble thoughts and deeds but our species as a whole is nothing but demonic and diabolic, the worst that has ever evolved on earth. If change that we have wrought in the world cannot be reversed, the rate of change can, perhaps, be slowed down and pain and suffering caused by us can certainly be reduced, only if we give morality centre stage in our affairs. But that is not to be, has never been, and will never be. For we are in thrall to our desensitising and discriminating notions of superior ‘us’ and inferior ‘they’ that have made us perpetrate the countless miseries and boundless suffering of all species including our own. Such beliefs cannot do anything else but what they have done during the tens of thousands of years of our existence—destruction. There is no escape, there is no hope. In the light of these facts I ask: Is there a greater achievement of humanity than visiting unlimited, untimely, and unnecessary death, pain, and suffering upon all species including our own? Is this what we call reason that we are so proud of, which makes us morally superior to other species, and what we shamelessly invoke to proclaim our right to dignity that other species cannot have? Is it not an irony, then, that we still arrogantly claim to be the only species whose individuals have right to dignity on account of their rational nature, for it allows them to choose good over evil? If those of us who can exercise reason but choose not to and still indulge in immoral acts of the worst kinds have the same dignity as the most virtuous among us, how can we deny dignity to the other forms of living beings who supposedly lack a rational capacity to distinguish between good and bad but not known to perpetrate evil either? This is the most unfair consideration given to human beings by themselves. For which we have fabricated innumerable myths, those clever euphemisms and philosophical abstractions that are used to self-deceive, to grant ourselves licence and give legitimacy for asserting our ‘moral’ right over other species and to absolve ourselves of our brutal deeds and all sorts of wrongdoings.

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Other living beings may not have ‘rational will’ as we see it but they do have ‘natural will’ that propels them to live their lives as nature intended, unless restricted and curtailed by the fury of nature itself or the will of those who possess ‘reason.’ It is known to us that other species do experience and avoid pain and suffering and many of them even actively seek joy and pleasure, as we do. Let us also admit that not everything is known to us about other species and certain things about them may not be ever known to us. And, morality demands that in matters where we cannot be absolutely sure and certain and which have far-reaching consequences, we must be extremely cautious and careful. Against the weight of these arguments, I am obliged to reject Kantian argument that ‘rational’ nature is the cause of dignity. If the underlying purpose of morality cannot be anything but to let life flourish, to promote joy and pleasure of and for all, and to prevent and alleviate pain and suffering in the world, then, the cause of dignity must be life itself because it is life which flourishes, brings joy and pleasure, and experiences pain and suffering. We, of course, need the notion of dignity in morality and ethics as it guarantees certain basic minimum conditions necessary for living life without wilfully induced, deliberately organised, and purposefully engineered pain and suffering. Rational nature does not give us dignity; instead, our capacity for reason makes it obligatory for us to recognise the dignity of life and show respect for self and others including those who may not or supposedly do not have a capacity for reason, for rational beings cannot hide behind the shield of moral ignorance. Dignity of an individual cannot just be an idea; it must be brought to bear on the world. It must translate into conditions necessary for leading a dignified life; conditions that promote the flourishing of life and reduce the pain and suffering of living beings. Such conditions are those which give all living beings opportunities to be, grow, flourish, move, reproduce, and exercise free will or natural will. Conversely, conditions necessary for leading a dignified life eliminate and remove any intelligent design, plan, or intervention which wilfully curtails and undermines the flourishing of life, introduces and increases the pain and suffering of living beings, and limit or deny opportunities to living beings to be, grow, flourish, move, reproduce, and exercise free will or natural will. A virtuous man leads his life in line with this belief and shapes his thoughts, emotions, and actions to create and preserve such conditions for others. This is the end and purpose of moral value called respect on which stands the whole edifice of morality.



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I insist, the proof of life gives right to dignity. It is life which creates the intrinsic worth of a being, so no one can have a greater intrinsic worth than another being. Further, while one’s intrinsic worth lasts until one is alive, it does not vanish with life. Even though the dignity of a living being is indivisible, since life resides in the physical form of being, body continues to possess a residual dignity after death. A dead body should not be violated, brutalised, ridiculed, celebrated, or enjoyed wilfully, therefore; it certainly deserves a respectful treatment, if not a ritualistic burial. Owing to life and dignity, all living beings are worthy of respect and they also deserve a dignified treatment after their death. This is the basis and essence of morality which has been most beautifully captured in 2009 movie Avatar. Life on earth can flourish only if rational creatures become moral beings or it will flourish again after the end of human beings. Until then, apocalypse will go on in one form or another. Now that the question of dignity is settled, let us discuss some related questions. Can the dignity of an individual be suspended if it is absolute and inviolable? Yes, for without putting certain restrictions on the notion of dignity, it cannot be realised for all beings. However, the suspension of an individual’s dignity is done only to protect and safeguard the dignity of others. Principle of minimum restriction, commensurate to the preservation of dignity of others, guides its progressive and proportionate deprivation; the last being the existence of a being who becomes a threat for the existence of others in ways that cannot be justified by the rationale of coexistence. What does the virtue of respect do to a man or, to paraphrase it, what does it make him do? A man committed to the moral value of respect desists from thinking, feeling, or acting in a manner that may directly or indirectly inflict fear, sadness, shame, stress, pain, and suffering to others. Such a man considers it undesirable, impermissible, wrong, and bad to disregard, debase, degrade, demean, or devalue other beings. A man of moral character does not harm, hurt, injure, or kill another being unless it is required to preserve and uphold the very principles of morality and for the preservation and flourishing of life as a whole. Moral value of respect makes a man mindful of and sensitive to others. It gives him a compass to navigate his life and guide all facets at each step and all through. A commitment to respect is an essential and indispensable first step towards the realisation of other moral virtues such as happiness, love, forgiveness, kindness, compassion, care, and saving life.

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If what we have discussed thus far is called respect, then, what is self-respect? Moral value of respect recognises and values the existence of dignity. It produces an appropriate response of its believer and practitioner in relation to others. Respect, however, does not only value others but also values self. If dignity is universal and possessed by all equally, self cannot be ignored or excluded from its ambit and reach. Notion of self-respect, therefore, is embedded in and emerges from the greater abstraction of respect. Existence of selfrespect makes a man to believe in his absolute, unconditional, indestructible, inalienable, and inviolable intrinsic worth represented by personal dignity. It enables and empowers him to recognise and assert his moral right of deserving respect from other human beings. It gives him self-recognition, selfapproval, and self-confidence on account of self-worth. It wards off inferiority complex, self-pity, guilt, and shame that occur for want of self-worth. It is self-respect which empowers and emboldens a man to resist any attempt by anyone that infringes on and tramples over his moral right to dignity. Such a resistance is defensive and protective; not offensive and destructive. It is virtuous, not vicious, for it is not a revengeful reaction driven by disrespect, contempt, or hate for others. Resistance of a self-respecting man takes the three-dimensional form of rejection and protest expressed through his thoughts, emotions, and actions. A person having self-respect cannot be crushed, defeated, or enslaved completely by anyone, for the realms of thoughts and emotions always remain out of bounds, above and beyond the reach of others. People like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela could not have asserted, engaged, and confronted in the manner they did without respect for self and also for others. A man of self-respect has to respect others. A man who respects others has to respect self. A man who does not respect others cannot have self-respect. A man who does not have self-respect cannot respect others. Respect and self-respect are inseparable. How exceptional achievements and personal dignity are related? Before commenting on this question, I want to make a larger point. While most of human achievements tend to overwhelm us by the feelings of awe and wonder, we do not seem to value living creatures around us and appear to treat them as the most banal of things. It is perhaps due to the abundance of life on earth and its autonomous nature. But that is merely our perception shaped by our beliefs. It does not take away from the most exceptional character of life. If a single living cell is more complex than the most complicated contraptions created by humankind ever, what can be more wonderful and worthy than a living creature? More than the nature of



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the world, we need to ponder on ourselves and question the nature of our culture and beliefs. Coming back to the question of achievement and dignity, there is a space and scope for the recognition and appreciation of exceptional achievements of an individual. However, such a celebration remains external to the domain of dignity. No amount of glorification of valued achievements of one man can override, dilute, belittle, influence, or affect the intrinsic worth of others. These are two different sets of beliefs that cannot be compared with each other and must exist independently of each other. All praiseworthy and laudable achievements including that of leading a virtuous life are acquired, amassed, or earned by a man but he is born with his dignity as much as any other living being. His intrinsic worth lasts his lifetime and remains constant and inalienable from the beginning to the end while anything that is acquired by him in his life may change or alter and can be lost too, in the course of life. In terms of intrinsic worth, no one can be appraised and pronounced inferior or subservient to others, irrespective of personal achievements and capabilities of others and failures and limitations attributed to someone. For not only the intrinsic worth of all living beings is identical but also the intrinsic worth of any living being is irreducible. To achieve, according to the eighth edition of Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, is “to succeed in reaching a particular goal, status or standard, especially by making an effort for a long time” or, as defined by the twelfth edition of Concise Oxford English Dictionary, to “bring about or accomplish by effort, skill, or courage.” Many thinkers and writers still use the same root word ‘respect’ to convey a response to both achievement as well as dignity and distinguish between these two types by adding certain adjectives. For example, ‘recognition respect’ is respect for dignity while ‘appraisal respect’ is respect for achievement. I find it difficult to understand and accept that the occasional feelings of elevation and admiration, awe and wonder caused by the rare feats of certain individuals are the same as those produced by a moral commitment to dignity which is possessed by all at all times. How ‘respect’ caused by dignity can be the same as ‘respect’ produced by achievement when one is founded on the notion of intrinsic and equal worth and the other on acquired and differential worth? How is it that respect in one sense integrates, unites, and includes and in another sense discriminates, divides, and excludes? Should there not be a differentiation between the acknowledgement of praiseworthy acts and that of personal worth? Achievement and intrinsic worth are different notions, for the former is limited to a time, space, and situation while the latter spans across time,

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space, and situations; the former is conditional while the latter is unconditional. Intrinsic worth of a man goes everywhere with him and remains always with him. It has a permanence which his achievements cannot have. It seems that a single word cannot capture and convey the sense and meaning of two entirely different constructs. Response to dignity is always present and acquires a deep cold state while response to excellence is experienced occasionally and comes with the heat of excitement and exhilaration. Should we, then, not use different words for expressing the recognition, celebration, and glorification of valued achievements of certain individuals and spare word ‘respect’ to be used exclusively for the expression and experience of moral value of dignity? Another relevant question in this discussion is that of arrogance. Often, the attitude and behaviour of powerful and successful people smack of arrogance. It is a consequence of a belief in personal superiority. Feelings, thoughts, and behaviours produced by a sense of a greater personal worth than the worth of others breed discrimination and contempt for others. Contempt is the opposite of respect because it is based on the notion of a lesser, little, or no value and worth of others. For arrogance causes pain and suffering in the end, it is morally undesirable, impermissible, wrong, and bad; it surely is a vice and an arrogant man is nothing but an immoral and vicious man. Moral virtue of respect is the surest antidote to the vice of arrogance that breeds contempt for others, for no virtuous man can respect himself more than others. Let me address an obvious question in the end. Why does a hostage rescuer need to possess the virtue of respect? I believe it is necessary because emotionally he may not be ready to save the lives of unknown hostages in the absence of respect for others and may not do everything it takes to save hostages especially when no one is watching and there is an imminent and real danger to his own existence. On the other hand, given the complex and complicated nature of rescue skills, he may not gain full confidence and complete capacity to rescue in the absence of self-respect that will cause him to believe in himself. Respect is also the quintessence of team and working as a team is absolutely essential for hostage rescue. Moral virtue of respect undergirds and scaffolds other virtues too that together constitute the moral character of an ideal rescuer. And, without the virtue of respect, a man cannot have moral character—hence this virtue. Do not worry that such a man would respect terrorists, even when they are legitimate targets and ought to be eliminated to save hostages. He surely will have respect for terrorists but that notwithstanding, he shall engage them at first sight without batting



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an eyelid in order to protect the dignity of hostages, for he understands it well that the dignity of one who is a threat to others can be suspended or terminated to preserve the dignity of others. I have no doubt that a man of moral character who possesses the virtue of respect will fulfil all obligations of a rescuer and fare far better than those who do not possess this virtue, particularly in a complex terrorist crisis. VI Humility is the fourth essential component of moral character of a rescuer. It is imperative to an assured operational excellence of a hostage rescue unit and its individual members, which is technically the best bet for a quick resolution of an otherwise impossible and intractable complex terrorist crisis. This virtue is also necessary for its subtle but significant contribution to the protection of operational secrecy—of missions and capabilities of organisation—that, arguably, also plays a decisive role in rescue interventions. But above all, the virtue of humility addresses the concern of seventeenth century English philosopher John Locke which still troubles those who care for the well-being and rights of others. He wrote, “View but an army at the sacking of a town, and see what observation or sense of moral principles, or what touch of conscience for all the outrages they do. Robberies, murders, rapes, are the sports of men set at liberty from punishment and censure.” Restraining force of humility is essential for guarding the individual members of a hostage rescue force against the corrupting influence of absolute power— the power of wielding the most advanced tools made for killing people, possessing the most effective knowledge and skills developed for killing people, and having the approval and sanction of State and society to kill people. A man who possesses such absolute power over the lives of others, howsoever contained and restrained he may be by the structural framework of controls, is best placed to perceive himself as the lord of the world and may wilfully disregard the dignity and even existence of others in action. Character of power is such that breeds vices and a man gradually drifts away from a virtuous course if moral restraint is absent. For vices cannot coexist with virtues, an absence of humility might eventually rob a man of his entire moral character. We can, therefore, neither ignore nor belittle the virtue of humility. Let us discuss the nature of this virtue and how does it realise operational excellence, maintain operational secrecy, and keep a man to his senses. Moral virtue of humility is acquired by a persistent practice of moral value of humility. Value of humility creates a moral framework for the construction of

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self-concept. It insists that the assessment and view of self is realistic, factual, and correct. It combats and curbs one’s desire to overrate and overestimate one’s self or to distort the reality to paint a picture of self that is not true in order to build or defend a personal image or gain personal importance. It continuously oversees and guides the process of development of self-view and keeps a man from falling into the vicious trap of falsehood and pretence by a lure of self-focus, self-service, self-importance, and self-projection. Due to its nature and function, the value of humility cannot be practiced without a commitment to the supporting and cooperating moral values of honesty, authenticity, and fairness. Owing to a correct assessment of accumulated self-competence, a humble man is not only aware of his strengths and abilities but he is also aware of his weaknesses and limitations. He, therefore, gracefully admits and accepts his mistakes and errors and does not indulge in defensive distortions and evasive manipulations. His humility keeps him open to new ideas and creates conditions conducive to exploiting opportunities and learning from the contrary viewpoints, criticisms, suggestions, advices, and experiences of others. A humble man has a realisation that his performance and success are not entirely controlled and determined by his personal abilities and efforts; the outcomes and results of efforts and events are also shaped by the contributions of others and role played by circumstances. He, therefore, desists from making untrue claims and taking undue credit for his accomplishments. Such a man keeps a low profile and happily shares credit and praise with others. He does not have an urge for undeserving recognition and, hence, does not indulge in self-glorification and self-promotion and has a tendency to avoid the limelight. A realisation of personal limitations also keeps his feet on the ground; it prevents his collapse from a failure and gives him reason to recover and strength to rebound, for he knows that he is neither perfect nor the pivot of the universe. A virtuous man who assumes the responsibility of saving lives automatically and spontaneously comes to possess a powerful drive for operational excellence. His humility, on the other hand, through a realistic self-assessment makes him aware of his gaps, shortcomings, weaknesses, and limitations in professional knowledge and skills and also in his physical and emotional readiness for hostage rescue, thus keeping his mind open to and ready for learning and improving. Together, these two virtues create necessary drive and right conditions for achieving operational excellence, facilitate personal and organisational course correction, and break people and organisations free from the clutches of complacency and the plateau of performance.



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A humble man is a low-key person who has no temptation for undeserving fame and does not vie for undue prominence. He possesses a right frame of mind necessary for successfully countering moral decadence caused by power and glory. I will, therefore, trust a humble man for maintaining operational secrecy although the role of humility is indirect, for it actually reins in a boastful tongue and deals with a desire for self-importance and self-promotion. Other benefits of humility manifest in trustworthiness, team building, and teamwork. Because of his non-threatening, respectful, acknowledging, and sharing disposition, a humble man enjoys good interpersonal relations. A presence of enabling factors and an absence of inhibiting factors for interpersonal cooperation makes him an ideal candidate for team and teamwork. Since a humble man is also an honest and authentic man, a combined effect of his moral virtues makes it easy for others to know him and also predict his behaviour, which eventually makes a man trustworthy. Trust is what drives a team and team is what drives a hostage rescue operation and realises its success in a complex terrorist crisis. Virtue of humility, therefore, cannot be left out of the framework of moral character of an ideal rescuer. But the primary function of humility is moral vigilance—to keep power from going to the head of a man and to keep him to his senses. In its vigilant role, the virtue of humility wards off and guards against the vices of selfishness, bragging, arrogance, and narcissism and does not let him become detached from the reality. While the perception of a man about others is primarily shaped by the virtue of respect and the role of humility in determining his view of others is indirect and secondary, it assumes a lead role when a man recognises, acknowledges, and announces the role and importance of others in a success attributed to him. Virtue of humility is backed by its cooperative virtues such as respect, honesty, authenticity, and fairness. For the moral character of a man is built by synergies produced by the cooperation and interoperation of several moral virtues, the character of a man is more than the sum of its constituent virtues. VII A fifth constituent of moral character of a rescuer is the virtue of integrity. Its nature is rather paradoxical, for integrity is very simple to define and quite easy to understand but it is challenging and difficult in the extreme to practice. Let us see the dictionary meaning of integrity to start with. Integrity, according to the second edition of Macmillan English Dictionary, is “the quality of always behaving according to the moral principles that you

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believe in, so that people respect and trust you” while the fourth edition of Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary gives the same sense of word from another perspective as “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles that you refuse to change.” I have chosen these definitions as both of them give an unmistakable impression of permanence of moral beliefs which is the key feature of this virtue. In another sense, integrity is the state of being unified, complete, and whole, which is the opposite of being divided, fragmented, or disjointed. If we combine both senses of word, then, the moral virtue of integrity indicates a fully developed well rounded moral character of a virtuous man that does not change, vary, or adapt with time, space, and situations in any manner that compromises his morality. Integrity cannot be acquired in the same manner as a man acquires other virtues, that is, by practicing specific values. In contrast, integrity is achieved only when he practices all moral values consistently and lives a virtuous life always and in all circumstances. Integrity is, thus, the end result of virtuous life led by a man—the pinnacle of morality. It is a resultant virtue derived from all other virtues. It is a special virtue which is entirely different in nature, for it has no stand-alone existence and cannot be conceived or practiced in isolation of other virtues. Role and function of this virtue is to make sure that all other virtues always remain intact in the moral character of a man. It holds all virtues together and acts as a container of moral virtues. It is the moral epoxy of virtues that binds the moral character of man into a formidable virtuous whole. Integrity is the virtue of virtues and can rightly be called a metavirtue. Integrity is an interesting virtue which is not only a constituent of moral character of man but also the proof of his morality. Only a man who consistently thinks, feels, and behaves in a manner that preserves and upholds his moral values, principles, beliefs, and ideals and does not change or compromise with time, space, and situations can be called a man of moral integrity. I am inclined to see this virtue as the very conscience of a man that keeps him on virtuous course throughout his life. A man of integrity is undoubtedly a virtuous man and his integrity is the guarantee of his morality. Integrity is a notion of wholeness and, hence, not only his acts but also the thoughts and feelings of a man of integrity ought to be consistent with his moral beliefs. A consistency and harmony of thoughts, emotions, and actions achieved by a man of integrity results in his reliability and trustworthiness, for such a man has no internal contradiction that makes him weak and susceptible to a compromise especially in trying circumstances and testing times. It would



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not be an overstatement if I say that a man without integrity can neither be reliable and trustworthy nor a man of moral character. Integrity, then, is an essential virtue of moral character of a man who voluntarily assumes the responsibility of rescuing hostages caught in a complex terrorist crisis, which pivots around the axis of reliability and trustworthiness. VIII I will now discuss the last indispensable moral virtue of a man who freely chooses to rescue hostages from a complex terrorist stronghold. Let us begin with events depicted in 2011 movie War Horse commencing at 01:47:00. In this First World War plot set somewhere in mainland Europe, British and German soldiers are engaged in deadly trench warfare. Both sides are holding their lines amidst a constant fear and danger of an enemy infantry offensive. Soldiers are lined up along trench walls for this eventuality and observers are watching out enemy line across a hostile and heavily barricaded no-man’s-land. A British horse, who had been captured by Germans in the early phase of war and exploited for their war effort ever since, is abandoned when German soldiers suddenly run away on the approach of a British tank. Bewildered horse trying to wake up his grounded mate who has just passed away finds himself alone and terrified at the sight of a mean and noisy giant rolling towards him. He panics and runs away but cannot escape due to battlefield barriers, so he turns round and runs straight to tank, leaps over it, jumps down onto the other side, and continues galloping frenetically amidst exploding artillery shells, thus reaching German entrenchment. Frightened horse leaps over a German trench and runs alongside it until he suddenly turns back as a shell explodes next to him. He jumps across a trench but fails and falls into it. He does not stop and dashes through trench until he climbs up and gets out again. From here he bolts madly into no-man’s-land amidst relentless shelling. Wild beast in fright hits and drags with him barbed wires with their posts that blocked his way and keeps racing until a post gets stuck that makes him flip over and fall onto a marshy ground. He is entangled badly in a dense web of barbed wire and cannot get up in spite of desperate efforts. So, there he lies trapped on no-man’s-land in severe pain, gazing helplessly. A British soldier observing no-man’s-land through a periscope notices some movement and alerts his mates around. After a close examination, soldiers find out that it is a horse. Their German enemies on the other side also discover from their trench that there is a horse in no-man’s-land. Without realising horse’s condition, British and German soldiers begin to call him

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Dignity of Life but horse cannot move though he tries to rise. It is now when they realise that “he is caught on the wire.” British soldier who had spotted horse first suddenly pulls out his bayonet from holster, hangs a white handkerchief on it, and steps out of trench waving improvised white flag. His fellow soldiers are stunned and astonished by his act. His Captain cautions and commands him to “get back” but he does not heed and moves on. On the other side, his unexpected move makes German soldiers nervous who think “it is a trap” and fire a warning shot over his shoulder to “scare him back into his hole.” He ducks and manoeuvres for cover and then angrily shouts at Germans to “see the white flag” and he is there only to tend to horse. A moment later he stands up again and advances. He again ignores his commander’s desperate order to get back and walks through hostile no-man’s-land right up to trapped horse muttering a prayer to overcome his fear. After reaching horse, he fondly talks to distressed beast to calm him down who becomes jittery and starts to move. He tells horse not to “buck and wriggle” for that will only harm him. He looks over the condition of horse and realises that he does not have equipment to cut wire. Suddenly a German soldier appears from the other side raising a pair of wire cutters in his hand. German tells British that he “might need” them to cut wire. British soldier agrees. German walks up to him and hands over wire cutters. British grabs this tool and turns to horse repeatedly looking back with disbelief and suspicion to his German enemy. Soon as British puts a “wire in the crux of the cutters” to snip it, German steps closer and explains to him that strand he is cutting is long and wound around horse at several places; tensioned wire would recoil violently upon release which would “only wound the poor fellow further.” German looks over trapped horse and proposes a quick plan to set free his head first so that frightened horse does not blind himself while trying to stand up. He realises that both of them would need to cut some strands simultaneously, so he shouts for more wire cutters. On his call, many wire cutters are hurled out of German trench. Both men cooperate and coordinate their actions carefully not to frighten already terrified and injured horse and save him from more injuries. They finally free their horse entangled in wire in the middle of deadly battlefield without worrying for their own lives. Now, both men stake a claim for freed horse standing between them. The question is quickly and amicably settled in favour of British by the toss of a coin and he walks back to his side with wounded horse. While releasing trapped animal, both men share their awe and wonder for his beauty and strength. When British Lance Corporal Colin proudly walks with limping War Horse through a crowded trench, all British soldiers— otherwise looking dull, worn out, and indolent—intuitively stand up in excitement and elation and turn around to look at them with staring eyes full of awe and wonder! Their joy and pleasure is vicariously felt and shared by audience watching these events unfolding on screen.



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Let us pause here and reflect on virtue displayed by these two men who saved this horse. Is it courage? Surely it is but I find it difficult to believe that only two soldiers are courageous among hundreds in a battlefield. Is it, then, care or compassion or love? These virtues too manifest in their behaviour but they do not necessarily entail a risk and not always practiced at the immediate cost of personal existence as done in this case. What virtue is it, then? No virtue known to me can entirely explain the thoughts, emotions, and actions of these two men, so I introduce a new virtue and include it as an essential constituent of moral character of the man I am talking about in this chapter. It is the virtue of rescue. In the absence of this moral virtue, I cannot explain why some people rescue and others do not. For only the moral virtue of rescue can answer why some of us choose to act, even at the risk of our own lives to save life while most among us merely watch or walk away. I contend that rescue is a value and a virtue inasmuch as care is considered a value and a virtue in contemporary moral philosophy. Also, as the virtue of care is fundamental to certain occupations such as nursing and social work, the virtue of rescue is the basis of professions such as disaster response, casualty rescue, and hostage rescue. While cooperating virtues such as love, kindness, care, compassion, courage, altruism, and more besides are necessary without which the virtue of rescue cannot exist, on their own they do not make a man a rescuer. For what makes him a rescuer is the virtue of rescue. We know that a moral virtue emanates from a moral value. And, it is the practice of a value in life that makes the commitment of a man to it deeper and virtue more robust. That becoming and staying virtuous is an ongoing, effortful, and self-directed undertaking in life whose process and outcome both are intrinsically rewarding and fulfilling. Therefore, in order to understand the character of a rescuer, we need to understand the value of rescue first. For this, however, we have to grasp the notion of primacy of life on which the value of rescue must rest and revolve. For every living being, the question of life and existence is foremost. Life is founded on this very principle which has made the instinct to survive— of taking direct action for the preservation of personal life and limb—far more powerful than all other instincts hardwired in living beings. Nature too is an outcome and product of life’s cardinal instinct of survival besides, of course, the event of its origin and its most remarkable and matchless ability to make its own copies. To paraphrase, survival instinct exists in all of us who are living and its outcome is a bountiful nature which brings unlimited awe and wonder and generously gives joy and pleasure to one and

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all. What else is nature but a collection of life and conditions that promote and flourish life, of which human beings are a part and product and, does it not give us intrinsic joy and pleasure to be with nature and experience its awe and wonder? For they preserve life and nature, the consequences of survival instinct as nature intended it are good and, hence, the instinct itself is intrinsically good, worthy, and desirable. Instinct and desire of all living beings to live, then, must be respected, loved, and cared. For it revives our deep emotional connection with life and nature, an act of saving a being and giving it a chance to live and flourish naturally brings joy and pleasure to us. An act of saving life, then, is not only intrinsically worthy and valuable but it is also intrinsically rewarding and fulfilling, thus meeting all conditions for being a virtuous act. As an element of nature, we are no different from the rest of living beings. We are made of the same material and have the same ancestral origins as all other species on this planet—so much so that all living beings are our near and far relatives and our existence and flourishing as a species is inseparably connected to and depends on the existence and flourishing of life as a whole. By the same logic and in the same manner as we consider ourselves worthy and valuable, each and every form of life is inherently worthy and intrinsically valuable, for there is indeed no difference between us and them. In the same way and for the same reason as we want to live and flourish, we must let all beings live and life as a whole flourish, for everyone else too has the same primeval instinct to live and flourish. And, as we choose to protect ourselves, it is choiceworthy to protect others, for by protecting others we are in a way protecting ourselves. Humanity, I believe, cannot be treated in isolation, for its roots and branches indeed intertwine the total expanse of life on earth. Our blinding self-focus that does not let us see these facts is nothing but an evil bias and vicious prejudice. If the notion of distinctness of human species and human exceptionalism is not arbitrary and objectionable to reason, then, further divisions within human race cannot be unreasonable either. By the moral standards of fairness, we cannot claim the equality of all human beings and at the same time treat all other living beings merely as a means and instrument to serve the ends of humanity. But if might is right, so be it. Let, then, there be no deception and pretence of rights and justice, freedom and equality for anyone anywhere. Interestingly, scientific reasoning too seems to endorse moral reasoning and a case for life. We are alive because others are also alive. No species can exist in isolation from the web of life that connects and relates all living beings to each other and everything else, thus processing life on this planet



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in the form of a giant complex system called Gaia. This is the fact of life on earth that cannot be disputed. There exists an intricate equilibrium in nature which emerged in the course of eons by forging, selecting, and stabilising the countless complex relationships of innumerable individuals, species, and non-living things. Such equilibrium realised by the self-organisation of life has tremendous robustness and great resilience; it is not easy to disturb and disrupt it. Problem is that while it is robust and resilient, it is not indestructible. If disrupted, it spells a disaster of unimaginable proportions for life. Whenever this equilibrium of life was pushed beyond the point of no return in the past, the established cycle of life was disrupted and the evolutionary history of life on earth punctuated. A large-scale disruption of tried and tested relationships was followed by the event of mass extinction of species via a wholesale death of living beings in a geological fraction of time. Trails of widespread annihilation, untimely death, and unlimited suffering remained there for long after until the reorganisation of nature evolved its new fulcrum of balance and stability which, then, allowed the vibrancy of life to gradually return yet again on the surface of earth. We understand it very well today and also know that a sixth such extinction event in the history of life on earth might just be occurring due to the reckless and destructive behaviours of our species. To reiterate, scientific knowledge too informs us that nature should be respected, which ultimately translates into the practice of respecting life, letting it flourish, and saving it where we can. So, the conclusion of scientific reasoning is the same as of moral reasoning but that is of no avail. If morality is nothing but fiction—a set of imaginary beliefs of human mind—we should at least believe in the realism of science that we are so proud of. But we choose to understand neither ethics nor facts and continue to display our obstinate refusal to respect life. And, matter-offactly, respect for life can only be ignored and disregarded at our own peril. Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli notes it with genuine concern. I believe that our species will not last long. It does not seem to be made of the stuff that has allowed the turtle, for example, to continue to exist more or less unchanged for hundreds of millions of years; for hundreds of times longer, that is, than we have even been in existence. We belong to a short-lived genus of species. All of our cousins are already extinct. What’s more, we do damage. The brutal climate and environmental changes which we have triggered are unlikely to spare us. For the Earth they may turn out to be a small irrelevant blip, but I do not think that we will outlast them unscathed – especially since public and political opinion prefers to ignore the dangers which we are running, hiding our heads in the sand. We are perhaps the only species on Earth to be conscious of the inevitability of

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Dignity of Life our individual mortality. I fear that soon we shall also have to become the only species that will knowingly watch the coming of its own collective demise, or at least the demise of its civilization. Nature is our home, and in nature we are at home. This strange, multicoloured and astonishing world which we explore – where space is granular, time does not exist, and things are nowhere – is not something that estranges us from our true selves, for this is only what our natural curiosity reveals to us about the place of our dwelling. About the stuff of which we ourselves are made. We are made of the same stardust of which all things are made, and when we are immersed in suffering or when we are experiencing intense joy we are being nothing other than what we can’t help but be: a part of our world.

If point made by Rovelli is philosophical, let us heed someone who arrives at a similar conclusion from a study of history. American ecologist and anthropologist Jared Diamond, who calls himself “a cautious optimist” for being a believer in human wisdom and technology as most human beings are, does not seem to share my disappointment and hopelessness. He tells the story of an isolated human community on Easter Island that had once thrived there and was able to successfully erect colossal stone statues but could not sustain its reckless “ecocidal” behaviours beyond the tipping point and eventually collapsed. He puts the pieces of the puzzle together by drawing upon several multidisciplinary sources and filling in the blanks with logical speculations, thus reconstructing a plausible narrative of rise and fall of ancient people of Easter Island. While his cautious optimism makes him quickly reverse a doomsday prophecy, he did end this story by saying it spontaneously that “when the Easter Islanders got into difficulties, there was nowhere to which they could flee, nor to which they could turn for help; nor shall we modern Earthlings have recourse elsewhere if our troubles increase. Those are the reasons why people see the collapse of Easter Island society as a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in our own future.” Although it was damaged badly and its erstwhile vibrancy was lost, life did not vanish from any of those remote islands which were once inhabited by human societies; only men and women who wreaked havoc there did. Scholarly hair-splitting of the collapse of Easter Islanders will not allow us to escape our planet if things were to go wrong here. Nothing is more foolish than today’s talk of finding and terraforming new planets for establishing human colonies while we are wantonly destroying our own beautiful and bountiful earth. We certainly do not have capacity to destroy life on earth on a scale that it becomes lifeless. Life here will remain and thrive for long after we are gone. A collective reliance on knowledge and



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morality will only prolong our stay on earth, lessen the pain and suffering of living beings caused by us, and let life flourish in its existing forms longer, which is good, desirable, and choiceworthy and there is not a shred of doubt about it. In terms of morality, the abstraction of primacy of life insists that we must save if we can and kill only if we must. It directs that all rational beings who have ability to understand the phenomenon of life should preserve and nurture it by saving living beings in danger and letting them flourish otherwise, for this is good for life, us included. Primacy of life also demands that a life should not be allowed to end prematurely, abruptly, and painfully for want of a timely action of removing an endangered being from a hazardous environment to safety, the certainty of death of all living beings in the future notwithstanding. Primacy of life is the basis for the existence of rescue as a moral value and virtue. At its very core, the moral value of rescue recognises the primacy of life, thus judging all such actions, thoughts, and emotions which preserve and promote conditions necessary and helpful for the flourishing of life and living beings as good, right, and desirable. Standing upon such a broad base of morality, the value of rescue eventually comes to emphasise and advocate the central theme of saving life. It is at this point where it branches off and becomes distinct from other moral values, for the ideal of saving life is the primary focus and function of rescue. But the ideal of saving life is not exclusive to rescue, for the moral value of care too stands for it and practices the same. An explication of the question as to where does the value of rescue bifurcate from the value of care and becomes a distinct value in its own right is, thus, required. Purpose and objective of rescue is to save life and its outcome and consequence is a gain of life. Rescue is possible only by a direct and positive action; merely thoughts and emotions cannot save a life, even if they scaffold and undergird actions all the way from beginning to end. There are three necessary conditions of saving life in the case of rescue which together make this moral value different and distinct. First condition for rescue is that a living being is facing a situation of immediate or imminent danger which can cause serious injury or death of that being if not removed physically from that situation. External intervention is required, for threatened individual is trapped in a situation and not likely to get out to safety without help. A second condition for rescue is that threat is not internal to endangered being but comes from external physical environment in a manner and form that can

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be sensed by nearly all human beings and not by a few specialists alone as in many cases of illness. Of course, the impact of environment might have harmful and even deadly internal consequences for a victim but threat in this sense is different here from sickness. A third condition is determined by the factor of time which is the most crucial and decisive in rescue, for an action has to be immediate, sharp, swift, and short. Action in rescue is always highly intensive and urgent and normally it does not last long. It follows the rule of here and now. In sum, a rescue intervention involves a quick manipulation of environment in order to safely isolate and remove a threatened individual from the threatening conditions and sources of danger. By manipulating surrounding environment, rescuers endeavour to gain control over situation and alter conditions in favour of victim for safe extrication. Action of rescue ends at the removal of endangered being from dangerous situation and all subsequent actions of saving the life of victim fall outside its scope and ambit. I consider care as a sister virtue of rescue. Rescue is an intense and short action while care is a prolonged and continuing commitment to save life. Care begins where rescue ends. Rescue is complete when an individual exposed to a danger has been removed from the reach of a grave and imminent threat to life. At this moment, rescued individual reaches inside the ambit of care. A race to save life is akin to a relay race in which, instead of batons, it is victims that change hands. Life may not be saved if a successful rescue is not followed by an effective care of victim. Rescuers, therefore, ought to immediately hand over rescued individuals to caregivers and step back. Now, caregivers gain primacy and proceed with the first aid, evacuation, definitive care, and rehabilitation of victim and their actions may continue for a long time. Due to the continuity and overlap of actions, the virtues of rescue and care may blur at their interface but they nevertheless remain two different and distinct virtues in nature and function. Certain acts of rescue, such as the rescue of hostages taken by terrorists, fall in the category of technical rescue which can be performed only by experts and not by laymen. While the virtue of rescue shores up an act of rescue by reliable and robust cognitive and emotional underpinnings, all that is just not enough in certain complex situations. In order for a rescuer to exercise his virtuous disposition and also be effective in complex situations, a fulfilment of certain conditions is essential, failing that, he cannot save life. First such condition is a realisation that a living being is trapped in a situation of immediate or imminent danger. Second condition is the physical presence of rescuer at this moment on that site which enables him to take



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immediate and direct action for rescue. Third condition is that a rescuer possesses capacity and means for saving life in that situation. Without these three enabling conditions, a life cannot be saved merely by the force of will and the disposition of a man in complex situations. Although I have placed it in the parentheses of technical rescue, hostage rescue is a special type of technical rescue which is fundamentally different and entirely unique. Action and occupation of hostage rescue is different from all other emergency actions and occupations, for danger to victim as well as rescuer is not only immediate but also intelligent; both rescuer and hostage or any one of them can lose life or limb any moment by the action of a determined and thinking adversary. As a rescuer has to face the opposing will of enemy, he faces the force of human will as against the force of instinct or nature in other cases. While the moral virtue of rescue may seem to be a job specific virtue, it can actually be practiced by any human being in the normal settings of daily life. Also, unlike its image popularised by media reporting, the virtue of rescue is not restricted to the rescue of human beings or certain large and endangered animal species alone but extended to all living beings, big or small. To save an ant trapped in a wet basin does not take anything other than will but an act of rescue even as simple as this is good, right, and desirable; it is self-rewarding and fulfilling too. Such ordinary acts of rescue also bring joy and pleasure to self and to others and lauded by all. Without these qualities, there cannot be a moral virtue, howsoever narrow or wide it may be in its scope and application. A broadening of scope of rescue is a philosophical imperative, for the value and virtue of rescue uphold the lofty ideal of saving life, not of saving human life alone. All rescuers ought to internalise this. Virtue of rescue can be possessed by any rational being who has ability to make choices. It can be exercised by all human beings everywhere in everyday life. However, in certain situations, a victim’s rescue may require special tools and competence. This limiting factor creates a philosophical trap for rescuers. What a man who is committed to the value of rescue and practices it in simple situations of daily life must do in a complex situation in order to remain virtuous if he is not skilled or equipped for a complex rescue operation? Interestingly, the answer to this question is rather simple. In that case, he ought to call experts or equipment for help. And, until professional help arrives, he must also do simple things within his power and reach in order to prolong the survival of endangered being. We have to understand

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that a virtue is not there to give a guaranteed result as not everything is in control; it only makes a man do what he can for upholding his moral value. A virtue is about making honest, sincere, and maximum efforts to lead a virtuous life and not necessarily about achieving certain valued ends which, however, remains its purpose from beginning to end. I have little doubt that rescue is a general moral virtue that can be practiced by all human beings. It is an ideal candidate for being a cardinal virtue should we must arrange moral virtues in a hierarchical order. It is, moreover, a quintessential virtue for the practitioners of all well established emergency response occupations such as firemen, lifeguards, disaster responders, coastguardsmen, policemen, wildlife officers, and more besides. Assertions made above are affirmed by the story of Irena Sendler. She was a young Polish social worker whose job was to help and counsel Jewish people confined in Warsaw ghetto set up by Nazis after the occupation of Poland. She could see through deceptive Nazi propaganda and timely sensed the planned extermination of Jewish population that was waiting to happen on an industrial scale, thus deciding to rescue trapped children from ghetto and hide them in Christian families that were willing to take these children and accompanying risks. With that goal in mind, Irena worked tirelessly in the ensuing years against all odds and took the greatest imaginable risks, for what she did was punishable by death. She was caught too in the end, brutally tortured, and sentenced to death but somehow survived. By then, Irena was able to successfully rescue and rehabilitate almost 2,500 Jewish children with the help of a small group of fellow professionals and comrades of Polish Resistance as well as a large number of compassionate and caring Christian families. But for Irena and her collaborators, these children would have choked to death in gas chambers like the millions of unfortunate victims who fell prey to the evil beliefs and practice of Nazism. Many of us still wonder today when perhaps not many of those who had risked their lives to save these Jewish children are alive: What had motivated them to do what they did? We can find an incredibly simple answer in 2009 movie The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. In a scene, when her mother asks Irena as to what is troubling her after finding her sad and lost in thoughts, she tells, “I thought I was doing all I could but, the truth is, I am doing nothing.” Her mother is baffled by this answer as Irena had saved a Jewish child just yesterday. Irena clarifies, “One child is not enough. . . . Inside the walls there are, thousands of children who could be rescued.” Irena’s mother finds her idea too unrealistic and dangerous, so she appallingly reacts, “Take them out! Is that what you are thinking? Past the Gestapo, the German soldiers, the Jewish police? How is that possible? You are a social worker. A



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good social worker. With the biggest heart I know. But to risk everything for something you know nothing about?” Irena resolutely retorts why she must, “I remember what father used to say. You see a man drowning, you must try to save him even if you cannot swim.” Her answer is the essence of rescue as a moral virtue. Many such stories are told in Resistance by Halik Kochanski which could be shared to inspire rescuers while teaching them courage. While going over a scene of War Horse in the beginning of this section, we concluded that all courageous people may not be rescuers. We have also established that the moral virtue of rescue can exist without specialised knowledge, skills, or equipment, only if a man does everything within his means and limits to save life. Let us now examine if the virtue of rescue can exist without its cooperative virtue of courage as it does in the absence of equipment and expertise. For an act of rescue, a victim has to be in immediate or imminent danger of losing life or limb. However, there may not be a risk of losing life or limb to a rescuer as in the case of ant trapped in a wet basin. Value of rescue, therefore, can be practiced without courage. But in its challenging forms which necessitate specialist knowledge, skills, and tools to safely extricate a trapped individual from a dangerous and complex situation, a rescuer does face a possibility of losing his own life or limb and has to necessarily and unavoidably deal with existential fear. While a considerable reduction of risk probability is effected by the play of technology and competence that also develop a sense of controllability, risk to expert rescuer remains just the same. In the absence of moral virtue of courage that shores up the virtue of rescue and lets it bridge, cross over, and overcome the uncertainties of personal existence, an instant, unwavering, and decisive action by a rescuer may not be forthcoming. I, therefore, believe that courage must manifest in the character of professional rescuers—all the more so in hostage rescuers. Owing to the potent play of opposing human will and intelligence, existential risks to a hostage rescuer are present in very high probabilities at all times. For this reason, I cannot conceive a hostage rescuer without the virtue of courage and would not trust a man in a complex terrorist crisis who does not have courage in its complete form of holistic courage. How the virtues of rescue and respect are related? It is an important question with far-reaching consequences. We are a form of life. We are there because there is life. We owe our lives to life as a whole. Life gives us joy and pleasure in innumerable ways. Preservation and nurturance of life is the noblest of aims and the loftiest of ideals, for it is good for one

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and good for all. Both obligation and gratitude demand us to respect and save life. Values of respect and rescue are intimately linked—the former precedes the latter and supplies strong and lasting cognitive and emotional scaffolding to the latter for an immediate, unwavering, and resolute action for saving life, even at the cost of personal sacrifice. A man who does not respect life cannot be trusted to rescue a living being; certainly not in a complex terrorist crisis situation for want of a three-dimensional integrity of character—the integrity of actions, thoughts, and feelings. This rule applies to expert and lay rescuers both. A man can rescue without courage but not without respect being a part of his moral constitution. Act of rescue by a man who desires and chooses to possess this virtue must be visible in each case and opportunity. That rescue is attempted in all cases, thus displaying consistency, repeatability, and predictability, is a moral imperative for being virtuous. It is a general rule of morality but the rule of consistency is applied rather differentially in the special case of rescue. While a layman who is not capable of saving life in a complex situation remains virtuous even in failing to save a victim, so long as he takes all possible steps that he can in that situation, an expert rescuer who is capable of dealing with complex situations and responds to a call to rescue as a professional loses his virtue if he fails to act spontaneously in any situation. For example, I will not consider a hostage rescuer virtuous who does not save my ant drowning in basin. It can be explained and understood if a layperson is not able to save life in a complex situation but how can we explain why a man who can save a life chooses not to act in all situations, simple and complex, except by an absence of virtue and value of rescue in his disposition and belief system. Obligation of a virtuous expert is of a higher order. He has to qualify a larger number of tests than a layperson. We must, however, grant two concessions to expert rescuers. When he fails miserably outside his domain of expertise, for an expert is nothing but a layman beyond his field of specialisation. Also, when a professional rescuer attempts rescue in his personal capacity, without professional paraphernalia and support system. On the other hand, we have to apply exceptionally stringent standards to expert rescuers acting in their professional capacity with full institutional support. If a trapped individual is harmed seriously or dies in the process of rescue, the act of rescue loses its purpose and negates the very same moral value which prompted it in the first place. Merely good intent is not enough; its outcome must be good too. If any expert rescuer or any rescue organisation anywhere can do it successfully, we have to treat a rescue mission as doable, not impossible and no leeway or latitude can



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be given to anyone. Purpose of rescue is to save, not to kill or harm. A failed rescue is a moral failure. In the least, it fails a rescuer on the count of responsibility and rescue. It may be an organisational, institutional, or systemic failure too inasmuch as structural and technological constraints are a causative factor in personal failure. To save life in all situations, big or small, is not merely a philosophical obligation of an expert rescuer. Apart from being a deontological imperative, practicing rescue in the risk-free settings of day-to-day life yields definitive practical advantages. These little acts of rescue reinforce a man’s belief in the moral value of rescue, strengthen his will and resolve to rescue, and help making rescue his disposition by working on all three levels—behavioural, emotional, and intellectual. For such a practice realises the three-dimensional integrity of character, it is extremely crucial for expert rescuers. Those tiny efforts made regularly to save life repeatedly remind a man of his commitment and ready him for the worst-case scenario. Rescuing life in daily settings is equivalent to a frequent moral training and revision for a professional mission with little efforts and resources. Such a rescuer, I believe, is more likely not to flutter and falter when faced with a choice between his own life and the life of a victim and would most likely go on to rescue at the risk of his personal existence, for he has prepared and waited for this moment for long. Our culture fosters competition and grading, so let me ask an obvious question here. Whose rescue is greater and who is a greater rescuer? I am against grading an action as good as it can get—the act of saving life. For each life saved by anyone in any situation is praiseworthy and all such acts are choiceworthy, I believe that an expert rescuer is no more virtuous than a lay rescuer and a hostage rescuer is no more virtuous than a fireman, a lifeguard, or a wildlife rescuer, so long as the virtue of rescue is a part of moral character and disposition of all. No one is greater; all are good instead. Rescue is about saving life. If a man chooses to risk his life to save life, it is the choice of his free will. It does make him special but not superior to a lay rescuer. Having said that, I have no doubt that such a man thrives intrinsically by the abundance of joy and pleasure derived from his virtuous thoughts, emotions, and actions and leads a purposeful, flourishing, and fulfilling life. His moral character is self-rewarding; he does not need extrinsic rewards to zealously continue on the path of his belief. He does not crave for recognition or being in the spotlight, for laurels, medallions, or testimonials bestowed upon him by others. Nor does he take such attempts seriously.

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To the intriguing question of prioritising rescue of one over another I have no clear answer. After anchoring rescue on the moral value of respect and upholding the rule of primacy of life, I cannot go back to assigning differential worth to different forms of life and placing one over another. On the other hand, I am acutely aware of our sensory limitations and emotional constraints and how they shape and prejudice our association and relation with others. That our association and dissociation with others is determined by physical resemblance and the behaviours of others—by shape, size, outer appearance, and stimulus-response patterns—cannot be questioned. This is a general rule that can be applied to all scales from individual to species and to the whole spectrum of relations from family to animals, plants, and beyond. We feel more for and closer to those who are like us and less for and distant from those who are not like us. In other words, similarities and dissimilarities in relation to us determine how we relate to and feel for others. But morality is a force that smothers the influence and effects of sameness on a person. Then, what may trouble a virtuous rescuer is not just a dilemma of first saving a child or an adult, a sick woman or an old man from a house on fire but other morally more obfuscating questions such as choosing a bird or a dog or a man for extrication or leaving a spider or a plant behind. We cannot have triage in rescue when it is conceived as a moral value. All that I can vaguely and superficially suggest here is that we must save life reflexively and maybe by following the rules of ‘here and now’ and ‘first thing first’ as lay rescuers. Also, rather unwillingly, uncomfortably, and hesitantly, to save human lives first as professional responders. A related problem is: What if a man is faced with a choice between two rescue operations demanding his intervention simultaneously, one in his personal capacity as a lay rescuer and another in his professional capacity as a hostage rescuer. For what he can do in a terrorist situation others just cannot while they can still do something useful in a competing situation, he shall assign priority to hostage rescue, I would say. Skill, competence, and expertise will guide his decision of choosing a rescue operation over another. But if no one is there at abandoned scene, he must call and plead for help from others, for no rescue mission can be deserted and forgotten entirely, come what may. Principle of handover in rescue too is important and it can be employed in a quandary. If a chance rescuer who has suspended some important engagement or work due to the sudden and unexpected demands of rescue honestly believes at any point in time that a credible rescue operation would go on and mission would be accomplished by others present at site without his intervention, he can publicly or quietly disengage from rescue work and proceed to attend to his suspended work.



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It is time to touch upon the shadowy side of rescue and expand the scope and extent of virtue to the full before concluding this discussion. I have thus far steered clear of a third dimension of rescue to keep it simple and drive the essence of virtue home. As a matter of fact, the act of rescue of a living being is warranted in a situation of imminent loss not only of life and limb but also freedom and liberty. For example, a butterfly trapped in a human dwelling ought to be rescued and set free, even if she is safe there for now. But a fullest definition of rescue causes complications in its practice in the human world due to the force of legal system and the abstraction of private property and ownership protected by it. While the history of humankind has seen significant changes in such beliefs and laws over time, formidable obstacles still remain in our culture which limit and inhibit the scope and action of rescue in our time. Particularly in the case of animals and plants, and even more so when it comes to domesticated species, conflict between morality and legality becomes paramount due to the unresolved questions of ownership, confinement, and freedom. Needless to say, if the life or limb of a living being, irrespective of species is endangered, the value of rescue makes it incumbent upon its practitioner to act and save victim. Further, if the freedom and liberty of a living being, irrespective of species, is endangered, even if the survival of victim is not at stake immediately, the value of rescue obligates its practitioner to act and save victim. All that I can say, then, is that if direct action to rescue a victim comes in conflict with law and cannot be taken in every case and each situation, the possessor of virtue must still resist and denounce such condition with full force and by all other means available—emotionally and intellectually, in speech and in writing. Our bodies may be the prisoners of our times but our thoughts and feelings are not, for they can transcend all obstacles and every barrier. That that is not enough to remain virtuous I know and to this question I have no answer. I will rest my case for making the virtue of rescue an essential constituent of moral character of a hostage rescuer with an assertion to reassure and assuage many a sceptic and their apprehensions: That a man whose disposition assigns primacy to saving life shall in no way be less effective in combat. For the virtues of respect and rescue do not force people to abstain from killing; they merely put restraints on the need for killing—kill we must for survival, but not for greed or fun, leisure and entertainment. Killing and confining living beings—when it is not an absolute necessity for the preservation and continuation of life itself—is a vice and those who indulge in such behaviours and possess this trait are indeed vicious. If the whole of humanity is pronounced evil and labelled vicious by this standard, then,

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so be it, and I am not afraid of saying it. For it indeed and undoubtedly is; there is no other species on earth, and, perhaps, there has never been one before, which is as dangerous and damaging to life as we Homo sapiens are. Then, can my man who I call virtuous escape his damning descent and complicit existence? The answer is: He shall try, even if he cannot and that is what makes him virtuous. A man of morality who habitually respects and reflexively rescues life shall refrain from the evils of killing, cruelty, and torture. He will preserve and promote life and deal with the evils of greed, excess, and wastefulness—fostered by our culture and civilisation and responsible for the plunder, devastation, and suffering of life—by his reliance on the moral virtue of moderation and by observing the principle of parsimony. This is the most he can do as an insignificant individual surrounded by and submerged in the ocean of culture and civilisation that he cannot come out, transcend, or escape. He will do it in spite of an awareness that the impact of his personal moderation and a parsimonious way of living on life as a whole counts for nothing. He has to do it still, for his choices are dictated not by intellect but by his virtuous disposition that cannot allow him to approve and adopt vices which limit and inhibit the flourishing of life. His repulsion for these vices will only make his attraction to life stronger and further strengthen his resolve to save life. It will not be easy to find such a man in the billions of human beings teeming and swarming all over the face of earth. But this man when he comes to be, I dare say, will be a great warrior who would unflinchingly risk his life and unhesitatingly kill terrorists in the blink of an eye to save hostages. Though, he would never feel proud of killings he had to do to save life and, to the dismay of many, he would never celebrate death nor would he disrespect or defile the dead body of a terrorist. He is my man who after accomplishing his mission would pensively and quietly disappear under the cover of darkness from the scene of boastful claims and cheerful celebrations, for he wants nothing in return. He was there not to kill but to save. He had to kill only to save. IX These are six most striking virtues of a rescuer, selected and elaborated only for being the most obvious and conspicuous constituents of his moral character. For they do not stand alone and cannot function in isolation without the cooperation and support of certain other virtues, a man actually has many more virtues in his character than those I have discussed above. That said, I will stay focussed on these six striking virtues in my discussion below.

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For greater clarity through geometrical visualisation, I will draw an analogy between a rescuer’s character and a hexahedron. For a rescuer’s character has six virtues and a hexahedron has six faces, we can imagine moral character as a hexahedral construct. A cube is a regular hexahedron whose all sides and angles are equal. Moral character of a rescuer, then, is akin to a cube that has six sides of equal dimensions and the same importance—no virtue is bigger or smaller, greater or lesser.

Courage

Respect

Responsibility

Character Cube Rescue Integrity

Humility

Moral Character of Rescuer Figure 5.1

An exploded view of a cube shown in figure 5.1 reveals its internal structure. A cube is composed of six identical square pyramids joined together all the way to its centre. If we imagine a cube as the character of man, it can be visualised as an entity formed of six virtue pyramids, namely, courage, responsibility, respect, humility, integrity, and rescue. All of them have to come together and inseparably bind each other to create a cube. If all six virtue pyramids do not interlock seamlessly, they would not form a character cube and if a cube is to represent moral character, then, a man would not have one. You cannot make a virtuous rescuer by selecting some and discarding some as you please. Let us see it from another perspective. Virtue pyramids are the internal structural components of character cube. From outside, though, what we see is just the character of man, which is an integrated whole, a monolithic construct. You break this cube and you lose everything with it including its

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square pyramids, for they do not come apart neatly to retain their geometrical shape. In the same way, moral virtues remain there, so long as a man has moral character; once his character is lost, his virtues vanish too. While we can imagine and explain virtues in isolation, in practice, they merge with each other inseparably to form character. It is not possible to imagine a virtue standing and operating alone and making a man virtuous. An absence of other cooperating moral virtues would just not let a man form a moral character. Both cube and pyramid possess three-dimensional structures. They cannot exist in two or a single dimension. It is true for moral character and virtues too, which cannot be conceived if a three-dimensional integrity, that is, the integrity of behavioural, intellectual, and affective dimensions does not exist in a man. If a moral virtue cannot exist without its cooperating virtues, how would a man become virtuous if he is not educated in supporting virtues? It is a relevant question here, for I did not elaborate all cooperative virtues of six select virtues in this chapter. I believe it is not necessary as a man would not need additional information and extra coaching on associated virtues to successfully practice six target virtues. In the process of practicing these six virtues, he would himself discover, learn, and internalise all other auxiliary values and cooperating virtues. Self-discovery of a full range of moral virtues is a natural and spontaneous outcome of process of self-correction through self-reflection. Moral character elaborated above is an ideal type, which is necessary to propel, keep, and navigate a hostage rescuer on the path of moral excellence. It is a path which is long and treacherous, rough and rugged, full of bumps and potholes of temptations and barriers and diversions of hardships. The question that Mordechai Anielewicz, a young protagonist of Jewish resistance in Warsaw ghetto, is often seen asking in 2001 movie Uprising is not an explanation or excuse but a challenge of life for a man of moral character: “Can a moral man maintain his moral code in an immoral world?” Construct of ideal moral character is an indispensable navigational tool of such a man for staying the course. It is a driver of moral excellence; it also supplies a manual of self-correction and purveys a corrective instrument of self-appraisal. A man of character is a thinking man and not an obedient man who has suspended his independent judgement. He is self-controlled by his values and virtues and not externally controlled by the authority of others. He is a



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man of guilt and not shame. Good news for those who command is that a virtuous man displays a supererogatory quality in his conduct and behaviour and does much more than required by the norms of society. Can a man like this fail? My answer is: Yes. Is that, then, a matter of worry? My answer is: No. Commenting on the idea of probability conceived by Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann to explain the flow of heat from hotter bodies to colder and not vice versa, Rovelli writes that “some behaviour is more probable, other behaviour more improbable.” What is true for thermodynamics seems to be true for humans too. It is ‘more probable’ that an expert rescuer who is a man of character is able to effectively deal with a complex hostage crisis outside and a deep existential crisis inside—both at the same time. To put it another way, it is ‘more improbable’ that a man who has acquired expertise in hostage rescue work and whose character is made of moral virtues discussed above would fail in a complex terrorist crisis. It does not mean that he cannot fail. Here I conclude by saying that if a man of such moral character resembles a rare breed of fighter monk, so be it, for who else can exercise free will and still choose to sacrifice his life for the sake of unknown others. All that we now need is a monastery hidden somewhere from sight, which quietly turns the assembly of select worldly men into an exceptional band of warrior monks. X No matter how hard I had tried to build a moral theory of rescue, even more painstakingly and elaborately than what I have presented above, I am fully aware that it would be brusquely rejected by military community, the main readership of my book. Why my theory is not useful to militaries and what are their objections? After studying several military organisations across time and space, Olsthoorn isolates five traditional military virtues for discussion in his book but considers only four of them as archetypal military virtues—honour, courage, loyalty, and integrity. Two out of these four military virtues, that is, honour and loyalty are firmly rooted in the highly acclaimed social cohesiveness of military units. But these are conspicuously absent from the ensemble of moral virtues I have put together for a rescuer. Also, courage and integrity, though included, have been explicated as moral virtues, not military virtues. My view, then, might not only be entirely unacceptable but also absolutely outrageous to traditional military minds.

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I have heard it recursively that soldiers fight for their regimental honour and not for their country or some ideology. I have also heard it time and time again that they fight for their loyalty to each other and not for certain moral principles or ideals advocated by politicians for justifying their military adventurism. It finds expression in popular culture too, for this is exactly what Lieutenant Colonel Moore recounts in the end in 2002 movie We Were Soldiers, “They went to war because their country ordered them to. But in the end they fought not for their country or their flag. They fought for each other.” While this belief dominates military thinking all over the world, I have put forth a contrarian view and argued for a fighter who fights for moral values instead. It, then, must make my theory not only heterodox and heretical but also too naive and fictitious. Why is it that there seems a general agreement on what makes a man fight? Modern world history can provide an answer. European countries on the strength of their methods of military organisation and warfare technology gained military ascendancy over other cultures and in the course of time managed to subjugate many peoples and rule a large part of the world. Once settled there as rulers, they recreated military forces locally in each occupied country largely patterned on their own militaries. Those few countries which remained outside of this vast European imperial order also quickly realised that the Western way of military organisation is indubitably superior to theirs and, thus, they went on imitating and replicating the Western-style militaries of their own. As a result, we find dominant military myths shared worldwide by forces structured on the Western principles and methods of human organisation and indoctrination. I must say that conventional military view on what makes a man fight is not baseless and cannot be dismissed curtly. It has been amply documented in the history of modern warfare and as much in countless personal histories. For example, Second World War had offered an “unparalleled opportunity” to study the psychology and behaviours of many thousands of soldiers engaged in combat and many scholars did take advantage of this opportunity and carried out systematic studies. In his book Fear and Courage, Rachman has collated the relevant findings of these research works, written and edited by D. Hastings, E. Shils and M. Janowitz, F. Wickert, I. Duff and C. Shillin, J. Dollard, J. Flanagan, L. Shaffer, M. B. Smith, R. Grinker and J. Spiegel, S. L. A. Marshall, S. Stouffer, T. Lidz, W. Lepley, and more besides, most of which were carried out on the soldiers of United States. Rachman tells, “One of the more surprising findings to emerge from the extensive study of U.S. infantry soldiers during World War II was the comparative insignificance



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of ideological factors in their combat fears and their performance generally. The most important combat incentive was a desire to get the war over with, coupled with a wish to return home. The second most important incentive was the need to support and assist one’s immediate comrades. Idealistic and patriotic reasons were not regarded as important.” Interestingly, these findings were not valid for ground troops alone. “Even the more highly motivated airmen studied by F. Wickert and colleagues regarded ideological commitment as a relatively minor determinant of their combat performance.” Extending the validity of these findings to a very different military setting saturated with political propaganda, Rachman cites Shils and Janowitz who question the role of ideology and ethics in the “extraordinary tenacity of the German army” and attribute it instead to the social cohesiveness of their primary unit; devotion of German soldiers to Hitler was also at work but their confidence was in him as a leader, rather than in his ideas. For no other war in human history has seen the scale of operation and also the magnitude of death and destruction before or since this cataclysmic event, these findings deserve a fullest appreciation and seriousness, even if the methodologies of some of these studies have since been questioned. But my problem here is not what soldiers believe in but why do they believe so. People are quite well known to believe in many a shared myth. That wars between powerful nations are not won by decisive battles or military genius but by moral and material attrition is a historical fact but the allure of battle persists just the same and a belief in the genius of generalship still dominates much military thinking. While scholarly enquiries such as Cathal Nolan’s The Allure of Battle dispel these myths and rouse us to see the reality that victory is actually achieved “by grinding rather than genius,” the heroic tales of Hannibal, Gustavus, Marlborough, Frederick II, Napoleon, Moltke, even Hitler, are still told and believed widely, even more so in military circles. So, why is it that soldiers seem to believe in each other more than other things that might motivate them to fight for? For answering this, I will employ a controversial modern theory and the ancient history of warfare. American historian Victor Hanson is the most prominent among those who argue that there is a distinct ‘Western Way of War’ which has proven its continuing superiority over the enemies of West for more than two and a half thousand years. He asserts, “Firepower and heavy defensive armament—not merely the ability but also the desire to deliver fatal blows and then steadfastly to endure, without retreat, any counterresponse—have always been the trademark of Western armies. . . . It is this Western desire for a single, magnificent collision of infantry, for brutal killing with edged

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weapons on a battlefield between free men, that has baffled and terrified our adversaries from the non-Western world for more than 2,500 years. . . . There is in all of us a repugnance, is there not, for hit-and-run tactics, for skirmishing and ambush? Does there not hide a feeling, however illogical and poorly thought out, that direct assault between men who, in Brasidas’ words, ‘stay their ground’ is somehow more ‘fair’ and certainly more ‘noble’ an opportunity to show a man’s true character and test it before his peers? . . . This Western desire for an awesome clash of arms was first expressed in Greece at the beginning of the seventh century B.C. There, for the first time in European history, heavily armed and slow-moving infantry, massed together in formation, by mutual agreement sought battle to find in a few short hours a decisive victory or utter defeat.” He, thus, claims that “the origins of the Western infantry experience lie in classical Greece, back past 2,500 years of military tradition.” It seems rather convincing against the fact of continuing hegemony of West but the controversial claims of Hanson’s theory have been discredited by many professional historians. For example, American historian John Lynn writes, “The thesis of a Western Way of War really cannot be maintained in its most fundamental assertions—the claim that it has maintained a continuity from the Greeks to the present day and its assertion that Western military practices are, in fact, unique. . . . In fact, Hanson’s mature theory, with its complex of elements, works best when one jumps from the late Roman republic to the nineteenth century. From Marius to Robespierre is a gap of nearly 1,900 years in a claimed continuity of 2,500 years, making it no continuity at all. Even if we credit the Roman Empire with civic militarism, which seems to be wrong, the hole would gape for 1,400 years or more.” Lynn concludes by saying that “claims that a Western Way of Warfare extended with integrity for 2,500 years speak more of fantasy than fact.” Nolan, on the other hand, challenges Hanson’s theory not technically but conceptually, “The practice and history of war in the West, or anywhere else, does not reduce to some Rosetta Stone of a single cultural model, or of claimed universally valid tactics or civic-military pattern or principles of war. No one fighting doctrine or stratagem is applicable in all places and times. There was no single approach to combat in the jagged history of the West, let alone in the wider world. War is not reducible to one thing, be it a presumed tradition or fighting style or even the idea of decisive battle. Enemies adjust. War evolves. The real military history of the modern period was therefore far more muddled than any one theory encompasses. It was filled with tactical stumbling and unintended mayhem more than a singular culture, all well beyond mastery by any uniquely skilled general with



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a supposed genius for war.” And, to a layperson, this claimed continuity seems to have decidedly ruptured in contemporary times by the reliance of West on aerial bombing and guided missiles, on the pieces of artillery and the packs of submarines, on global navigation satellite systems, unmanned vehicles, night vision devices, sniper rifles, and explosive mines, on intelligence and special operations, and on the largest stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, biological, and radiological arsenals—all invented, designed, and deployed to ambush enemies with total surprise and from safe distance and also improved continuously to retain the edge and advantage of overmatch. So much for the Western Way of War and its repugnance for hit-and-run tactics, for skirmishing and ambush. That said, what interests me in this theory is its assertion that certain ethos and traditions of Western militaries today had originated in the classical Greek hoplite armies of heavily armed and armoured foot soldiers formed between 800 BCE to 500 BCE and have continued ever since. Unlike the individualistic warfare of previous eras “embodied foremost by the impulsive Achilles,” to quote Olsthoorn, a hoplite army fought collectively as a unit with method and organisation. A hoplite held a round convex shield in his left arm and a long spear in his right. He wore body armour from head to foot to protect his whole body—head, chest, and shins. Hoplites used to tightly form up into lines to fight in close order. This fighting formation of hoplites was called phalanx. Its first rank used to lock shields together—part of the shield of a soldier giving cover to a mate on his left—to make a defensive wall and present spears from over or under their shields. A couple of ranks behind front line also pointed their spears out to the front over it. Lynn describes the organisation and mechanics of hoplite battle succinctly. “Hoplites marshaled in a thick, unbroken linear formation, the phalanx. Traditionally, they stood eight ranks deep, but circumstance or the lay of the land might require a different depth. A phalanx could stretch from hundreds of yards to over a mile, depending on the number of hoplites assembled. . . . The actual battle began with an advance by both the opposing phalanxes; this began at a walk, but finished at a run. The armoured hoplite could endure a rush of perhaps 200 yards before becoming too exhausted to fight. As the lines advanced, each tended to slip to the right, as hoplites sought to protect themselves better by inching a bit more under the shields of their comrades. . . . At the moment when the lines collided, the combatants delivered their most powerful blows, as momentum joined with arm strength to penetrate shields and armour. After the collision, the two phalanxes ground into each other in the push, or othismos. The opposing first ranks shoved into each other, impelled not only with their strength but by the rear ranks as well.

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This deadly scrum compressed the phalanx; men whose spears had shattered stabbed with swords or grabbed at one another with bare hands. . . . At some point one phalanx or the other gave way, and when an army started to break, the collapse came quickly. The victorious phalanx rushed forward to cut down those who had turned to run. Small groups of hoplites tried to ensure their retreat by maintaining some cohesion, although this effort limited the speed of their flight.” Olsthoorn clarifies it further. “When the first line fell, the second stepped in. The lines in the back had to push to provide the phalanx with the necessary momentum. The battle ended when the organization of one of the phalanxes collapsed,” for Greeks by now had settled to battle with each other only in this communal formation and did not fight individually as they did before. “To avoid the break-up of the phalanx – and thus losing the battle – holding your ground was absolutely imperative; it was deemed more important than individual heroic acts, but also more important than staying alive. The Greek soldier had therefore to overcome his natural instinct for self-preservation.” This was “accomplished by a keen sense for honour and shame, but also by means of discipline and organization imposed from above.” Idea of phalanx does sound truly spectacular and it indeed is stellar by all standards but how could Greeks do it in the first place? In other words, how a phalanx could become operational to begin with? A definitive way of realising it is by a group training regime. As we have noted above, Olsthoorn suggests two forces behind a functional phalanx but we know that “a keen sense for honour and shame” alone is not enough to make it work on the ground and it is more plausible that a phalanx was operationalised primarily by “discipline and organization imposed from above.” Even though historians do not find the evidence of sustained training in primary sources except for Spartans, there is little doubt that the immense challenges of coordination, of orchestration and synchronisation of hundreds or thousands of bodies and minds to make a mass behave like a single organism, can only be managed by an element of command and control which can force its will upon individuals, make them assemble at a particular time and place, and train them repetitiously in a particular fashion and formation with certain regularity. Some quick maths would give us a sense of what exactly a phalanx was in terms of structure and organisation and if it was possible as a fighting formation without an extensive regimented training programme. If a phalanx was only one hundred metres wide, which seems to be the smallest frontage, for it could extend to hundreds of metres to “over a mile,” if it was only eight ranks deep, which again was its standard depth as there were deeper formations of up to sixteen ranks, and if in close order a soldier



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occupied just one metre space of frontage to manoeuvre with his gear and equipments, there were some eight hundred odd men in this formation, which ironically was among the smallest of phalanxes. It is a full battalion of sorts—of heavily armed foot soldiers moving as a compact mass and fighting in a tight formation not known to us—that poses a fairly complex organisational problem. Only those who have not served in armed forces can believe a phalanx was possible without “lengthy training.” Also, it was just not possible for a man to hang his arms and armour over fireplace in peacetime, only to grab them moments before marching straight to a battlefield to fight in a strict military order of phalanx, even if we exclude efforts for acquiring individual skills and techniques required for effectively wielding select weapons in a battle and consider only the physical performance of a soldier. If the load of personal equipments was too heavy, as much as seventy pounds of extra weight calculated by classical researchers, it would surely need sustained personal training to strengthen a particular set of muscles for a particular pattern of movement generation and force production. Truly, the nature of classical Greek warfare was physical. It began with a run of about a hundred metres followed by repeated explosive force production for thrusting spears and swords and sustained isometric muscular contraction for postural and positional endurance against the dead weight of shield and armour and a massive push of enemy. Also, the formation of phalanx had to be maintained all through the period of battle for achieving a victory, for the event of its break-up marked the defeat and end of battle. Though battle was short, it was not too short to be over in a few minutes either like a boxing or wrestling bout. Pursuit of enemy following the break-up of opposing phalanx, although for a short distance, too was a part of battle code. Such a battle would require a phenomenal physical effort which was not possible to deliver without a regular, specific, and extended personal training regimen as well as collective training for organising and fighting in phalanx. A sustained, strenuous, and methodical repetition of drills was essential for effectively wielding heavy equipment through the entire duration of a battle that lasted for “a few short hours” without a break and maintaining the formation of phalanx. It, thus, seems implausible that Greek hoplites, other than Spartans, did not train regularly. How else ordinary men could have delivered such extraordinary personal and collective performance if not for training? I just cannot conceive the origin and evolution of phalanx as an organised and effective instrument of warfare in the absence of regular simulation and routine practice in peacetime. It is also difficult for me to understand why hoplites would not train and prepare for war if they were so certain of impending aggressions and so committed to protect their land, people, and pride. As for the written accounts of antiquity that are

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cited by historians to make claims and assertions, I would only say that the world fortunately works only in certain ways and we can reasonably infer what can happen and what cannot in matters where the laws of nature are more decisive than human will and stories told by people who lived then. Also, we do not see or tell what we do not want or like to. There is no particular reason to expect fairness and objectivity from people who lived well over two millennia before us when it is found woefully missing from the contemporary world. Human beings have always been human beings. Implications of this view are profound. Mainly, it was military training necessitated by phalanx warfare that forged esprit de corps and developed a feeling of pride and mutual loyalty among soldiers who fought together, even if other factors such as community life and political representation in a small city state too were at play. It manufactured strong interpersonal bonds and crystallised powerful social cohesion in classical Greek military order. In fact, bonding between soldiers was firmly embedded in the mechanics of phalanx in which the life of a soldier depended on the cover given by the shield of his mate on his right and the safety of ranks behind depended on the defence provided by front rank. All men in a phalanx were tightly connected to each other and all depended on each other. They indeed fought for each other in ancient Greek battlefields. Genesis of the Western military tradition of fighting for each other and its reliance on social cohesion for fighting can, thus, be traced back to ancient Greece. Arguably, it is possible that the proliferation of classical literature in Europe after Renaissance and its wide publicity and availability ever since might have played a role by inspiring modern military commanders at all levels who borrowed ideas from classical Greek military tradition and reinvented the myth of fighting for each other. Lynn too candidly admits, “But even if a Western Way of War does not bind together the European experience by a continuous filament, Greek and Roman precedent has provided us with ideas, myths, and a vocabulary of war.” It can also be argued, then, that the idea of fighting for each other is just one way of fighting, not the only way. And, fighting for each other is no guarantee for success; when two Western armies fight, only one wins in the end. If men can believe in the idea of fighting for each other and for their regiment, that is, for loyalty and honour and if they can practice it too, can they also fight for high moral ideals? I will come to this question a little later. At the moment, I would discuss a formidable force behind battle performance. If hoplites were so motivated, honourable, and committed to save their land, people, and the way of life as argued by historians, why,



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then, did they not choose to fight to death for the same ideals they had gone to war with after the disintegration of their phalanx? Why did these brave men instead run away instinctually and intuitively? Why did winners in ancient Greece not charge and pursue their fleeing enemy frenetically after the disorganisation and collapse of opposing phalanx? What stopped victors from behaving instinctually and intuitively? I reiterate and contend that contrary to narrative presented by a majority of classical historians, it seems more plausible that an effective and strong command and control mechanism was in place in classical Greek military order. For if we assume that ancient Greek armies were organised, disciplined, and drilled from above to fight as a single entity, we can find some cogent and compelling answers to these questions. It can be said, then, that what actually disappeared with the disintegration of a phalanx was its command and control element, which was the force behind its structure and function. Left on their own, their personal survival instinct kicked in and soldiers began to scram. To put it differently, it seems that the command of collective through its direct mechanism and indirect manifestation controlled individual behaviour and morale in a phalanx. Disintegration of phalanx was a result of disappearance of its command, which freed individuals from its control who, then, turned around and ran away, for they were not trained to fight independently as individual soldiers. In a similar vein, a phalanx that remained intact also retained its command and control element, which prevented a wild chase of its defeated and disjointed enemies by reining in its soldiers, for that would inevitably lead to a disorganisation of this phalanx and a resultant dissolution of its command and control apparatus too, which was still in place. Soldiers and commanders can say what they hear and believe—fighting for each other or fighting for the honour of their regiment—but the fact remains that in a well drilled military force, the iron fist of discipline enforced by the fear of punishment governs their behaviours both inside a garrison and on a battlefield. After having enlisted into military service, they have no choice but to become disciplined, which is a euphemism for ‘following orders blindly.’ An ardent advocate of cohesion like French military commander and theorist Ardant du Picq clearly recognises its value and admits, “Man will not really fight except under disciplinary pressure” and “the purpose of discipline is to make men fight in spite of themselves.” He asserts, “Man has a horror of death. In the bravest, a great sense of duty, which they alone are capable of understanding and living up to, is paramount. But the mass always cowers at sight of the phantom, death. Discipline is for the purpose of dominating that horror by a still greater horror, that of punishment or disgrace.” First sixteen minutes of 2013 movie Forbidden Ground vividly

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depict the brute force of military discipline unleashed cold-bloodedly in a First World War battlefield—when British soldiers are ordered to get out of their trenches and charge enemy line across the impossible no-man’s-land in the face of unrelenting German machinegun fire. Impending disaster and death owing to this reckless command decision was obvious to all foot soldiers and anxiety visible on their faces but the force of command and its control over men was such that made them do the impossible without a word of protest. It shows the enormous power of discipline that can override reason, emotions, and instinct—all at once. It is, then, the cardinal driver of military force as organised by mankind. A film is not always a fiction. On such harsh discipline and control in Italian army during First World War, British historian Christopher Duggan writes, “Military police manned machine-gun posts behind the infantry when attacks were launched to shoot those who faltered or tried to run away, and summary executions and decimations were not uncommon.” If on the front stares a great risk of exalted death and at the rear awaits a certain disgrace if not an ignominious death, what choice a man is left with? Men do not always enlist to fight; a large number of them enlist for a living and then forced to fight as they are left with no choice. From antiquity to our age, the iron hand of command and the spectre of punishment have tamed and disciplined those who bear arms just like circus animals and commanded them to do things unimaginable. See these otherwise intimidating, arrogant, and overbearing gunslingers in their units behave sheepishly and obsequiously to avert the wrath of their commanders and you would scarcely believe your own eyes if you are not familiar with the culture of armed forces. These young men who freeze and cower at the sight of some older men are men who kill other men like themselves without batting an eyelash when asked by those old men. What else are wars if not what American psychologist Philip Zimbardo tells they are: “Most wars are about old men persuading young men to harm and kill other young men like themselves.” I will now come to the question of ideals and if men can fight for their ideological beliefs too. Men are known to fight for loyalty and honour as we have seen above but is there any evidence that suggests that they can fight for a noble cause too? Interestingly, we find many notable exceptions to the rule of fighting for loyalty to each other or for the honour of unit in the same West. Christian crusaders of medieval Europe are the most conspicuous and well known example of ideological warriors. I want to make a special mention of the most remarkable Catholic military order of Templars which lasted for nearly two centuries in medieval period. It was considered a formidable military force akin to present-day elite special forces. Templars



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were not only highly skilled and ferocious fighters but they also observed a tremendous self-imposed discipline in their personal lives. Between two World Wars we find an alternative tradition of fighting for principles in the same societies that fought these wars. Rachman compares data collected by Dollard from the volunteers of Spanish Civil War with the responses of professional soldiers of Second World War. He concludes that “they differed from the regular U.S. soldiers studied by S. Stouffer and his colleagues in a number of important respects. . . . Above all, however, they volunteered on ideological grounds. It is not surprising that they attributed considerably more importance to ideological beliefs. For example, in reply to the question of what they considered to be the most important factors to help a man overcome his fears in battle, 77 percent endorsed ‘a belief in war aims.’ The comparable question put to the U.S. regular troops produced the much smaller percentage of 6 percent. Even the more highly motivated airmen studied by F. Wickert and colleagues regarded ideological commitment as a relatively minor determinant of their combat performance. In the responses to a questionnaire on factors that help to overcome fear, ideological commitment was not among the first twenty items.” Most remarkable feature of this alternative stream was not its existence as such but the fact that it existed in a domain external to mainstream professional militaries and, thus, remained outside of their cultural influence. Into this idealistic tradition of fighting in modern West, 1995 movie Land and Freedom gives a fascinating glimpse. Ideology can influence a professional military organisation too. Although ordinary German soldiers in Second World War were motivated by the cohesiveness of their primary unit, the best military units of Nazi Germany were Waffen-SS units, which were essentially driven by political and social convictions. Rachman, citing Shils and Janowitz, writes that “the WaffenSS units were highly esteemed, not for their Nazi connections, but because of their excellent fighting capacities. The ordinary soldiers felt safer when there was a Waffen-SS unit on their flank.” This fact has been somehow acknowledged in 2014 movie Fury when a Waffen-SS unit marching and singing at a distance makes a five-man crew of an immobilised American tank flustered just before a hyperbolic battle. Although later in action, instead of depicting them as skilled soldiers, Germans are unabashedly mocked and ridiculed as mindless critters running chaotically around and towards a broken tank without an intelligible battle plan. The world has witnessed many revolutionary movements which successfully rallied countless people around certain ideals and raised voluntary forces which militarily challenged States and, in certain cases, not only defeated the professional armies of State but also drove off those who had come to fight on behalf of rulers as in Vietnam. It was the unrelenting assault of Islamic jihadists

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backed by Western countries that drove out the then formidable Soviet military from Afghanistan. History has repeated itself there recently. For all the irreparable losses suffered for two decades by them, Taliban jihadists could not be obliterated, weakened, or defeated in Afghanistan by a most capable Western military collaboration having enormous and unparalleled superiority over a ragtag enemy. Americans had to leave Afghanistan after two decades of occupation along with the whole shebang, clearly realising and reluctantly admitting that the idea of Taliban was indeed invincible and within a few weeks after Americans mysteriously disappeared from their Bagram base, Taliban captured the whole of Afghanistan back. To sum up, loyalty and honour are just one set of motivators that make men fight. There are alternative psychological drivers, high moral ideals included, which too can make men fight with equal ferocity. A second objection to a moral theory of rescue is that, even if a force can be organised on moral principles, it cannot have that quintessential discipline and social cohesiveness of a military force which together make it an effective fighting unit. I will argue against this proposition too. Let us discuss the problem of discipline first. If the members of unit do not suspend their independent judgement on matters of right and wrong, what becomes of its command and control element which should ideally have such power that makes men to become cannon fodder just by pointing a finger? Will it, then, not impair its fighting effectiveness in the direst moment? First of all, harsh discipline imposed from above might be the prime mover of great military forces in the world but such a force would just not work in a complex terrorist crisis situation anyway. For want of a distributed command structure which gives it that quintessential self-organising property for rapid adaptation at cutting edge, a hostage rescue unit can in no way be effective in a complex terrorist crisis. For it causes latency in making decision and friction in taking action due to its remote location from the front and excessive interference, its central command has to be necessarily weak. There is absolutely no room for creating confusion, causing delays, and making mistakes in a hostage rescue operation, for mission here is saving hostages, not killing or capturing terrorists and time is the most decisive factor. We have discussed it at length before and will keep discussing throughout, given its central importance to the theme of mass hostage rescue. Discipline is a must but since it cannot have more than a rudimentary command enforced discipline due to a weak central command, such unit has to overly rely on a strong sense of self-discipline. Self-discipline might be elusive in regular units but the moral values and virtues of men—advocated and propagated



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steadfastly by organisation—will give them gargantuan intrinsic motivation to behave in the most desirable fashion and carry on against all odds to accomplish their mission without a push or shove from above. This is exactly what makes such men “the bravest” who have “a great sense of duty, which they alone are capable of understanding and living up to,” in the eyes of an intelligent army commander and insightful military thinker such as Du Picq. My hostage rescue unit, therefore, would present no problems of discipline due to a weak central command. A strong central command and harsh discipline imposed from above, on the other hand, will not let it become effective. Let us now see the effect of social cohesion, or its absence in the form revered in militaries, on a force. Social cohesion is a natural outcome of respecting others, of staying and working together with others over a long period of time for a common goal, and I have no qualms about it. I cannot dispute the argument of Du Picq advanced for unity among fighters that “four brave men who do not know each other will not dare to attack a lion. Four less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid, will attack resolutely.” I have no reason not to agree with Rachman either who makes a case for heightened fear in solitude and cites a study of Shils and Janowitz to suggest that “with a few interesting exceptions, most people appear to be more susceptible to fear when they are alone. When they were isolated, even experienced combat veterans performed badly and were far more inclined to surrender. Prolonged isolation had the effect of reinforcing the soldiers’ fears and lessened their resistance.” I also firmly believe as others do that the cohesiveness of a military unit is good and desirable. My objection is that overmuch emphasis on social cohesion—so much so that, to cite Olsthoorn, “to be lacking in loyalty is . . . perceived as being dishonourable,” and “seen as a ‘betrayal’ of one’s own honor group” is neither good nor desirable. In the form of a “tendency to suspend judgement and to side with someone or something more or less unquestioningly,” I would count loyalty not as a virtue but a vice and agree with Olsthoorn that “standing behind fellow countrymen, colleagues, or organization, when it is clear that they are at fault” is “a highly undesirable form of loyalty, and certainly not virtuous.” Although wrong and condemnable, this is exactly what the military virtue of loyalty becomes in practice and effect. Olsthoorn further remarks that “military personnel are, in fact, very much concerned about their reputation, yet as it stands this concern is often limited to how they are viewed by their peers” and they are not “in general at least, prone to praise an act because

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it contributes to the common good or general happiness; on the whole, they tend to praise an act because it contributes something to their own well-being, or the mission. That amounts to another reason to think again about the wisdom of stressing social cohesion and group bonding to the extent it happens now.” While human history is replete with the diabolic instances of loyalty in its irrational and immoral forms, the most notorious of all is a total support of almost all gentile Germans given to Adolf Hitler and his Nazi ideology; much of Nazi phenomenon was a consequence of loyalty of millions of Germans to Hitler and their blind obedience to his image, ideas, and authority—so much so that only after the defeat and destruction of Germany did many of them realise the enormity of crimes their loyalty and obedience to Hitler had made them to commit. In fact, Hitler’s was not only a reign of absolute terror but also a reign of absolute allegiance. Believers in the military virtue of loyalty should also know that ‘My Honour is called Loyalty’ (Meine Ehre heißt Treue) was the motto of Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS). Perhaps, the chief of SS, Heinrich Himmler was too happy to have this catchphrase and knew it well that the overriding power of loyalty over human conscience and on the questions of right and wrong was the surest means of getting the most evil deeds done from ordinary men and women, which SS actually did most zealously during Nazi rule. There can be no disagreement or dispute, then, if I say that morality and loyalty cannot coexist. From what we have discussed above, it can be argued that individuals are able to cope with their fears better as part of a group and I do not dispute it. What is important instead is to know how social cohesion and the norms of behaviour in a group help a man to deal with his fear and how this coping mechanism is relevant to a complex terrorist crisis. Rachman quotes Shaffer and writes that “a survey of 6000 airmen showed that the factors of helplessness and hopelessness were responsible for major increments in fear. ‘Being in danger when one cannot fight back or take any other effective action, being idle, or being insecure of the future, were the elements that tended to aggravate fear in combat.’ The three factors that were rated as most fear-provoking were: being fired upon when you had no chance to shoot back, a report of an enemy aircraft that you could not see, the sight of enemy tracer bullets.” A rescue operation in a complex terrorist stronghold is most likely to throw a number of such challenges up close. For example, rescuers do not have to contend with the problem of a compressed operational time frame alone; they also have to deal with the constraints of opening fire on terrorists. Rescuers do not have the liberty of a soldier to shoot back,



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for they cannot afford to kill the same people they have risked their lives to save; their effectiveness is determined by saving, not killing. Opposing and competing demands make their lives way more difficult, for instance, they not only have to be accurate but also fast at the same time, both in advancing and shooting. A hostage rescue operation in a complex terrorist stronghold, we can say, is indubitably an undertaking full of fright, for rescuers stare death in the face with their hands tied and legs shackled. Rachman discusses the fear of death in wartime and underlines that social and personal pressures do play a positive role but only in the suppression of displays of fear, not actual fear. He writes that “despite the presence of autonomic and other bodily feelings recognized as those of fear, the necessity to inhibit avoidance behaviour obliges combat soldiers to maintain themselves in contact with intensely frightening circumstances. The accounts given by R. Grinker and J. Spiegel of the experiences of air crews during World War II show how the enormous social pressures maintained the men in intensely frightening missions even though the subjective and physiological components of their fears reached extraordinary high levels.” Three “main components” of fear identified by Rachman are: “Subjective experience of apprehension, associated psychophysiological changes, and attempts to avoid or escape from certain situations.” Under the overwhelming pressures of social cohesion and personal honour, fighters had reportedly managed to stay on by dealing with the third component of fear and did not avoid or escape. But remaining two components of fear were arguably still present and active in them and must have done what they do the best—the impairment of cognitive and physical efficiency. To stay in contact with a frightening situation and carry on under social pressure is one thing; to act voluntarily with a full force of free will produced by a strong moral commitment is quite another. Holding out on the front lines in a war is decisive, for one who lasts longer is one who wins. But one who wins in a complex terrorist crisis is one who accomplishes one’s mission faster, whether of killing hostages or saving them. It is just not enough, therefore, to stay in contact with enemy in a complex terrorist crisis. Crisis itself must be terminated speedily and accurately. In a breakneck hostage rescue operation, intrinsic motivation and voluntary force derived from a deep-rooted moral commitment to act in the face of death plays a decisive role and the role of cohesion is only secondary if not irrelevant. Morality of rescuers is, thus, not just abstract and ideational; it is actually very much functional and operational. It makes my rescuers effective. However, such gargantuan moral force of free will of a man, which more than likely overcomes all three components of fear, cannot occur under the dark shadow of group loyalty in the first place.

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Just like discipline, then, loyalty and honour too will not let a rescue unit become truly effective. Excessive cohesion and rigid discipline imposed from above are the enemies of morality; they also kill the autonomy and independence of individuals. They not only undermine the moral standing of force by coming in the way of supporting what is right but also compromise the operational effectiveness of a force in all likelihood by creating conditions for groupthink. I quote American psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman who refer to the works of M. Deutsch and D. F. Van Eynde to suggest that “the amount of power others have to punish an act is negatively correlated with acting bravely.”As opposed to this, personal autonomy and independence, and also personal intelligence, seem to conserve accuracy and speed—the hallmarks of a rescue operation in a complex terrorist crisis. They do it by altering the subjective experience of fear and reducing and arresting the psychophysiological consequences of surge of emotions that degrade cognitive and physical performance. Personal autonomy and independence seem to give a greater sense of controllability to operators which, in turn, reduce the subjective experience of fear, the first component of Rachman’s model. “The fighter pilots might have experienced less fear,” writes Rachman in the context of Second World War, “despite the greater dangers facing them, because of the enhanced degree of controllability which they exercised during combat. They were, after all, a group of highly trained, self-confident men who had sole control over their machines. Unlike the heavy bomber crews, they were not under instructions to maintain an unchanging course regardless of the actions of the enemy. Rather, they were encouraged to act with initiative and independence.” Effect of controllability was such that “even though the casualty rate among the crew members of medium bombers was substantially lower (23 percent), they reported more fear than the fighter pilots whose casualty rate was extremely high (48 percent).” Expertise and intelligence also help. To explain the crucial role of “competence in coping with potentially fearful situations,” Rachman quotes Shaffer that “men with greater intellectual ability are better able to control their emotional reactions.” He also cites a study of Korchin and Ruff to suggest that “the possibility of a correlation between general intellectual ability and competence in the skills that are likely to be required in dangerous situations, is strengthened by the study on the Mercury astronauts—they were men of superior intelligence and broad competence.” Discipline and cohesion which dissuade, discourage, and disrespect autonomy, independence, and intelligence would not make my rescue unit effective, thus. Instead, they will degrade its effectiveness.



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Problem, however, is even bigger, for personal autonomy and independent judgement are not the derivations of intellect and reasoning alone but of morality too—so much so that they cannot be brought to bear on the world without moral values and moral reasoning. A man without moral virtues cannot have the will and determination to act independently. A man’s morality and his personal autonomy and independence become the casualty of loyalty, honour, and discipline in a military force. People, then, stop thinking and questioning or else they become the victims of culture of conformity, shame, and punishment as shown in 1989 movie Casualties of War. Where goes his personal intelligence when this happens to a man? It is ridiculed and booted out. An expert unit, I believe, cannot be run like this. While the mass of military can do just fine by obeying orders given by commanders without applying mind in a battlefield, personal autonomy and independence in a hostage rescue operation cannot be outsourced to a remote command. Freedom to think and act must be available at leading edge to one and all to make quick and correct decisions for rapid adaptation. Also, an expert rescuer cannot surrender his intelligence either to command or to group lest he will forgo his expertise too. We have seen that an adaptive expert team is an integral extension of its expert members. It becomes a synergistic, even emergent, entity when it thinks and acts like its independent members put together and simultaneously regulates itself against two dysfunctional tendencies—explosive fragmentation triggered by interpersonal rivalries and implosive meltdown caused by groupthink. An adaptive expert team, thus, thrives on the intelligence and autonomy of its individual members and not on the absence of their independent mind and judgement. Intelligence and autonomy also help it self-regulate through the self-regulation of individual members, plus their mutual regulation of each other. We have discussed that such a team and a culture of distributed authority is an absolute necessity for the rescue of hostages in a complex terrorist crisis. Independent reason and judgement, therefore, cannot be suspended by rescuers for the sake of cohesion or discipline. In other words, too much cohesion and discipline is not good for a hostage rescue unit raised to deal with a complex terrorist crisis. I conclude my counter now. While the might of discipline pushes armies ahead in a battlefield, the strength of cohesiveness keeps men together and makes them fight as a herd and I do not dispute this. But such discipline is not a choice, for it cannot handle the challenges of mass hostage rescue in a complex terrorist crisis. Self-discipline is an alternative, which is a product of moral values and virtues of men—hence a moral theory. A reliance on

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loyalty and honour as the prime motivators of rescuers in a complex terrorist crisis is not an option because these values assign primacy to each other and to a cohesive group to which men belong. Rescue, on the contrary, demands assigning primacy to unknown others with whom men have no relation. That is possible only if there is a strong sense of altruism and selflessness in men. And, altruism and selflessness, we know, are the bedrock and basis of morality—hence a moral theory. I must also caution that we can have only one system, traditional or moral, to remain functional. Traditional and moral properties cannot coexist; these properties have natural affinities in their own families. We cannot cross-breed traditional discipline with the abstraction of rescue as a moral value or selfdiscipline with the notions of loyalty and honour as military values. Pressures of authority and the peerage are the conventional basis of organising with the external locus of control. Pressures of moral beliefs are the alternative basis of organising with the internal locus of control. A man cannot deal with both loci of control and still be in harmony and congruence; he will feel like a square peg in a round hole, confused and misfit, unable to resolve contradictions. “I hate an idealist. There’s always something messy about them.” These words are uttered by General Nelson Miles to young Lieutenant Britton Davis when he questions U.S. Army’s use of lies and deceit in nabbing Apache rebel leader Geronimo in 1993 movie Geronimo. Miles in these few words communicates the general sentiment of all armies in the world, past and present. Why must professional militaries insist on loyalty and honour to the extent they do, its clear evil potential notwithstanding? We can, perhaps, find a pragmatic answer by asking: Who controls soldiers and their commanders? Political aims and objectives of a military action are usually not controlled by the military of a country. Such decisions are taken by the masters of military. Political masters, one of whom is proclaimed the supreme military commander of country without knowing much about warfare in most cases, can order forces to start a military campaign or to stop it according to their judgement. Their decisions are influenced by their personal beliefs and ethics, political ideas and calculations, economic interests and stakes, international pressures and geopolitics, and also by domestic public opinion in democratic polities. Opinion of military may have just a little say in going in or getting out of an armed conflict. What is the best time to do so and how is all it can tell mostly. Matters of military strategy and tactics oftentimes remain subservient to political aims and objectives and they only serve the ends of beliefs and interests of rulers. This is a fact of life and another reason,



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over which they have no control, for why military commanders would not buy my moral theory. Group loyalty in armed forces, then, seems to be an effective tool to deliver. But for group loyalty and an all-powerful command and control element, what else could have made the French soldiers of Vichy regime to collaborate first with Nazis who had attacked them and occupied their country and then to join Allies who had attacked them and their masters for collaborating with Germans in a short span of few years? Defence of motherland is good and cannot be questioned. But the invasion of foreign countries for changing or preserving regimes and the consequences of such wars of aggression have always been and will always be deceitful, devilish, and hideous. No matter how the torchbearers and trumpeters of such invasions try to paint them in black and white, events and history always end up smudging them badly. Other than when a country defends its land from enemy aggression, it is very difficult to rationally and morally approve the aims and objectives of a grey military action on a foreign land. While a military action on a foreign land to prevent genocide is morally laudable, its ostensible intention too appears suspect when the same politicians conveniently ignore the same plight of humanity in some other theatres; it does call into question their selective morality and ulterior motives, then. In democratic societies, such decisions and actions are debated openly and fiercely, which divide families, friends, and nations and create doubts and confusions even in the minds of politically unaware citizens. One set of politicians initiates an action and another set winds it up. One generation advocates a military action and another generation apologises for it. One day someone is called a freedom fighter and another day he is declared a terrorist. How can reason and morality convince a conscious American soldier to fight in Vietnam and an aware Soviet soldier to fight in Afghanistan? How can a moral British soldier account for his violent actions in Iraq when he is confronted with the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction there and the world has not become safer after regime change and the murder of hundreds of thousands Iraqis? History proves that rulers are not always right and their opponents are not wrong each time. Who can fight for ideals and employ reason in such murky and dubious conditions, even if no one has to answer and account for death and destruction, for pain and suffering? Professional militaries are not only caught in the clutches of evolutionary history rooted in ancient Greek city states but also cornered by the harsh realities of the human world. They have to necessarily take refuge in the myths of ‘fighting for each other’ and ‘regimental loyalty and honour,’ for there is no other way they can achieve the ends for which they exist. A force that does not and cannot have control over the purpose of its action cannot be founded

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on moral principles. And, thus, I do not question the organising rationale of military forces as such. But hostage rescue is an altogether different world and we can organise differently. In contrast to all other professions embedded in military force, the profession of hostage rescue is unique in not being a tool to impose the will of masters. It is not connected directly or indirectly to the preservation or assertion of power or gaining control over peoples and their resources. Resultantly, the morality of rescuers is not likely to clash and collide with the devious rationales of masters manufactured to justify a military action, its morally questionable goals, and its painful costs and evil outcomes. A man of morality can live with his convictions and still wield the weapons of war as a member of hostage rescue unit. He can have the loftiest of ideals and still no resentment caused by doubt or conflict due to moral divergence between personal and professional. A man of character can peacefully live with and also die for his moral beliefs. A force such as this, I must admit, surely has risks and dangers for realpolitik. If they decide to make one, the masters of force must also learn to live with it and not to employ it for anything else except for what it exists. It shall not be asked or expected to do something that cannot be said plainly and publicly and defended legally and morally. Do not order it to fall back after it has been asked to move in. Never command it to execute captured terrorists. For the members of such force shall not obey such orders and oblige their masters. A refusal to follow wrong and bad orders is not an act of defiance or insubordination and neither a mutiny. Instead, it is an expression of moral courage—to say and do what is right and good. A force which is expected to sacrifice the lives of its own members for the sake of unknown others—whose members either come back with freed hostages or return to be burned or buried—must be built on the highest ideals and loftiest morals. You can take it or leave it. In the end, I would say that group loyalty and honour is good and desirable if it exists with and within morality. So long as the conduct of mates and unit is consistent with ideals they ought to uphold, cohesiveness must be fostered by all means. However, need for cohesion cannot be allowed to override moral framework within which men and organisation professedly exist. I see no reason for a conflict between cohesion and morality in a military unit which exists for a good and right purpose and if the stated objectives of its existence cannot be manipulated by powerful others located outside the influence and control of unit. In such a case, both loyalty and morality not only coexist peacefully but also make each other stronger.



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XI Why is it so that certain men fight for loyalty to each other, for their regimental honour while certain others fight for high ideals and for the questions of right and wrong? In order to unravel the enigma of human behaviour, we need a deeper sociological enquiry. American-Austrian sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann assert that “reality is socially constructed.” The so-called ‘reality,’ then, is extensively shaped and defined by culture. But what is culture? British cultural theorist Raymond Williams cautions that “culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language” and as such, it is not easy to define. To put it simply, culture is a particular way of thinking, feeling, and doing. It resides in the collective thoughts and emotions, shared beliefs and behaviours of peoples, which on the one hand unite them together and on the other make them distinct from others. Culture is a trans-generational phenomenon with a long life, for it is transmitted from one generation to another. Its reach in societies and influence over individuals is such that nothing in the human world is beyond culture. Such crisp and drab definitions of culture, however, miserably fail to reveal its full and total hold over human behaviour. In fact, I find Harari’s explication much better than sociologists’ that bares the deep structure and underlying function of culture most clearly and definitively. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination. Churches are rooted in common religious myths. Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins. States are rooted in common national myths. Two Serbs who have never met might risk their lives to save one another because both believe in the existence of the Serbian nation, the Serbian homeland and the Serbian flag. Judicial systems are rooted in common legal myths. Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine efforts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights – and the money paid out in fees. . . . Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings. . . . People easily understand that ‘primitives’ cement their social order by believing in ghosts and spirits, and gathering each full moon

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Entire human world—the way it is, the way it looks, and the way it behaves—is a consequence of fictitious ideas and shared myths. Evidently, our ideas and beliefs, our shared myths and imagined realities can make us do anything; anything is possible if we collectively believe in something. This fact is encapsulated in what is called Thomas theorem. Propounded by American sociologists William and Dorothy Thomas, it states, “If men define



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situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” It is indeed a simple proposition of epic proportions. An interesting example of how a fiction can create a reality by human endeavour on a global scale is New Year’s Eve. At every imaginary point in its orbit, earth reaches yet again after a year in its next cycle and there are countless such points in space. By our logic of New Year, then, there is a new year each day, every moment in fact and not just after the midnight of December 31 as we believe. But we created a myth of New Year at this single point and its consequences are most visible in our personal and collective emotions, thoughts, and behaviours, in countless events and their organisation, in society, culture, and economy, in the planning, preparation, and execution of ideas linked to it all over the world. Our hysterical celebrations on New Year’s Eve are no different from the ancient rituals and orgies of primitive tribes that we find so out of place, even ridiculous—such is the power of ideas and beliefs. Another interesting example is Indian vegetarianism. All dairy products are believed to be vegetarian by well over a billion people and labelled as vegetarian by the mandate of law. No one cares to see from where we get milk and how an animal can produce something we attribute to plants. It is a proof that culture can make people believe anything, however counterfactual or counterintuitive an idea may be. When people believe in something, they just go on believing it, generation after generation, country after country, without questioning, even when it needs nothing more than a little common sense to question. For example, a new ‘day’ begins just after ‘midnight’ but that is just fine with all of us and hardly anyone finds it odd logically as to how a day can break in the middle of night. Similarly, we know it is brown but call it black gram. These are but a few examples; the human world is ridden with such irrational and ridiculous but unquestioningly accepted beliefs. People can be made to believe anything and their shared beliefs can make them do anything. The whole history of humankind with all its noble and evil stories is nothing but a tale of human beliefs. Horrors of Nazi Germany, American slavery, European colonies, Indian caste, of ideological hounding, religious persecutions, and countless wars, of all genocides and mass murders known to us were caused by people’s beliefs. People not only live by their beliefs; they also kill and die for their beliefs. In 1978, American cult leader Jim Jones led over a nine hundred ordinary men and women to kill themselves and their children in the course of an hour or so in his Jonestown commune in Guyana. On his insistence, people swallowed a drink laced with cyanide and helped their children too. There was no protest, just some discussion, and no force was used; situation remained eerily calm and astonishingly controlled, given what was happening there and there were not many cries other than

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those of children as evident from the sound recording of incident available to us (see Peoples Temple Cult Death Tape, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ File:Peoples_Temple_Cult_Death_Tape_Q042.ogg). It was a mass suicide action done voluntarily by hundreds of individuals at one man’s behest in whom they believed. Do not think that they were much different from us, for we do the same when we submit to the will of one person and march on to fight, kill, and die in wars. Indian caste system is yet another example of how beliefs can make people inflict injuries not only on others but also upon themselves by readily and wilfully accepting an entirely unacceptable and unjust way of life and place in society for thousands of years. Also, people can not only believe in anything, they can as well alter their beliefs overnight to believing something exactly opposite to what they had believed until just a day ago. How else could the same military and police, which were the instruments of occupation and rule of colonial countries and the tools of suppression and oppression of colonial people who visited untold miseries on them and committed the worst atrocities, instantly become their unquestionable saviours and get unconditional respect from their millions and millions of victims after the departure of their colonial masters? In such intriguing situation, how does a man make his choices freely? In other words, how can he exercise his free will when culture dominates our minds so very much? Actually, free will is not shaped so much by man’s natural instincts or it would not be free in the first place. Free will, instead, is formed largely by his beliefs which too are not free in the sense of being free from social influence. Nonetheless, so long as a man chooses to do what he independently thinks, feels, and believes in, he is said to have exercised his free will. In this state, there is no divergence or contradiction between his desires and decisions as both are intrinsic to self. A man does not exercise his free will when he is not able to decide or do what he intrinsically desires and believes in due to the limiting influence of extrinsic factors and the constraints of extraneous considerations. Our famed free will is only so much free. Let us come back to our question: Can men elect to fight for high ideals and for the questions of right and wrong and still be effective? I affirm that they certainly can. In the context of culture, fighting for each other is no mystery; it is neither a universal truth nor a necessary condition for fighting effectively. That we live in imagined orders created by shared myths and perpetuated by sustained indoctrination and subtle coercion is a fact of life. Our beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and behaviours are largely shaped by culture. If something is believed to be true, it becomes true in



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its consequences, for the actions of agents are guided by their beliefs. If people believe in the myth of fighting for each other, they will fight for each other. If they believe in the myth of fighting for certain ideals, they will fight for them. Both responses are produced and conditioned by culture; there is nothing natural or universal about them, for it is myths and fictions planted in the minds of people which determine how they behave. This is the way of human life for many thousands of years since we invented fiction and transcended our species forever beyond the objective realities of the natural world. All human organisations and institutions have been grounded in culture and erected on shared beliefs ever since. Military forces are no different. If we first create certain conditions in which people are made to think, feel, and act in certain ways and then cite their beliefs, sentiments, and behaviours to justify, perpetuate, and propagate those very conditions, we get into deceiving by a circular logic. For the outcomes of a specific environment presented as ‘the reality’ do not imply that there is no other way. For a given reality only indicates things as they are and it has no validity above and beyond the context and beliefs of people. Assertions based on such logic to discredit and foreclose alternatives are essentially false. For abstract ideas make tangible realities when people believe in them. Power of ideals cannot be rejected just because paid soldiers do not seem to fight for ideals. Reason cannot be suspended only because something else is believed by those who have won wars, for what about wars fought valiantly and won by certain others? While I admit that fighting for ethical principles and moral values has not been a dominant military tradition in the world, it is also a fact that people still have fought bravely for ideals they believed in. I, therefore, believe that it is very much possible for men to fight fiercely for moral ideals they believe in, for it is not men but the culture of society or organisation that determines what they believe in and fight for. There is nothing wrong with people, for they are merely moulded and shaped by culture. It is also not the weakness of moral force as such, for the conditions and environment of a soldier induce him to keep ideals at arm’s length. I firmly believe that if a unit is structured differently and exists in a distinct culture, then, the same men can and shall fight for moral principles and ideals. There must be right reasons and right conditions for a soldier to become a principled fighter. Our problem is not man but culture and environment that we create for him. Human systems are consciously designed and carefully organised to channelise energies of many different individuals coming and working together to achieve certain goals. Generally, there is incongruence and incoherence between personal, organisational, legal, and moral. As a result, human cooperation

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and coordination that makes our systems work is not self-organised and self-regulated in the same way as we see in natural systems. Our systems, instead, are run by way of authority over individuals and constant direction from above in order to control their behaviours, resolve contradictions and conflicts caused by such discordances and divergences, and to make them work to achieve defined goals. In other words, a force from above structures and operates, defines and runs a system wherein all components must always behave as told in order to make system work. While the individual components of such system work locally, the combined effects of their local efforts result in a desired global behaviour owing to the planning and coordination, orchestration and synchronisation of different activities done by a central command with a bird’s-eye view. In such organisation, if a single or a few entities begin to take an independent view of what must be done based on local information, it might be counterproductive and harmful to its global purpose due to a clash of local rationality with the global rationale of system. For in a command operated system, global information is not available to local entities, even though global knowledge available to command component itself is drawn from information supplied by local components. Problem of local rationality or the ignorance of the big picture at all levels, then, is an outcome of command organisation. Unlike human systems, natural systems such as the flocks of birds, the schools of fish, the swarms of insects, the colonies of ants and bees, and the pack of wolves are formed spontaneously and reflect spontaneity in their behaviours. They come into being when all individuals habitually follow few simple rules in making their decisions and the fidelity of their local behaviours attract them together and cause the emergence of a global behaviour. Emergence of global behaviour, in other words, is a consequence of self-organisation of self-similar and self-attracting local behaviours of components based on few simple rules. In these systems, local rationality does not and cannot undermine but causes and creates global behaviour. Such systems, therefore, do not require a central command to control its individual entities and their individuals do not require the big picture to avoid the pitfalls of local rationality. Simple rules of behaviour not only self-organise but also self-regulate such systems and their individual components. It all becomes so simple, then. Moral values, I believe, are such simple rules which can create a self-regulated organisation of human beings. It will be no different from the flocks of birds, the schools of fish, the swarms of insects, the colonies of ants and bees, and the pack of wolves which emerge from simple rules followed regularly by individual members. Post-emergence, a collective such as this shall come to possess a kind of intelligence that no individual can possess and have a degree



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of resilience that no component can have. It will become a superintelligent superorganism, all because of some simple rules applied honestly, faithfully, and repeatedly by individuals. It is indeed not impossible to obtain such emergent behaviour if fundamental ingredients are arranged carefully right in the beginning and time and energy are supplied thereafter to let them grow, build on themselves, and emerge into a complex adaptive system. It is possible if we are able to create congruence and coherence between self, official, formal, and ideal, which is possible if the simple rules of moral behaviour become the basis of personal, organisational, social, and civic life. There will, then, be a general absence of disagreement and discordance and a general prevalence of convergence and coherence—of the thoughts, emotions, and behaviours of individuals—and a system will spontaneously self-control and self-direct. A self-regulated system remains resilient and functional in a continually changing environment by means of spontaneous and rapid adaptation to external stimuli through endless feedback loops that reverberate and travel throughout system and make its individual components to adapt in their localities without a central control and plan. Such system is what we need in a complex terrorist crisis. And, an emergent adaptive human system can be structured by morality. Since no one person or a small body can comprehend the entire complexity of a situation, such entity cannot be considered fully competent to take decisions in a complex situation. It becomes all the more difficult if decisionmakers are located away in time and space from leading edge in an ongoing situation. Delay caused by the communication of feedback all the way up from cutting edge and that of command all the way down to sharp end will always force command decisions and directed actions to trail events and opponents they are trying to control. While such command system might be useful when facing an opposing command system of similar built-in sluggishness, it cannot cope efficiently with a self-organising adaptive opponent. Only the distributed components of a decentralised self-organising system following a local decision-action-feedback loop can adapt, keep pace with, and be expected to outpace events unleashed by many a local agent acting independently and decisively, who continually respond to developments happening around them and chase a primary goal by following simple rules. When seen in this theoretical context, a band of terrorists is better modelled as a distributed and decentralised self-organising phenomenon. When it precipitates a complex terrorist crisis, it becomes a formidable challenge for a conventional military organisation run by a central command to resolve. A radically different way of organising a hostage rescue unit is, therefore, inevitable and desirable and the answer is a self-organised self-regulated adaptive hostage rescue unit.

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There is no reason to worry, for much of our anxiety and distrust of a self-regulated system arises from our common experience of dealing with complications and uncertainties caused by the conflicting beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and behaviours of human beings, which, then, are resolved by the intervention of command and control mechanism to achieve defined goals. In a self-regulated organisation, these problems are definitively and autonomously resolved by morality. In other words, the problem of human fallibility gets solved intrinsically by the mechanism of self-regulation that emerges from the idea of morality; we need not worry about the free will of man secretively cheating self-regulation, for his ‘free’ will is merely an expression of his beliefs, which in this case are firmly rooted in morality. Problem, instead, is that while morality is invented by humanity and known to us from time immemorial, human affairs are largely conducted either without taking it into account or by overriding moral reasoning. If morality is relied upon in organising human affairs, individuals acting independently and locally by following simple rules based on morality—supported by operational strategy and goal clarity in the case of a hostage rescue unit—can self-organise into an adaptive superintelligent emergent team that can solve complex problems much more efficiently and spontaneously than a central command based organisation can, which needs to effortfully synchronise and monitor the actions of many an individual by means of dedicated resources and demanding skills. All that we need for self-organisation is to put in place a set of dedicated people and simple rules to think, behave, and solve problems and then leave them free to organise. When enquired into, emergence is found happening all around us in the world. Given the regularity and reliability of emergent phenomena, there is no need to worry about the capabilities and consequences of such organisation. It will fare much better than what you can expect in complex situations. Morality, therefore, is the answer to the problem of complex terrorist crisis. But, then, what is morality and where does it come from? Morality is a set of beliefs that intrinsically motivates a man to behave in such altruistic and selfless ways that preserve and promote the existence of life as evolved on earth. Morality self-induces its practitioner to further the joy and pleasure of living beings and mitigate their pain and suffering. For being a set of beliefs, it surely originates from fictions and myths like everything else does in our culture. But there is more to it than meets the eye. Frans de Waal, a Dutch primatologist and ethologist, informs that “altruism is not limited to our species. . . . Aiding others at a cost or risk to oneself is widespread in the animal world. The warning calls of birds allow other birds



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to escape a predator’s talons, but attract attention to the caller. Sterile castes in social insects do little else than serve food to the larvae of their queen or sacrifice themselves in defense of their colony. Assistance by relatives enables a breeding pair of jays to fill more hungry mouths and thus raise more offspring than otherwise possible. Dolphins support injured companions close to the surface in order to keep them from drowning. And so on.” Even if such behaviours may not be called moral in a human sense for not being the consequences of moral beliefs and reasoning, they are moral in their effect if we consider that the purpose of human morality is to induce a man to behave in altruistic and selfless fashion. Also, while I do not contest the mainstream argument of evolutionary biology that natural behaviours are selfish behaviours and only insist that we are capable of altruistic behaviour all the same owing to our ability to believe in fictions, I must say that in nature, unselfish and altruistic behaviour is not as untypical and out of place as it is made out to be, even if we technically cannot call such behaviour moral for want of underlying causal myths. This alternative viewpoint is strongly argued by American philosopher Elliott Sober and evolutionary biologist David Wilson in their book Unto Others and by Wilson in his book Does Altruism Exist? Evolutionary perspective on morality, then, is interesting and encouraging, for it seems to suggest that human morality might have some evolutionary linkages and we too might just be hardwired in some ways to behave morally, above and beyond our beliefs.

Chapter 6 Culture and Environment

I Adolf Eichmann was a mid-ranking SS officer who was present in January 1942 Wannsee Conference chaired by SS General Reinhardt Heydrich. This secret assembly of Nazi bureaucrats prepared a road map and gave directions for the implementation of ‘Final Solution’ to what in their view was ‘Jewish problem.’ After the assassination of Heydrich few months later in Prague, Eichmann became the main coordinator and operations manager of Final Solution—a euphemism used by Nazis for the extermination of all estimated eleven million Jews living under Nazi occupied and Nazi allied Europe. Hitler is said to have committed suicide on April 30, 1945 when Soviet Red Army was just a few hundred metres away from his bunker in Berlin. Germany surrendered a week later and fabled Third Reich thus came to a bloody end which was believed to last a thousand years. After war, several Nazi officials were brought to trial in Nuremberg and elsewhere. In testimonies given by Nazis during these trials, Eichmann emerged as a key Holocaust organiser but he had vanished into thin air. Fifteen years later in 1960, Israeli Secret Service captured Eichmann in a suburb of Buenos Aires in Argentina and smuggled him to Israel. He was put on a show trial at Jerusalem in 1961 essentially for his crimes against Jewish people. A show trial was done, perhaps, because the political leaders of Israel wanted to show to Jewish people and to the wider world that Jewish State can do justice if the world does not. Barring a few high-ranking Nazi leaders, almost all the perpetrators of unspeakable crimes of torturing and killing the millions of innocent Jews, Gypsies, and members of other political and social target groups were tacitly let off after war and it was done behind closed doors through the usual quiet and cunning of liberal politicians without formally adopting a policy of general amnesty or national reconciliation ever. Earlier 205

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during war, Allied powers had never launched a single military mission to save Nazi prisoners waiting their turn to be gassed and incinerated in many extermination camps which were then running at full capacity and in the full knowledge of all. Fearing a ruthless reprisal from Soviets after their defeat, most Nazis who were involved in these ghastly crimes fled from east and came to American and British controlled territories in west in hope that liberal capitalists would not go after them with the same fury and revengefulness as communists would and they had better chances of getting away there. They were not wrong. Australian journalist Mark Aarons and American author John Loftus in their book Unholy Trinity write, “Churchill and Roosevelt made speeches in public, but in private, their policy was to abandon the Jews to their fate. . . . In the end, the Nazis – with the help of their Western and Vatican collaborators – got away with it. Many Nazi mass murderers did not even seek sanctuary in Argentina, they simply settled in Britain, America, Australia and Canada where it took up to forty years to start to catch up with them. Most either died in the meantime, or were too old to be prosecuted for anything more than immigration and naturalisation felonies. The tiny handful successfully prosecuted for their actual war crimes were the exception to the rule. . . . The Western tribunals were shamefully lenient; only a handful received punishment proportionate to their crimes. . . . The Vatican was not alone in protecting Nazi fugitives after the war, nor was the Holy See solely behind the transformation of ex-Nazis into ‘freedom fighters’. The termination of serious war crimes investigations was the result of official diplomatic decisions by several Western powers.” About post-war Germany, British writer Tom Bower in his investigative book Blind Eye to Murder writes, “The Allies had settled for a Germany in which power, influence and wealth remained in the hands of those who had held them under the Third Reich. With authority back in its own hands, one of the first acts of the German Establishment was to ensure that, for its members at least, there should be a Schlussstrich (literally, a bottom line), a closing of their account with the past.” As a result, “the architects of the country” in Federal Republic “were very often the same men who had held high positions in the regime which my boyhood heroes had fought to overthrow.” He laments in his searing indictment that “few of those who gave the orders have ever been punished” and “mass murderers remained at large and undisturbed.” In its search for new allies against communists, the Western world swiftly forgot all its wartime promises and conveniently chose to betray the Jewish and all other victims of Nazi hatred and violence. In this backdrop, a successful capture of Eichmann must have come as a providential opportunity for Israel to prove a point—hence a show trial.



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Hannah Arendt, an American political theorist who was born in Germany but left her country in time to escape persecution by Nazis for being a Jew, decided to attend Eichmann trial held in Jerusalem in 1961 as a reporter of The New Yorker. Arendt did not want to miss it, for she thought that “this was probably only chance” for her to understand the phenomenon of Holocaust and events that had happened in Nazi Germany. Eichmann was executed in 1962. A year after that in 1963, Arendt published her highly provocative book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. She categorically supported death penalty given to Eichmann but emphatically denounced the attempt of Israeli State to portray him as a “perverted sadist” and an abnormal monster. She argued that Eichmann was not a psychopath but a normal person, his evil deeds notwithstanding. “The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.” She suggested that it is system and situation that make “this new type of criminal, who . . . commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong.” In such a situation, evil becomes banal and ordinary, trite and commonplace and entirely normal people go on to inflict unthinkable pain and unspeakable cruelties upon others. For saying what she did, Arendt paid a price. In introduction to 2006 Penguin edition of Eichmann in Jerusalem, Israeli writer Amos Elon recounts “the civil war it had launched among intellectuals in the United States and in Europe.” How could someone call a man like Eichmann a ‘normal’ person who was responsible for organising Holocaust, the greatest genocide in human history? How dare she say like that! It was appalling and preposterous, dangerous and disruptive for many. “No book within living memory had elicited similar passions. A kind of excommunication seemed to have been imposed on the author by the Jewish establishment in America. . . . A nationwide campaign was launched . . . to discredit her in the academic world.” Such hostile reaction to Arendt’s assertion, what Elon calls “a startling disproportion between the ferocity of the reaction and its immediate cause,” seems to be more than just an unbridled Jewish outburst to a rather simple insight. There were deeper reasons that had caused a widespread and dramatic emotional, intellectual, and ideological upheaval. Arendt’s simple conclusion was profoundly shocking and deeply disturbing, for people then did not believe that evil was so commonplace in humanity; many still do not believe that ordinary human beings can be frighteningly cruel. They then did not believe that not only some despicable others but

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they themselves were equally capable of doing the most heinous deeds in certain situations; people still believe that they would somehow not fall. Arendt’s suggestion, then, was not exculpatory for anyone—rather, it was damning for all. It demolished that fictitious wall between ‘us’ and ‘them’ which until now had separated good liberals from evil totalitarians in the minds of all. Perhaps, it was a total disruption of self-concept what had unsettled and racked many people to the core and enraged them insanely. It was a charge against their perpetual sanity which had made people insane. Philip Zimbardo explains, “When faced with some unusual behavior, some unexpected event, some anomaly that doesn’t make sense, how do we go about trying to understand it? The traditional approach has been to identify inherent personal qualities that lead to the action: genetic makeup, personality traits, character, free will, and other dispositions. . . . Modern psychiatry is dispositionally oriented. So are clinical psychology and personality and assessment psychology. Most of our institutions are founded on such a perspective, including law, medicine, and religion. Culpability, illness, and sin, they assume, are to be found within the guilty party, the sick person, and the sinner.” That is why, “given violent behavior, one searches for sadistic personality traits.” Our approach to judge a wrongdoer, then, conveniently blames a man and spares humanity; it keeps us comfortable by reassuring us about our imagined goodness. In our society, his actions determine the nature of man—good, bad, or evil. Also, harm and hurt, ills and evils caused by a man are believed to be the result of his moral error, of his personal failure—a failure of his free will to make a moral choice. While it remains as much a truism today as it was when Hannah Arendt was standing alone, relentlessly assailed, certain developments were waiting in the wings that would severely dent and permanently damage the fixed binary notions of good and evil, at least in the community of intellectuals. When the world was intently following the trial of Eichmann and Arendt was being intensely denounced for saying that he was a normal man, a young American psychologist Stanley Milgram was quietly conceiving and carrying out his experimental research in a psychology laboratory of Yale University. Although he did not suffer directly for being a Jew, he could not come to terms either with what had happened in Nazi Germany and wanted to explore if something like that could happen again elsewhere, including in America. This was the purpose of famous Milgram Experiment on obedience to authority. In the words of Milgram, “Of all moral principles, the one that comes closest to being universally accepted is this: one should not



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inflict suffering on a helpless person who is neither harmful nor threatening to oneself. This principle is the counterforce we shall set in opposition to obedience.” He later wrote, “The aim of this investigation was to find when and how people would defy authority in the face of a clear moral imperative.” Decades after Milgram’s shocking experiments, an old friend Zimbardo recounted, “As a young Jewish man, he wondered if the Holocaust could be recreated in his own country, despite the many differences in those cultures and historical epochs. Though many said it could never happen in the United States, Milgram doubted whether we should be so sure. Believing in the goodness of people does not diminish the fact that ordinary, even once good people, just following orders, have committed much evil in the world. . . . Milgram wanted to discover the direct and immediate impact of one powerful individual’s commands to another person to behave in ways that challenged his or her conscience and morality. He designed his research paradigm to pit our general beliefs about what people would do in such a situation against what they actually did when immersed in that crucible of human nature.” Milgram Experiment shocked the world. It reacted with a characteristic disbelief: How on earth it could be true? But the truth was that ordinary men and women were ordered to literally shock an innocent man and they went on shocking him repeatedly. Milgram wrote, “We have now seen several hundred participants in the obedience experiment, and we have witnessed a level of obedience to orders that is disturbing. With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under to the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter’s definition of the situation into performing harsh acts.” As it happens always, Milgram was challenged, questioned, and criticised by “many psychologists, students, and lay people,” recalled Zimbardo. To the dismay of the many critics and believers in humanity, it was not an isolated experiment in psychology involving just a few people. As Zimbardo clarifies, “It is the most representative and generalizable research in social psychology or social sciences due to his large sample size, systematic variations, use of a diverse body of ordinary people from two small towns—New Haven and Bridgeport, Connecticut—and detailed presentation of methodological features. Further, its replication across many cultures and time periods reveal its robust effectiveness.”

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Milgram presented a comprehensive analysis with empirical data in his book Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View published a decade after Arendt’s controversial book. He concluded, “A commonly offered explanation is that those who shocked the victim at the most severe level were monsters, the sadistic fringe of society. But if one considers that almost two-thirds of the participants fall into the category of ‘obedient’ subjects, and that they represented ordinary people drawn from working, managerial, and professional classes, the argument becomes very shaky. Indeed, it is highly reminiscent of the issue that arose in connection with Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book, Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt contended that the prosecution’s effort to depict Eichmann as a sadistic monster was fundamentally wrong, that he came closer to being an uninspired bureaucrat who simply sat at his desk and did his job. For asserting these views, Arendt became the object of considerable scorn, even calumny. Somehow, it was felt that the monstrous deeds carried out by Eichmann required a brutal, twisted, and sadistic personality, evil incarnate. After witnessing hundreds of ordinary people submit to the authority in our own experiments, I must conclude that Arendt’s conception of the banality of evil comes closer to the truth than one might dare imagine. The ordinary person who shocked the victim did so out of a sense of obligation—a conception of his duties as a subject—and not from any peculiarly aggressive tendencies.” Milgram Experiment thus left the stamp of empirical evidence on Arendt’s insight and imparted her hypothesis of ‘banality of evil’ the force of scientific legitimacy. Stanley Milgram had demonstrated the overwhelming power of a ‘legitimate’ authority over ‘ordinary’ and ‘normal’ individuals to command them to carry out the excessive acts of moral consequence. People who repetitiously delivered electric shocks to an innocent subject of experiment had agreed for a ‘payment’ to play certain ‘role’ and followed the ‘rules’ of the game as defined by authority. It was now left to his friend Philip Zimbardo to set up his own landmark experiment in the Psychology Department of Stanford University few years later that would again shock the world. So much is the belief of human beings in the inherent goodness of humanity that the world, it seems, always waits to be shocked by events that reveal the dark side of human nature. In 1971, Zimbardo with his associates constructed a mock Stanford County Jail in the basement of Jordan Hall and selected two dozen participants for two weeks who had agreed to play the roles of prisoner and guard for a payment—“half living in our prison day and night, the others working eighthour shifts.” To sum up the purpose of this “well-planned study,” Zimbardo



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cites American psychologist Craig Haney who then was his research associate, “The rationale is this: our research will attempt to differentiate between what people bring into a prison situation from what the situation brings out in the people who are there. By preselection, our subjects are generally representative of middle-class, educated youth. They are a homogeneous group of students who are quite similar to each other in many ways. By randomly assigning them to the two different roles, we begin with ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ who are comparable—indeed, are interchangeable. The prisoners are not more violent, hostile, or rebellious than the guards, and the guards aren’t more power-seeking authoritarians. At this moment ‘prisoner’ and ‘guard’ are one and alike. No one wanted to be a guard; no one really committed any crime that would justify imprisonment and punishment. In two weeks, will these youngsters still be so indistinguishable? Will their roles change their personalities? Will we see any transformations of their character? That’s what we plan to discover.” What was discovered in Stanford left the world stunned. It was seen that institutional setting, roles, rules, norms, conformity, and authority—together created a situation that immersed and overwhelmed all involved in experiment, lay subjects and expert observers alike. All went along with the flow of situation—their personal moral beliefs were suppressed and their ability to see and stand up for good and right was suspended. A brazen misuse of authority by guards, an abject surrender to unscrupulous authority by prisoners, and the severe psychological and moral consequences of this situation on individuals led Zimbardo to terminate his experiment on sixth day, which was planned to last a fortnight. Zimbardo explains that this experiment “emerged as a powerful illustration of the potentially toxic impact of bad systems and bad situations in making good people behave in pathological ways that are alien to their nature. . . . The line between Good and Evil, once thought to be impermeable, proved instead to be quite permeable.” He summarises, “One of the dominant conclusions of the Stanford Prison Experiment is that the pervasive yet subtle power of a host of situational variables can dominate an individual’s will to resist” and asserts that “neither the guards nor the prisoners could be considered ‘bad apples’ prior to the time when they were so powerfully impacted by being embedded in a ‘bad barrel.’” Zimbardo, it seems, could not muster necessary will to write a book on his experiment, for he had also become a victim of situational forces. He had allowed his experiment to continue, the ample signs of a breakdown of normal order and personal restraints leading to the unforeseen suffering of subjects notwithstanding. It took him over three decades to come out of

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his moral predicament in 2004 when the world woke up once again with a sense of utter disbelief following the courageous actions of whistle-blower Sergeant Joseph Darby, a young Army reservist assigned to the 372nd Military Police Company of US Army guarding the infamous prison of Abu Ghraib near Baghdad, Iraq. Darby brought to light the horrific scenes of abuses and tortures in Abu Ghraib prison which gave Zimbardo a fillip and reason to relive his experience and share with a wide audience as to what exactly had happened in those fateful six days in so-called Stanford County Jail. Egged on by Darby’s disclosures, he wrote an elaborate account of events with an exhaustive analysis in The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil published in 2007. These events were re-enacted in 2015 movie The Stanford Prison Experiment. It is indeed quite disturbing to see on screen how quickly and completely all role players and experimenters give in, get into the grip of situational web, and lose a sense of right and wrong. Perhaps, we would never admit and accept, its abundant and endless manifestation all around notwithstanding that our species has a proclivity for violence and cruelty. Much before the above two landmark studies, Turkish psychologist Muzafer Sherif and Polish-American psychologist Solomon Asch through experimental research conducted in America had demonstrated the irrational and irresistible power of group and social conformity over the intelligence, reason, and judgement of individuals. It was left to yet another American psychologist Irving Janis to show that the force of conforming pressures of group not only corners and trounces plebeians and commoners alone but it as easily entraps and overwhelms the brightest and mightiest of all. Here is the central message of this bleak introduction—that situations, conditions, and circumstances external to man have greater potential for influencing and determining his behaviour than his internal constitution and free will; that a man is more vulnerable in the company of other men, for he is, arguably, one kind of person when thinking and acting alone but becomes very different when he is with other men who influence his thoughts, feelings, and actions. We, then, must ask what makes these overwhelming situations and external influences and why and how such a transformation takes place which disables or overrides the reason and morality, personal control and inhibitory mechanisms of a man. Here is the answer in brief. Imagined reality of group segregates people and divides them into ‘we’ and ‘they.’ In a group, people have certain obligations to each other which they do not have to those who are not its part. People in a group which otherwise binds them together too are divided into ‘superiors’ and ‘leaders’ who order



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and instruct and ‘subordinates’ and ‘followers’ who obey and trail. Social life is organised and controlled by the codified notions of authority, roles, rules, and procedures that create a system. People are also regulated by unwritten abstractions and shared beliefs that define normative behaviours and create a culture. Together system and culture create an environment or an order in which people exist, think, feel, and act. Conjunctures that overwhelm a man, then, are nothing but the combinations of relationships and interactions between events, individuals, and abstractions, between people, system, and culture. A man in this grand scheme of things surely looks too little, too weak, and all too insignificant on his own. How can we depend on this helpless miniature man? Let us dig a little deeper to find out if a man can at all be salvaged from situations. II We have discussed a man in isolation in the previous chapter but in reality, a man does not live alone and leads a social life instead. He interacts with other individuals and groups in various social settings, in different social roles and relationships, which create what we call social forces that influence and shape his experiences, beliefs, and behaviours. Organisational setting and the challenges of social life in his role as a rescuer is the focus of this chapter. And, the purpose of discussion is to find out if and how a man can become an ideal rescuer in the face of hazards of social order and dangers of social control discussed in the above section. We have discussed a framework of moral values of a rescuer in the previous chapter where I have argued that there are certain indispensable moral values of a rescuer and no man can become an ideal rescuer without an absolute commitment to morality. Even if this argument, let us suppose, remains uncontested, the question remains as to where these moral values can be talked and taught to individuals? Certainly not in families, not in peer groups, not even in schools and universities, for they do not deal with the problem of rescue. The only place where it seems plausible is an organisation which is responsible for the rescue of hostages. We can, therefore, assert that organisation is the most important social setting in preparing a man for his role as a rescuer, and also its corollary, that no hostage rescue organisation can presume that individuals who join it as members have an awareness of and a commitment to the morality of rescue. In the same way as they know next to nothing about the techniques and tactics of rescue operations, it can be safely presumed that freshmen know virtually nothing about the moral foundations of rescue. They are, in fact, tabulae rasae in the world

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of rescue even as adults and it is the responsibility of organisation to turn them into rescuers. But in order to understand what an organisation can do to a man, we have to first understand what an organisation is and how does it come into being. Living beings perceive the world around them by means of their sensory organs. But the story of making sense of the world for the large numbers of evolved beings with brains is little more complex than that. In their case, bioelectric signals are produced by sensory units distributed throughout body and relayed to a central control unit called brain where they are processed. Meaning is imparted to physical signals by brain and situation is thus brought into the awareness of an organism. During signal processing, brain and nervous system bank on their interpretive resources made of instincts evolved in the course of millions of years and experiences gathered by individual in the course of a lifetime. Both these memories are used to make sense of and choose responses to external stimuli. Although there is some evidence to suggest to the contrary such as Carl Safina’s Becoming Wild and we actually do not know much about them, for the sake of simplicity, let us say that despite the amalgamation of instincts and experiences, the reactions and responses of wild animals to external stimuli are largely regulated by their biological instincts in natural environments and it seems so because their personal experiences in a natural environment may not be significantly different, perhaps, from those which shaped their natural instincts over the eons. Contrary to wild animals, however, the responses and reactions of human beings living in a world built for and by humans are predominantly determined by certain ‘facts’ and fictions that we experience and learn to believe in during the course of our lives which then substantially regulate our cognition, emotions, and actions. This makes human story still more complex. So, what is our story? Members of our species now live in and interact with human built complex social and physical environments which are entirely different from natural environments in which we had originated, evolved, and acquired our instincts. Therefore, the processing of signals sent by sensory network to brain is not as much influenced by our instincts transmitted and acquired biologically over the eons. Instead, it is predominantly controlled by the memory of an individual acquired in the course of life and its experiences—so much so that the role of natural instincts in the artificial world of humankind has largely been reduced to irrelevance today and human experience and imagination have assumed a near total control in making sense of the world we have come to live in. Our memory employed for interpreting the world is



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formed from experiencing and imagining. Beliefs that we imagine and share create and shape our realities. Beliefs are myths and fictions, not real, but their consequences are real, for what we believe in becomes our reality as a result of our collective efforts. It, then, becomes impossible to differentiate between real and imagined; they get entwined closely, fused inseparably, and coexist harmoniously in the human world. Our beliefs and experiences thus shape our meanings and responses during interactions with the external world and control our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in it. It is indeed a complicated story. We trust and prefer to work with people we know well. We can cooperate and collaborate with unknown or little known people too if we can trust them and share interests with them. When people share certain beliefs, they are able to understand each other better because shared beliefs lead us to generate expectations, behave in conformance to expectations, and make predictions in our social interactions. By relying on our shared beliefs, therefore, we can understand and collaborate with people who we do not know personally. When a large group of people shares a rich body of beliefs and transmits them from person to person, from one generation to another, it becomes a culture. Culture is an instrument of social interpretation and control which makes people to behave in expected manners and enables them to predict the behaviours of others. Its outcomes are general trust, shared interests and goals, and social order and stability within a cultural group. Shared beliefs thus make it possible for a large number of unknown people to cooperate and pursue the goals of higher order—goals which are greater and bigger than what any one individual can achieve personally. An organisation is a social group that exists to achieve certain higher order goals that cannot be achieved by an individual alone; its members share certain beliefs and work together for its goals. But an organisation does not come into existence and continue to exist just like that. It is people who make it to occur. It is people who conceive and build an organisation by defining its goals, designing and erecting its structure, and propagating its way of life in order to execute its functions and serve its purpose in the future. It is people who sustain and maintain an organisation and make it to serve its purpose ever after. Looking at the trajectory of organisational development, we can say that in its initial phase, the roles and responsibilities of founding members are most critical and decisive for the success of organisation in the future. It can also be said that after the structure and way of life have become embedded and created a distinct culture and environment of organisation, the roles and responsibilities of all members assume equal significance in

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sustaining and maintaining the health and fitness of organisation necessary to accomplishing its goals and fulfilling its purpose. We, thus, find people— founders or successors—always in the centre of an organisation at any point in its life. People are everywhere in organisation—they make organisation and they populate organisation, they run organisation and they steer organisation— so much so that people are organisation. Goals of an organisation are achieved by people working individually and collectively under organisational influence and control. Structure of an organisation creates roles and rules for people to work individually and collectively as group members. Culture of organisation creates environment and conditions for people to perform individually and collectively as human beings. Purpose of an organisation is best served when its structure allows its members to realise the greatest functional efficiency and its culture allows them to realise the greatest human potential—both as individuals and as a team. Challenge for an organisation, therefore, is not limited to creating a structural framework to control its members and make them work individually and collectively for its defined goals. It extends beyond this to the problem of creating a distinct organisational culture, which is consistent and congruent with its goals in human terms. An organisation which is able to achieve a harmony and consonance between occupational and human needs accomplishes its goals smoothly. Organising people is indeed an interesting and complex experiment of human engineering. A functional structure and a vibrant supporting culture is what we desire in organisation but it is not easy to realise, remains elusive mostly, and might just not happen in the end, for there exists a dark side of organising human beings. This dark narrative of human organisation is scripted by inbuilt fractures, deep fissures, and widespread pathogens that exist in the structuralcultural framework of an organisation and cause it to malfunction, drag, and drift away from a desirable path. In order to erect reliable defences and prescribe effective antidotes against risks endemic to organisational setting, we need to understand the nature of lurking dangers and know the pathology of social control first. III Authority is a strange paradox, a double-edged sword, a necessary evil without which no organisation can function. It is the most deadly pathogen of human organisation which at the same time must reside in it to control and direct the independent efforts of its individual components towards its goals. An



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indispensable dark construct it is, which is very easy to create but very difficult to contain. An organised social life and the limitless benefits of cooperation cannot be conceived if the selfish impulses of individuals remain uncontrolled. A social organisation, therefore, needs social control. Notion of authority and obedience to its command is the most effective mechanism of social control. It is difficult to imagine sustainable cooperation among the members of a large group without the notions of authority and obedience. Paradoxically, authority is also the most dangerous instrument of social control in its malevolent and pathological forms. Milgram warns, “The person who, with inner conviction, loathes stealing, killing, and assault may find himself performing these acts with relative ease when commanded by authority. Behavior that is unthinkable in an individual who is acting on his own may be executed without hesitation when carried out under orders.” He explains why. “In growing up, the normal individual has learned to check the expression of aggressive impulses. But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority.” Instead of encouraging and strengthening internal control, human culture actually values, propagates, and enforces the deactivation of personal control when a person is acting as a subordinate to authority. While culture punishes impulsive violence, it rewards violence commanded by authority; its rituals and euphemisms glorify the most aggressive and destructive behaviours sanctioned by authority. Milgram, thus, comes to a profound conclusion: That authority “constitutes a far greater danger to human survival” than the individual acts of violence due to its potential for unleashing the devastation of unimaginable proportions as seen in wars. His assertion was not ideological; it was grounded in the reality. My own sense of the world makes me agree with Milgram’s assertion that authority is more diabolic and dangerous than the aggressive and selfish instinct of man, to contain which it exists. In fact, I realised it first-hand years back as a fresh recruit in police academy. A squad getting its first lessons in marksmanship was shooting .22 rifles in an outdoor range when chief instructor got mad at stray dogs quarrelling and barking nearby and asked trainees to shoot them. Next moment, all but one shooter in detail trained their guns on dogs and began firing. Fortunately, recruits were still raw and dogs were streetwise, so they escaped unhurt. Cadet who did not obey was harshly rebuked by instructor in front of all. It happened when we had just entered uniformed service and our submission and obedience to authority was nowhere near ‘total’ as it became in the end. It showed that

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recruits who had suspended independent judgement—which meant most of us—needed only some polishing, for they had come prepared to submit to authority and follow its orders blindly. In the course of time, I got to know all persons well who had mindlessly followed a questionable command that day and I could say that, acting on their own, they would never kill or injure an innocent dog. This episode left a lasting impression on me. I had not read or heard about Stanley Milgram then, but I surely did realise that something was bad and defective in us and the way we allow ourselves to be controlled and manipulated by authority; otherwise, obedience would not override morality so easily. Later in life, I routinely saw subordinates silencing their conscience to satisfy their superiors. It always perplexed me as to why people submit and surrender their self to authority so readily? Obedience to authority is a fact of our social life. It is a necessary condition for creating a stable order based on mutual cooperation. A stable social order is valued by societies and obedient followers are given respect and reward in all societies. To make this point, Milgram refers to Hungarian-British author Arthur Koestler who says that “the individual who indulges in an excess of aggressive self-assertiveness incurs the penalties of society—he outlaws himself, he contracts out of the hierarchy. The true believer, on the other hand, becomes more closely knit into it; he enters the womb of his church, or party, or whatever the social holon to which he surrenders his identity.” Such a man forgoes his moral reasoning, sacrifices his independent judgement, and suppresses personal control on his actions to serve authority, its point of view and definition of situation. He becomes a blind follower—a robotic tool operating on commands given by controller. Such transformation of men makes the functioning of rigidly hierarchical organisations such as armed forces particularly smooth and easy but it also leaves authority immensely powerful and capable of unleashing unrestrained violence if it ever turns malicious and malevolent. There are countless examples spread across ages, cultures, and societies which repeatedly reveal the dark side of human social organisation in terms of ease and readiness with which we fall in line and obey the orders of authority. All wars in the world started when people in authority commanded their military forces to wage war. Blind following of gentile Germans produced the evil of Hitler and the horrors of Nazism. Blind obedience of American soldiers ended in the heinous massacre of My Lai in Vietnam. Criminal acts of the worst kind have been perpetrated everywhere as a result of obedience to authority. Arguably, not all persons who indulged in the acts of organised violence that history has witnessed repetitiously were driven by an intense personal hatred towards victims; the large numbers of them might just be obeying orders given to them.



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In ordinary affairs too, most people act when they are ordered to act in a manner they should not and would not act on their own; they do not act when ordered not to act in situations where they should and would act if they are left alone. I have seen it time and time again that authority has a far greater say in the actions and omissions of men than morality, laws, rules, and procedures put together. That people do obey as and when ordered by a legitimate authority—readily or reluctantly—without caring for the consequences of their actions is what Milgram had found in his experiments and this is also what we experience in everyday life and read in history books. We must, then, ask—why do we behave in such manner? To know the answer, let us explore the percipient and insightful analysis of Milgram deduced from his experiments which has definitively unravelled the troubling puzzle of obedience to authority. Milgram employs cybernetic theory to explain obedience to authority. Individual component of a hierarchical system, he argues, displays variable behaviour, depending “on which of the two states it is in.” If component is in self-directed autonomous mode, it acts “on its own, and for the satisfaction of its own internal needs.” If it is in systemic mode, it suppresses “local control in favor of regulation by a higher-level component” for achieving organisational goals. This duality emerges only after an individual component is “integrated into a larger organizational structure.” Without such modification, a system of multiple components organised hierarchically cannot coordinate and function. Milgram calls this transition agentic shift which metamorphoses a man from autonomous state to agentic state. Agentic state is “the condition a person is in when he sees himself as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes.” Agentic state is “in opposition to that of autonomy—that is, when a person sees himself as acting on his own.” Milgram writes, “From the standpoint of cybernetic analysis, the agentic state occurs when a selfregulating entity is internally modified so as to allow its functioning within a system of hierarchical control. . . . From a subjective standpoint, a person is in a state of agency when he defines himself in a social situation in a manner that renders him open to regulation by a person of higher status. In this condition the individual no longer views himself as responsible for his own actions but defines himself as an instrument for carrying out the wishes of others.” Obedience to authority is the outcome of this psychological transformation. “The essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions. Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred in the person, all of the essential features of obedience follow. . . . A person gives himself

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over to authority and no longer views himself as the efficient cause of his own actions. . . . It is a fundamental mode of thinking for a great many people once they are locked into a subordinate position in a structure of authority. The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most farreaching consequence of submission to authority.” Milgram elaborates that groundwork for obedience to authority starts early in the life of a human being living in family under “parental regulation, whereby a sense of respect for adult authority” is inculcated. “As soon as the child emerges from the cocoon of the family, he is transferred to an institutional system of authority, the school.” Here he learns as a student that the “arrogance is not passively accepted by authority but severely rebuked and that deference is the only appropriate and comfortable response to authority. . . . On the job, he learns that although some discreetly expressed dissent is allowable, an underlying posture of submission is required for harmonious functioning with superiors.” In the process of socialisation, individual also realises that “compliance with authority is rewarded, and failure to comply punished.” Milgram succinctly defines the outcome, “The net result of this experience is the internalization of the social order—that is, internalizing the set of axioms by which social life is conducted. And the chief axiom is: do what the man in charge says.” Existence of authority in social life is so ubiquitous and its impression so deep and indelible that a person enters each institutional setting “with the expectation that someone will be in charge,” with a readiness to follow directions given by a person seems to be in charge. In the process of socialisation, a man learns to deal with the complex architecture of social life made of a multitude of social situations and occasions regulated by many different authorities. Milgram states that authority is “the perceived source of social control within a specific context” and explains that “context defines the range of commands considered appropriate to the authority in question.” He writes, “Authority systems are frequently limited by a physical context, and often we come under the influence of an authority when we cross the physical threshold into his domain.” If we enter the domain of an authority voluntarily, we tend to follow its orders more readily because “the psychological consequence of voluntary entry is that it creates a sense of commitment and obligation.” Another reason for compliance to authority is that “generally, authorities are felt to know more than the person they are commanding; whether they do or not, the occasion is defined as if they do. Even when a subordinate possesses a greater degree of technical knowledge than his superior, he must not presume to override



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the authority’s right to command but must present this knowledge to the superior to dispose of as he wishes.” These beliefs of a man relevant to immediate situation combine with his underlying respect for authority and make him ready to obey various authorities in social life. Obedience to authority need not be coercive, for it happens willingly if people allow authority to define the meaning of their actions. Milgram writes that “there is a propensity for people to accept definitions of action provided by legitimate authority.” It is a radical psychological transformation of individuality, for the acceptance of authority’s definition of the world simultaneously causes a man to suspend his independent judgement and surrender his personal autonomy. “It is this ideological abrogation to the authority that constitutes the principal cognitive basis of obedience,” Milgram proclaims. If a man “accepts authority’s definition of the situation, action follows willingly.” Milgram, however, clarifies that the agentic shift of a man only makes him ready for executing actions prescribed by authority; his agentic state does not necessarily make a man act automatically without being activated by authority. He writes, “The agentic state constitutes a potential out of which specific acts of obedience flow. But something more than the potential is required—namely, specific commands that serve as the triggering mechanism.” Agentic state is the “state of mental organization which enhances the likelihood of obedience. Obedience is the behavioral aspect of the state. A person may be in an agentic state—that is, in a state of openness to regulation from an authority—without ever being given a command and thus never having to obey.” It is commands given by authority and not a person’s agentic state which “lead to specific acts of obedience.” And, why is it that authority does not request but commands? Milgram explains that a request “contains a definition of action but lacks the insistence that it be carried out” while a command consists of “a definition of action and the imperative that the action be executed.” As an instrument of behavioural control, authority chooses to command and does not request. Obedience to authority is grounded in its so-called ‘morality’ which is inculcated deeply in the process of socialisation and supplies a set of beliefs for the justification of obedience. Milgram exposes this pseudo-morality of obedience too which is crucial for understanding the problem of obedience. He writes, “The most far-reaching consequence of the agentic shift is that a man feels responsible to the authority directing him but feels no responsibility for the content of the actions that the authority prescribes. Morality does not disappear, but acquires a radically different focus: the subordinate person feels shame or pride depending on how adequately he has performed the

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actions called for by authority. . . . Language provides numerous terms to pinpoint this type of morality: loyalty, duty, discipline, all are terms heavily saturated with moral meaning and refer to the degree to which a person fulfills his obligations to authority. They refer not to the ‘goodness’ of the person per se but to the adequacy with which a subordinate fulfills his socially defined role.” Function of conscience now shifts radically “from an evaluation of the goodness or badness of the acts to an assessment of how well or poorly one is functioning in the authority system” and a break with authority acquires “the character of moral transgression.” Needless to say, such distorted ‘morality’ tailored for obedience is anything but moral but obedience is readily extracted from a believer just the same. Notwithstanding socialisation which creates a strong bond with authority, the counterforce of morality, in all likelihood, also exists in a man which activates his conscience to judge his actions in terms of right and wrong, good and bad. When a man realises that his actions directed by authority are not right and good, he experiences tension induced by moral beliefs that causes him to consider breaking from authority. On the other hand, the thoughts of breaking with authority also precipitate anxiety due to his pseudo-moral beliefs. Milgram explains that this anxiety “stems from the individual’s long history of socialization. He has, in the course of moving from a biological creature to a civilized person, internalized the basic rules of social life. And the most basic of these is respect for authority. The rules are internally enforced by linking their possible breach to a flow of disruptive, ego-threatening affect.” As a man “contemplates this break, anxiety is generated, signaling him to step back from the forbidden action and thereby creating an emotional barrier through which he must pass in order to defy authority. . . . The remarkable thing is, once the ‘ice is broken’ through disobedience, virtually all the tension, anxiety, and fear evaporate.” But this fact is not known to obedient men; they instead rely on various defence mechanisms such as avoidance, denial, and dissent to deal with moral stress caused by their immoral acts executed on the command of authority. In effect, subterfuges and rationalisation employed by agents do not undermine or negate authority. Defence mechanisms only sap the force of conscience and people end up carrying out the orders of authority, however reluctantly. Milgram’s insight into dissent is most crucial. He writes, “Strain, if sufficiently powerful, leads to disobedience, but at the outset it gives rise to dissent.” Dissent “serves a dual and conflicting function. On the one hand it may be the first step in a progressive rift between” agent and authority. “But paradoxically it may also serve as a strain-reducing mechanism, a valve that allows” an agent “to



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blow off steam without altering his course of action.” He clarifies, “Dissent may occur without rupturing hierarchical bonds and thus belongs to an order of experience that is qualitatively discontinuous with disobedience. Many dissenting individuals who are capable of expressing disagreement with authority still respect authority’s right to overrule their expressed opinion. While disagreeing, they are not prepared to act on this conviction. . . . As a strain-reducing mechanism, dissent is a source of psychological consolation . . . in regard to the moral conflict at issue.” Dissenting, then, is closer to dithering or delaying in its effect than defying which signifies actual disobedience. This was Milgram’s theory of obedience which plausibly explains why we obey readily. It was derived empirically from our propensity for obedience in the real world. “In order to take a close look at the act of obeying,” Milgram writes, “I set up a simple experiment at Yale University. Eventually, the experiment was to involve more than a thousand participants and would be repeated at several universities, but at the beginning, the conception was simple. A person comes to a psychological laboratory and is told to carry out a series of acts that come increasingly into conflict with conscience. The main question is how far the participant will comply with the experimenter’s instructions before refusing to carry out the actions required of him.” Milgram had described this ‘shocking’ experiment to a number of “psychiatrists, graduate students and faculty in the behavioral sciences, college sophomores, and middle-class adults” and asked them “to predict how other people would perform.” He found a “remarkable similarity in the predictions of the several groups.” Milgram wrote, “They predict that virtually all subjects will refuse to obey the experimenter; only a pathological fringe, not exceeding one or two per cent, was expected to proceed to the end of the shockboard.” What was found in the end, however, was truly shocking—sixty-five percent, that is, two of every three volunteers delivered the make-believe lethal shock of 450 volts to a pretending victim due to their mindless obedience to experimenter, which was the maximum level on shockboard and there was no element of coercion involved to extract their compliance. Milgram later wrote that predictions had completely missed the mark because “the force exerted by the moral sense of the individual is less effective than social myth would have us believe.” He sums up the disturbing message of his experimental research in the epilogue of his seminal book. “The behavior revealed in the experiments reported here is normal human behavior but revealed under conditions that show with particular clarity the danger to human survival inherent in our make-up. And what is it we have seen? Not aggression, for

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there is no anger, vindictiveness, or hatred in those who shocked the victim. Men do become angry; they do act hatefully and explode in rage against others. But not here. Something far more dangerous is revealed: the capacity for man to abandon his humanity, indeed, the inevitability that he does so, as he merges his unique personality into larger institutional structures. . . . This is a fatal flaw nature has designed into us, and which in the long run gives our species only a modest chance of survival. . . . It is ironic that the virtues of loyalty, discipline, and self-sacrifice that we value so highly in the individual are the very properties that create destructive organizational engines of war and bind men to malevolent systems of authority.” Milgram warns, “Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. But when he merges his person into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority.” In my view, the most important, relevant, and practical lesson of Milgram’s research is contained in his analysis of disobedience to authority. He writes, “Disobedience is the ultimate means whereby strain is brought to an end.” But “it is not an act that comes easily.” Act of disobedience lies at the end of a process that goes through various stages; “inner doubt, externalization of doubt, dissent, threat, disobedience: it is a difficult path, which only a minority of subjects are able to pursue to its conclusion. Yet it is not a negative conclusion, but has the character of an affirmative act, a deliberate bucking of the tide. It is compliance that carries the passive connotation. The act of disobedience requires a mobilization of inner resources, and their transformation beyond inner preoccupation, beyond merely polite verbal exchange, into a domain of action. But the psychic cost is considerable. . . . Even though he has chosen the morally correct action, the subject remains troubled by the disruption of the social order he brought about, and cannot fully dispel the feeling that he deserted a cause to which he had pledged support. It is he, and not the obedient subject, who experiences the burden of his action.” This is not unusual at all, for a man of character has to bear the burden of morality and face the consequences of making moral choices in life, which nearly always means standing up to society and Establishment and to face the wrath of powerful. From the moral point of view, it can be asserted that the notion of disobedience is not a singular property but has two forms—positive and negative. Those acts of disobedience which follow the course of moral conviction and



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undertaken to achieve certain moral ends are surely right and good, desirable and permissible as they create conditions which are good for all. These are the acts of positive disobedience and they are choiceworthy and laudable. On the other hand, the immoral and morally neutral acts of disobedience are disruptive and destructive in nature for they destabilise social order. These are the acts of negative disobedience; such acts are undesirable, bad, and wrong, so they are condemnable and culpable. A man may commit the same mistake in making a moral choice which the subjects of Milgram’s experiments did under the influence of a legitimate authority if he is not aware of these experiments. In order to strengthen the moral conviction of rescuers and prevent them from falling into the trap of following a legitimate but perverted authority, I recommend that Milgram’s Obedience to Authority is made a part of induction training curriculum in hostage rescue organisation. This discussion will become more interesting if Obedience, the original 1965 film of experiment made by Milgram, is shown to recruits along with 2015 movie Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram Story. I also recommend that Milgram’s book should be taught personally by the top commanders of organisation, for this is likely to keep authority vested in them under greater personal and social restraint, prevent its perversion, and limit its role to serving its constructive purpose of directing collective efforts only to hostage rescue. I will wind up this discussion with an inspiring story of positive disobedience. Mbaye Diagne, a  cheerful Senegalese  military officer, was serving in Rwanda as an unarmed military observer of United Nations  Assistance Mission for Rwanda when the genocide of minority Tutsis broke out on April 6, 1994. Unspeakable slaughter of fellow humans continued for the next hundred days with unparalleled pace until the Tutsi-led rebel forces of Rwandan Patriotic Front crushed government forces and their ally, Hutu militia Interahamwe, and captured Rwanda. Massacre of innocent people was happening right in front of United Nations, which not only chose not to do anything but instead reminded its ground forces that their mandate was only to observe and commanded them not to intervene. A million people were murdered and countless women and children were brutally raped and mutilated in just one hundred days when the whole world stood silent, conveniently abandoned all the helpless victims, and stoically witnessed an unfolding genocide on television screens—perhaps, the most horrific mass murder since Holocaust. In the midst of this chilling callousness and appalling inaction of those who could have saved hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, some individuals decided to stand up for victims and act alone. Captain Mbaye was one such rescuer who chose the call of conscience over

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professional command and compliance. He refused to obey orders and believed to have rescued hundreds of people until he died as an unintended casualty of war. He had disobeyed at a great risk to his life and career but he did so when he realised that it was not right to comply and stand by. IV Authority, we know, is a potential pathogen of human organisation. Organisational setting and system in which it is set, which are impersonal, unlike authority, too are potential organisational pathogens; there is no escaping them in the same way as we cannot escape authority in an organisation. Morality of men is the bulwark of idealised human situation in any setting and circumstance. Only if men save themselves from faltering, a situation can be saved. In contrast, when moral force in men is sapped and neutralised, a sensitive human approach is lost, people are taken over by pathological tendencies, and suffering becomes the trademark of situation. This was methodically demonstrated by the bitter experience of Stanford Prison Experiment. It established that the impersonal ingredients of organised life may take a severe toll on the underlying human foundation and purpose of our social life. Zimbardo wanted to assess “the extent to which the external features of an institutional setting could override the internal dispositions of the actors in that environment.” He, therefore, created a mock prison and carefully selected participants who were to play guards and prisoners. “When we began our experiment,” writes Zimbardo, “we had a sample of individuals who did not deviate from the normal range of the general educated population on any of the dimensions we had premeasured. Those randomly assigned to the role of ‘prisoner’ were interchangeable with those in the ‘guard’ role. Neither group had any history of crime, emotional or physical disability, or even intellectual or social disadvantage that might typically differentiate prisoners from guards and prisoners from the rest of society. . . . It is by virtue of this random assignment and the comparative premeasures that I am able to assert that these young men did not import into our jail any of the pathology that subsequently emerged among them as they played either prisoners or guards. At the start of this experiment, there were no differences between the two groups; less than a week later, there were no similarities between them. It is reasonable, therefore, to conclude that the pathologies were elicited by the set of situational forces constantly impinging upon them in this prisonlike setting.”



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Events that took place in the course of six days of this experiment were ‘unexpected’ and ‘unbelievable,’ for we neither understand nor accept the hollowness of human morality. Stanford Prison Experiment showed the world how weak and fallible human beings are against mighty situational forces unleashed by institutional setting in a bad system. It brought the fact of our moral frailty to light and delivered a severe blow to the myth of human goodness, which completely crumbled and repeatedly failed the test of time and character there. In the words of Zimbardo, “The primary simple lesson the Stanford Prison Experiment teaches is that situations matter. Social situations can have more profound effects on the behavior and mental functioning of individuals, groups, and national leaders than we might believe possible. Some situations can exert such powerful influence over us that we can be led to behave in ways we would not, could not, predict was possible in advance.” Zimbardo also underlines that “situational power is most salient in novel settings, those in which people cannot call on previous guidelines for their new behavioral options.” He elaborates, “Within certain powerful social settings, human nature can be transformed in ways as dramatic as the chemical transformation in Robert Louis Stevenson’s captivating fable of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The enduring interest in the SPE over many decades comes, I think, from the experiment’s startling revelation of ‘transformation of character’—of good people suddenly becoming perpetrators of evil as guards or pathologically passive victims as prisoners in response to situational forces acting on them. . . . Good people can be induced, seduced, and initiated into behaving in evil ways. They can also be led to act in irrational, stupid, self-destructive, antisocial, and mindless ways when they are immersed in ‘total situations’ that impact human nature in ways that challenge our sense of the stability and consistency of individual personality, of character, and of morality. . . . The SPE, along with much other social science research, . . . reveals a message we do not want to accept: that most of us can undergo significant character transformations when we are caught up in the crucible of social forces. What we imagine we would do when we are outside that crucible may bear little resemblance to who we become and what we are capable of doing once we are inside its network. The SPE is a clarion call to abandon simplistic notions of the Good Self dominating Bad Situations. We are best able to avoid, prevent, challenge, and change such negative situational forces only by recognizing their potential power to ‘infect us,’ as it has others who were similarly situated. . . . Any deed that any human being has ever committed, however horrible, is possible for any of us— under the right or wrong situational circumstances. That knowledge does not excuse evil; rather, it democratizes it, sharing its blame among ordinary

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actors rather than declaring it the province only of deviants and despots—of Them but not Us.” Such powerful and hard-hitting remarks only seem to suggest that being ‘good’ is not good enough in a powerful situation; we have to be more than just being good. Roles played by men in organisational setting are among the most powerful drivers of dreadful situations. While authority corrupts men from outside, their roles corrupt them from within—both are the corrupting expressions of power. Roles have a tendency to compartmentalise thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. They have capacity to separate a man from his normal self. Such segregation of personal actions and splitting of self-concept prepares the ground for the abandonment of morality and purveys justification for the abdication of personal responsibility. Roles, thus, block the moral vision of a man, numb his moral reasoning, subvert his moral judgement, and make him morally dumb. Zimbardo cautions that “some roles are insidious, are not just scripts that we enact only from time to time; they can become who we are most of the time.” On the other hand, “people can do terrible things when they allow the role they play to have rigid boundaries that circumscribe what is appropriate, expected, and reinforced in a given setting. Such rigidity in the role shuts off the traditional morality and values that govern their lives when they are in ‘normal mode.’ The ego-defense mechanism of compartmentalization allows us to mentally bind conflicting aspects of our beliefs and experiences into separate chambers that prevent interpretation or cross talk. . . . To the extent that we can both live in the skin of a role and yet be able to separate ourselves from it when necessary, we are in a position to ‘explain away’ our personal responsibility for the damage we cause by our role-based actions. We abdicate responsibility for our actions, blaming them on that role, which we convince ourselves is alien to our usual nature. This is an interesting variant of the Nuremberg Trial defense of the Nazi SS leaders: ‘I was only following orders.’ Instead the defense becomes ‘Don’t blame me, I was only playing my role at that time in that place—that isn’t the real me.’” Roles are played by rules in organisational setting. Rules are arbitrary; they are imaginary too, not real, but they do have power to shape the reality. Zimbardo explains, “Rules are formal, simplified ways of controlling informal complex behavior. They work by externalizing regulations, by establishing what is necessary, acceptable, and rewarded and what is unacceptable and therefore punished. Over time, rules come to have an arbitrary life of their own and the force of legal authority even when they are no longer relevant, are vague, or change with the whims of the enforcers. . . . Some rules are



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essential for the effective coordination of social behavior. . . . However, many rules are merely screens for dominance by those who make them or those charged with enforcing them.” Rules are made by system and the behaviours and actions of role players are sanctioned by its ideology. Zimbardo rightly concludes that system is the real creator of situations. “The most important lesson to be derived from the SPE is that Situations are created by Systems. Systems provide the institutional support, authority, and resources that allow Situations to operate as they do.” About Stanford Prison Experiment, he asks, “‘Who or what made it happen that way?’ Who had the power to design the behavioral setting and to maintain its operation in particular ways? Therefore, who should be held responsible for its consequences and outcomes? Who gets the credit for successes, and who is blamed for failures? The simple answer in the case of the SPE is—me! However, finding that answer is not such a simple matter when we deal with complex organizations, such as failing educational or correctional systems, corrupt megacorporations, or the system that was created at Abu Ghraib Prison. . . . System Power involves authorization or institutionalized permission to behave in prescribed ways or to forbid and punish actions that are contrary to them. It provides the ‘higher authority’ that gives validation to playing new roles, following new rules, and taking actions that would ordinarily be constrained by preexisting laws, norms, morals, and ethics. Such validation usually comes cloaked in the mantle of ideology. Ideology is a slogan or proposition that usually legitimizes whatever means are necessary to attain an ultimate goal. Ideology is the ‘Big Kahuna,’ which is not challenged or even questioned because it is so apparently ‘right’ for the majority in a particular time and place. Those in authority present the program as good and virtuous, as a highly valuable moral imperative. . . . The programs, policies, and standard operating procedures that are developed to support an ideology become an essential component of the System. The System’s procedures are considered reasonable and appropriate as the ideology comes to be accepted as sacred. . . . During the era when fascist military juntas governed around the world from the Mediterranean to Latin America, from the 1960s to 1970s, dictators always sounded their call to arms as the necessary defense against a ‘threat to national security’ allegedly posed by socialists or Communists. Eliminating that threat necessitated state-sanctioned torture by the military and civil police. It also legitimized assassination by death squads of all suspected ‘enemies of the state.’” Communist regimes had similarly crushed their ‘capitalist enemies’ with equal brutality in the name of ideology. Although Zimbardo fails to mention that ruthless violence and chilling executions he cites had the sanction and support of United States to check the spread of

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communism in the world, he candidly admits that “in the United States at the present time, the same alleged threats to national security have frightened citizens into willingly sacrificing their basic civil rights to gain an illusion of security. That ideology in turn has been the centerpiece justifying a preemptive war of aggression against Iraq. That ideology was created by the System in power, which in turn created new subordinate Systems of war management, homeland security management, and military prison management—or absence thereof, in default of serious postwar planning.” While I have picked here the cruxes of only three causative factors of overwhelming situations from the extensive analysis of Zimbardo studded with research studies and examples, I recommend that his book The Lucifer Effect should be taught in organisation as a companion to Milgram’s Obedience to Authority. Purpose of these readings is to increase the weight of moral anchor of rescuers by making them aware of their moral fallibility in the face of overpowering, unexpected, and unknown situations. Let us wrap up discussion on Stanford Prison Experiment with a crucial message it leaves for the silent majority of ‘good’ pragmatic people—those who see everything but do nothing in a morally urgent situation because it is risky to act. Zimbardo equates such inaction with evil and tells in scathing words, “In our study, being a good guard who did his job reluctantly meant ‘goodness by default.’ Doing minor nice deeds for the prisoners simply contrasted with the demonic actions of their shift mates. . . . None of them ever intervened to prevent the ‘bad guards’ from abusing the prisoners; none complained to the staff, left their shift early or came to work late, or refused to work overtime in emergencies. Moreover, none of them even demanded overtime pay for doing tasks they may have found distasteful. They were part of the ‘Evil of Inaction Syndrome.’ . . . In situations where evil is being practiced, there are perpetrators, victims, and survivors. However, there are often observers of the ongoing activities or people who know what is going on and do not intervene to help or to challenge the evil and thereby enable evil to persist by their inaction. . . . It is the good cops who never oppose the brutality of their buddies beating up minorities on the streets or in the back room of the station house. It was the good bishops and cardinals who covered over the sins of their predatory parish priests because of their overriding concern for the image of the Catholic Church. They knew what was wrong and did nothing to really confront that evil, thereby enabling these pederasts to continue sinning for years on end. . . . Similarly, it was the good workers at Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, and hosts of similarly corrupt corporations who looked the other way when the books



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were being cooked. Moreover, as I noted earlier, in the Stanford Prison Experiment it was the good guards who never intervened on behalf of the suffering prisoners to get the bad guards to lighten up, thereby implicitly condoning their continually escalating abuse. It was I, who saw these evils and limited only physical violence by the guards as my intervention while allowing psychological violence to fill our dungeon prison. By trapping myself in the conflicting roles of researcher and prison superintendent, I was overwhelmed with their dual demands, which dimmed my focus on the suffering taking place before my eyes. I too was thus guilty of the evil of inaction. . . . At the level of nation-states, this inaction, when action is required, allows mass murder and genocide to flourish, as it did in Bosnia and Rwanda and has been doing more recently in Darfur. Nations, like individuals, often don’t want to get involved and also deny the seriousness of the threat and the need for immediate action. They also are ready to believe the propaganda of the rulers over the pleas of the victims. In addition, there often are internal pressures on decision makers from those who ‘do business there’ to wait it out.” He rightly points it out that “our usual take on evil focuses on the violent, destructive actions of perpetrators, but the failure to act can also be a form of evil, when helping, dissent, disobedience, or whistle-blowing are required. One of the most critical, least acknowledged contributors to evil goes beyond the protagonists of harm to the silent chorus who look but do not see, who hear but do not listen. Their silent presence at the scene of evil doings makes the hazy line between good and evil even fuzzier.” V Authority and organisational setting are the powerful personal and impersonal enemies of man, for they are capable of compelling him to override his moral reasoning and ignore his personal judgement. Social pressures, applied on him by a group whose part a man is, is yet another influential enemy of morality and autonomy of man. In addition to our everyday experience which suggests that it is not unusual to be led or silenced by group, there are several experimental studies that establish our vulnerability to group beliefs and inclination for consensus and unanimity. A subtle, silent, and invisible social pressure exerted by group on the decisions of an individual is most vividly revealed in the famous experiments of Solomon Asch carried out in 1950s. In fact, Asch was critical of Muzafer Sherif whose experimental research had earlier suggested that individuals would usually prefer conformity over autonomy. Asch did not believe it, so he set up his own experiment to methodically prove it otherwise. In the end, his research reached the same conclusion—that people value conformity more than their autonomy. It is

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indeed surprising to see in the film of his experiments as to how irrationally people follow group and do what others do just to be in the safety of herd. While we are surprised to see others behaving as they did in these experiments, this is exactly what most of us do all the time without even being aware of our tendency towards group conformity. Most of us think that we are smart and independent but research proves it otherwise and portrays us not much different from the groups of orderly ants or chaotic wildebeests mindlessly following each other. It is a problem and in order to retain our autonomy and safeguard morality, we need to understand why do we fall for conformity. “In studies of social clubs and other small groups,” writes Janis, “conformity pressures have frequently been observed. Whenever a member says something that sounds out of line with the group’s norms, the other members at first increase their communication with the deviant. Attempts to influence the nonconformist member to revise or tone down his dissident ideas continue as long as most members of the group feel hopeful about talking him into changing his mind. But if they fail after repeated attempts, the amount of communication they direct toward the deviant decreases markedly. The members begin to exclude him, often quite subtly at first and later more obviously, in order to restore the unity of the group.” He refers to the experiments of American psychologist Stanley Schachter which “showed that the more cohesive the group and the more relevant the issue to the goals of the group, the greater is the inclination of the members to reject a nonconformist. Just as the members insulate themselves from outside critics who threaten to disrupt the unity and esprit de corps of their group, they take steps, often without being aware of it, to counteract the disruptive influence of inside critics who are attacking the group’s norms.” Given the way we behave, it is not difficult to comprehend why a man feels safe in a herd as a conforming individual and why he experiences anxiety and perceives insecurity when standing up to a group he is a part of. This is, perhaps, the way humans have been behaving since time immemorial—so much so that we might just have been hardwired for group conformity. Zimbardo cites a new research study led by American neuroscientist Gregory Berns on group conformity which used functional magnetic resonance imaging technology to locate the regions of brain which are affected when going with or against group. It reveals that while conformity is not discomforting, nonconformity “creates an emotional burden for those who maintain their independence—autonomy comes at a psychic cost. . . . The lead author of this research, the neuroscientist Gregory Berns, concluded that ‘We like to



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think that seeing is believing, but the study’s findings show that seeing is believing what the group tells you to believe.’ This means that other people’s views, when crystallized into a group consensus, can actually affect how we perceive important aspects of the external world, thus calling into question the nature of truth itself. It is only by becoming aware of our vulnerability to social pressure that we can begin to build resistance to conformity when it is not in our best interest to yield to the mentality of the herd.” Zimbardo sums up why we conform. “We conform first out of informational needs: other people often have ideas, views, perspectives, and knowledge that helps us to better navigate our world, especially through foreign shores and new ports. The second mechanism involves normative needs: other people are more likely to accept us when we agree with them than when we disagree, so we yield to their view of the world, driven by a powerful need to belong, to replace differences with similarities.” At times, it is also pragmatic and beneficial to conform to group in addition to fulfilling internal psychological needs. A man may also yield to group due to the fear of social isolation or retribution because penalty may not be limited to emotional stress. Rewards and punishments for concurrence and defiance can be given by a group in both formal and informal manners and nonconformity may have financial, social, psychological, and physical costs and consequences. An awareness of both the benefits of acceptance and the costs of rejection by group causes a man to conform to group; it is not always grounded in the benign intangible emotional needs of man to belong for being a social animal. Effects of cohesiveness and conformity on the morality of man are deleterious. Janis asserts, “My observations of military combat units indicate that social pressures in cohesive groups can have favourable effects on morale and unfavourable effects on compliance with organizational standards of ethical conduct.” He states, “During the chaotic period following the end of World War II, many small cohesive units among the American occupying forces developed norms that were counter to those of the military organization and to the society at large; this development facilitated collective delinquent behavior.” He notes that the members of cohesive groups “tend to evolve informal norms to preserve friendly intragroup relations and these become part of the hidden agenda at their meetings.” Janis later crystallised his observations into the phenomenon of groupthink caused by the conforming behaviours of members in small cohesive groups. Groupthink is “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.” It “refers to

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a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgement that results from in-group pressures.” It is “conducive to errors in decision-making, and such errors increase the likelihood of a poor outcome. Often the result is a fiasco, but not always” because sometimes, success is delivered by chance and serendipity does exist, after all. After meticulously studying five major disasters of decision-making in the terms of five American presidents, Janis formulates that “the more amiability and esprit de corps among the members of a policy-making in-group, the greater is the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and dehumanizing actions directed against out-groups.” In the context of conformity dynamics, a ‘group’ is that part of group which imposes its will on others and makes them to agree with its beliefs and ideas. It can be an authority, a dominant minority, or an unrelenting majority—any one of these forces can create an illusion of consensus and unanimity by silencing or shelving the beliefs and ideas of other members. Some members may suspend their independent judgement to go along with the powers that be to achieve greater success in life that brings more personal wealth and power to them, some may concede to avoid conflict and harm in order to retain positions and power they have already achieved in life, and the rest may just follow herd rather intuitively. It is not very difficult to achieve a false consensus in organisation but it is very difficult to fight against it and prevent it from happening. Occurrence of false consensus and illusion of unanimity can only be resisted by the force of morality unleashed by the character of men. I recommend the inclusion of Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes by Irving Janis in the training syllabus of hostage rescue organisation. A short film compiled by Heroic Imagination Project on the classic group conformity experiment of Solomon Asch should also be shown to recruits, which starts with a brief introduction by Philip Zimbardo followed by the original footage of experiment (see Asch Conformity Experiment, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyDDyT1lDhA). VI In the previous chapters, it was discussed that the individual members of a hostage rescue organisation must acquire expertise in different relevant domains and they must build various expert teams specialising in these domains for delivering sustained effective performance; that merely domain expertise and expert teams are not enough to resolve a complex terrorist crisis with



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minimal loss, for such resolution in such a crisis is not possible without these men possessing the moral character of rescuer. In this chapter, we have discussed the dangers of organisational life and how external forces can easily confine and quarantine the conscience of men and also degenerate many of them into sheer monsters; only the men of moral character can be expected to ward off the corrupting influence of organisational pathology. Both perspectives underscore a crucial and decisive role played by the morality of men in hostage rescue, thus making it our foremost concern. But morality is a gargantuan problem, exceedingly difficult to overcome. We know that the participants of experimental studies discussed above had voluntarily approached and agreed to play certain roles by certain rules defined by experimenters for a payment. Members of an organisation are similarly selected from among those who voluntarily approach it and agree to play certain roles by the rules of organisation for a salary. There is, then, no reasonable basis for us to assume that the members of organisation would behave differently from the subjects of experiments when faced with a moral predicament in real life. We can also draw the same conclusion differently. For experimenters had carefully selected their subjects to represent general populace, we can say that there is empirical evidence to suggest that the moral foundations of general population are indeed weak. As it is the same population which supplies members to social organisations, it is more likely that the morality of a majority of members cannot stand the test of time and circumstances. A key axiom, then, is that a man is not morally reliable unless there are reasons to believe otherwise. This seems to be true for all cultures and societies in this day and age at least. Reasons for our moral weakness are not difficult to figure out. Our knowledge of morality is vague and subjective. Most of us pick up morality in the course of growing up, in an unorganised manner through the bits and pieces of our scattered and fragmented experiences. Nowhere moral education is a part of adult education programme; it is not taught in a formal and systematic way in institutional settings as other subjects and skills are taught. There is no dedicated discipline, specialised department, or expert teachers of morality in colleges, academies, and universities as we have in mathematics and physics, history and geography. Religion, which is a major source of moral inspiration, distorts it to serve its own interests and perpetuate order. Anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists present it as they find it in society and philosophers debate what it ought to be. It remains a side dish for all. As a result, most of us cannot even define morality, can neither identify moral values clearly nor differentiate between them. Passing manner and

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casual way in which morality is imbibed and internalised by us, I believe, is a reason for our moral weakness. Another reason for our weak commitment to moral values can be found in our experience which paradoxically suggests that there is not much need or usefulness of morality in the system of rewards in our social life. Success in terms of wealth, power, and fame is most valued but there is hardly any evidence to suggest that moral values are necessary for achieving success in life—our icons and role models who epitomise success are all too often wanting in morality. Adult life of a man, thus, remains largely bereft of moral education and does not much inculcate morality in him. When some moral lessons are given in childhood, most of us are driven by innate selfishness, are too tender to resist temptations and fears, and tend to compromise easily. It is also not unusual for a child to find that the teachings of morality are not cogent, for they are not congruent with the behaviours of teachers and parents and what is taught is not truly practiced by adults. Society and system thus consistently fail to convince most of us to lead a moral life from childhood through adulthood and populate the world full of men and women whose morality is fragile and moral reasoning weak. That most people are morally fragile is bad news but good news is that some can still resist and beat all the lures and fears of situational forces and authority. This is my take on the experiments of social psychology which have made heartening revelation that not all people succumb to the commands of authority and powerful situational pressures. Moral compromises of a man, we can argue, do not indicate the absence of morality in him; they only suggest the absence of his moral reliability—all the more so in confusing and overwhelming situations where he must face the test of character. If there is any moral awareness in a man that imparts a sense of right and wrong through moral reasoning, he always has some will to do what is right. Problem is that the force of his moral will is proportionate to the strength of his commitment to moral beliefs. It implies that a weak commitment to morality is overpowered by some other powerful considerations while a staunch moral commitment overpowers all other competing considerations. It explains why in the face of malevolent authority and overwhelming situations when most people give in and succumb to the temptations and compulsions of command and circumstances, few are still able to stand up to all pressures and do what is right—owing to their unwavering commitment to moral beliefs and primacy accorded to moral reasoning. Morality affirmed by moral reasoning and rationality backed by pragmatic reasoning exist together and compete with each other; finally, one of them prevails and determines the actions of man in a difficult situation. Behaviour of a man in such situations



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is the proof of his morality and establishes his moral credibility in the eyes of others. For no man is born with morality but learns it instead while growing up, social settings play a decisive role in the development and display of his moral character. Affirmative and favourable social settings create enabling conditions while negative and unfavourable social settings create inhibiting conditions for building and consolidating the moral character of man. If the crucial social settings of family and society are not in control and only organisational setting remains somewhat in control, all efforts must be made here to impart morality and inculcate moral virtues. But the development of moral character of its members does not seem to be among the primary concerns and priorities of organisations. Those who create and control them believe that organisations can do well without having to do anything with the intrinsic force of morality. Many people, especially in authoritative positions, believe that the obligation of members to play their roles is purchased by money. We often hear them say, “You are paid to do this.” There are those who believe that since members have chosen freely to play their roles, they must fulfil their obligations. They often say, “You made a choice to do this.” Some believe that the obligation of members of organisation is enforced by a legal contract signed by them and they can be forced to do what organisation wants. They quite often warn, “You will bloody well do as told.” Such notions are not incorrect but insufficient. Purchasing power of money is limited and there are things it cannot buy. A choice made under the influence of past circumstances and presumptions may not look relevant and right in the altered conditions of the present. A legal contract always turns out to be a trap of sweeping conditions, hidden terms, and unforeseen consequences. All these recipes are, therefore, good only for securing a minimal, average, and half-hearted commitment; it is beyond their capacity to extract an absolute and unshakable commitment of members to achieve organisational goals. And, none of them can intrinsically motivate individuals for ideal role playing on behalf of organisation especially where it entails existential risks. For the morality of man is the most crucial and decisive force in mass hostage rescue, we have argued, a hostage rescue organisation built to resolving complex terrorist crises cannot be raised and run by such mechanical mindset of mediocre bureaucratic systems. It requires a flourishing social environment for human beings who are carved by favourable abstractions and beliefs, by desirable thoughts and emotions. It needs a culture of continuous learning for excellence and needs conditions for leading a virtuous life of moral commitment.

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A man is made of his beliefs which then regulate his thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. A man can modify his thoughts, feelings, and behaviours by replacing undesirable and consolidating desirable old beliefs and internalising desirable new beliefs. Organisation can play a critical role in this transformational process of human engineering. It can impart moral education to its members and strengthen their morality through sustained efforts guided by a structured educational programme and an enabling culture that allows moral life to flourish. It can create an ethical environment oriented towards learning to realising maximum human potential by means of boundless adaptation driven by self. Not family, not society, but organisation can make a man the man of morality. And, organisation by building his moral character can salvage a man “caught up in the crucible of social forces.” But such organisation itself has to be designed and built differently. VII Let us discuss certain conceptual basis for designing and engineering organisational culture and environment before putting forth a framework of ideal social setting for a hostage rescue organisation. We know that moral values guide a man’s moral choices and behaviours in terms of what is good, right, permissible, and what is not. Apart from values, there are also norms which prescribe the sanctioned behaviours of a man in social settings. Norms are derived from the set of moral values which are affirmed by an organisation. All organisational norms, formal or informal, stated or tacit, then, ought to emanate from and must be consistent with the shared moral values of organisation. Any behaviour which cannot be justified in terms of upholding a moral value of organisation or its cooperating value cannot be called normative. Norms are the specific prescriptions of desirable and appropriate behaviours which put together a code of conduct that each member of an organisation is expected to follow. Problem is that all norms of behaviours cannot be prescribed, for there are countless situations which the members of organisation have to face and deal with every day. But that does not create an intractable problem, for so long as actions are congruent with organisational values, they are considered normative. In moral values lies the rationale of all norms and a member can easily clear up confusion caused by the absence of norms in a situation by banking upon moral values for guidance. It creates a real bind only when an organisation fails to clearly define and propagate its core moral values and advocates only a code of conduct instead, however well meaning and elaborate it might be. Its members, then, do not have a set of values to fall back on in grey situations where prescribed code is silent.



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In addition to values and norms, there are certain beliefs which are often visible and valued in organisational settings guiding people’s behaviours but they cannot be classified as values or norms. For instance, we have a general inclination acquired, perhaps, in the course of evolution to obey, comply, conform, and be loyal in our social life. These notions are valued in all societies. While human social organisation rests on such notions, they cannot be called behavioural norms or moral values, when standing alone, for there is nothing in them which is intrinsically good and, hence, necessarily desirable. I believe that notions such as obedience, compliance, conformity, loyalty, unity, and so forth should be better seen as morally neutral, which have a bright side and also a dark side. These notions are desirable, good, and right when grounded in morality, serve its ends, and become the character strengths of a virtuous man. Their nature is vicious and they are the vices of men who serve the ends of evil. While their bright side is praiseworthy and laudable, the dark side of notions such as obedience, compliance, conformity, loyalty, and unity is morally undesirable, impermissible, bad, and wrong. Each organisation affirms and values, promotes and propagates such morally neutral notions for guiding the behaviours of its members. These notions are valued in the social life of organisation and create favourable and enabling conditions for its members to achieve organisational goals. A consistent emphasis and continuous practice eventually embed these valued notions in the culture and environment of organisation. While this is not entirely correct, for no notion or idea exists outside of human mind, we do get an unmistakable sense of their existence in a place where they do. Valued notions exist in the minds of people but manifest in the interpersonal exchange and interactions of social life, thus appearing to exist in social environment instead. VIII Six moral values I have selected and defined for a rescuer in the previous chapter are also the core moral values of a hostage rescue organisation. We know, a moral value mostly cannot stand alone and it must cooperate with several other associated values which shore it up in practice and make it fully functional. These six core values, thus, build an intricate matrix of moral values which, when taken together and seen as a whole, convey the morality of a hostage rescue organisation and also of its members. Besides core moral values and behavioural norms derived from them, an organisation needs certain valued notions too. Valued notions are needed to facilitate social life within organisation. They are imperative, for they act as lubricants and make the narrow and frictional pathways of interpersonal

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interactions and social exchange slick and easy for its members carrying the burden of morality. These notions are the strands of culture that bind and anchor moral values everywhere in social space. They keep the path of morality clear for the movement of its practitioners by removing many an egotist roadblock, group resistance, and personal animosity, which are otherwise generated by the idealist actions of man. These valued notions are, therefore, essential for an organisation to create a culture and environment that facilitates and helps its moral values to become the moral virtues of its members and allows virtuous men to flourish in life. Valued notions, however, are not needed by a hostage rescue organisation just to underpin and nurture the morality of its men; they are also required to make its culture congruent with its purpose and goal from a morally neutral perspective. Let us understand it why. Purpose of a hostage rescue organisation here is to resolve a complex terrorist crisis with minimal loss. We have earlier discussed the character of a complex terrorist crisis and its core elements of opacity, ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity. Events in a complex terrorist crisis are ongoing, evolving, and ever-changing. Crisis situation aggressively reacts to and with all internal and external elements and stimuli. Its complexity is not a given like an intricate machine but akin to an interactive organism; it is, thus, better conceptualised as a dynamic-reactive complexity. It is impossible to find the truth about such a situation, for it has, perhaps, no truth or, to put it differently, its ‘truth’ changes with time. We can only look for a few factual ingredients in its recipe as the rest is cooked by dynamic-reactive human interactions. When facing a complex situation, therefore, we must strive not to find the truth as to what it exactly is but to make a sense, to gather a workable understanding and acceptable certainty of situation to begin acting, and to calibrate our actions not only to control it but also to probe it at the same time to make more sense of it as we go after it. In other words, a workable certainty is good enough to start acting in an environment of dynamic-reactive complexity that cannot be understood, for it is not only largely unknown but it cannot be known; it changes continuously depending on interactions between its elements and environment—so much so that it can go anywhere and become anything. Action taken in such a situation has two distinct purposes—to begin solving problem and to understand it further. The interface and interactions of responders with the unknown refines the understanding of situation and enables them to make both reactive and anticipatory adaptations through feedback in the course of action. Goal and intent of action are, thus, clear but its direction and details remain uncertain; they are decided there and then.



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I must re-emphasise that a situation of dynamic-reactive complexity cannot be understood completely because it is not complete until it ends. Diagnosis and prognosis, then, must evolve together. We understand it as we resolve it, we know about it as we go into it, and we deal with it as we go for it. We must be aware that ‘this’ is only our current, not complete, understanding of situation. We should not be surprised if new information changes our understanding drastically or even entirely. We may prove to be wrong at any point in time but we must be ready to adapt rapidly to be right in the end. Action and comprehension must go together without a sense of finality in an ongoing situation, so we must update, revise, and adapt repeatedly until the end. But our quest does not end with the resolution of crisis, for we must review events yet again soon after operation to understand why we could not see things earlier and grasp events better when they were actually unfolding. It is imperative to accept and admit that our understanding of a complex situation before it ends is nothing but provisional and might just remain incomplete, even after it has ended. And, we cannot do anything about it. In order to resolve a situation of dynamic-reactive complexity, we must do things differently. First, we look for signals which make a pattern; then, we look for signs that break that pattern. We want to know what makes sense and also what defies it. We seek and not ignore anomalies, we incorporate and not discard aberrations, and we welcome not detest contradictions. A search for the signs of pattern disruption is as important as a need for pattern construction. This converse method of enquiry is essential for error management in the human judgement of a complex problem. To grasp, grapple with, and solve such a complex problem, we need to make a series of inferences and assumptions to fill the gaps in available information and plot the missing dots of picture. It is best done when we have access to a variety and multiplicity of ideas, imaginations, suggestions, opinions, viewpoints, and perspectives that might even be inconsistent with and contrary to each other. While dealing with such a control defying situation, we have to stay coherent, control our emotions, work together, and believe in our ability to win. We have to have a hope that soon we would overcome all challenges and a belief that there lies a moment in the near future when this would be over, for nothing lasts forever and all crises get resolved in the end. A complex terrorist crisis is not only uncertain in its character as discussed above but it is also uncertain in its occurrence. Possibility of its emergence remains open and unknown and it hits unannounced any moment like an earthquake. Such crisis, thus, warrants a protracted wait and prolonged patience with all round preparedness and full readiness at all times.

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In sum, a complex terrorist crisis means an uncertainty of occurrence and events as well as a complexity of situational dynamics. All this is expected to happen when it happens. Therefore, while a hostage rescue organisation appears to be dealing with the unexpected, the unexpected is what is expected and organisation is expected to face and fix the unexpected. It is all about handling the unexpected and controlling the unknown. This paradox in our context renders word ‘unexpected’ rather meaningless by sapping its commonplace sense. An awareness of this contextual complexity in a hostage rescue organisation is imperative right from the laying of its foundation until ever after. Problem of defining a complex situation and finding the better and faster ways of its resolution is best solved by drawing upon and tapping the strengths, abilities, ideas, imaginations, and actions of all members of organisation and not of just a few in the positions of authority or in their proximity. A culture of freedom and equality, thus, becomes indispensable to the social environment of a hostage rescue organisation. A culture of freedom and equality needs certain valued notions without which it cannot exist. Valued notions of social life, we can say, are defined by the values and goal of organisation. In turn, they shore up its core moral values and undergird its readiness to realise organisational goal. IX Doubt is a first valued notion of a hostage rescue organisation. MerriamWebster’s Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary defines ‘doubt’ as “a feeling of being uncertain or unsure about something.” This definition captures the very essence of a complex terrorist crisis and, therefore, it is absolutely imperative to doubt the definition of situation and also opinions given by people about it. Given the nature of human culture and society which are founded on believing, an organisation has to carefully cultivate people for doubting instead. If it is not done by organisation and members are left on their own, they are more likely to believe than doubt. Q uest for discovering the reality and dispelling illusions is propelled by the notion of doubt. In order to doubt with reason, a man has to rely on his own assessment and independent judgement of a situation; at the same time he has to be careful and cautious about his own understanding too. It is desirable and good to self-doubt, that is, to take some time to understand a problem in hand and avoid the rush of simplicity and finality. It is good to listen to others and see things from their standpoints too but



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at the same time it is essential not to suspend your own intelligence and judgement. To doubt is not to disagree necessarily but to be independent and autonomous in your agreement or disagreement. To doubt is not to disbelieve or disregard another person but to believe in yourself and stand by your own fair judgement. To doubt is to look for all variables and determinants and find all probable relationships. To doubt is to see through what is obvious and apparent and visible to all on the surface. To doubt is to get to the depths of conjuncture to discover what lies buried underneath it. To doubt is to remain open to new and novel that might hitherto be somehow unseen, unrevealed, and unknown. To doubt is to be ready to change and adapt. To doubt is to be aware that you might not be correct and others might not be correct too. Moral values that enable and empower a man to doubt, and let others doubt too, are respect—which incorporates self-respect—integrity, humility, honesty, fairness, and courage. Value attached to the notion of doubt, in turn, constructs a supportive environment for the practitioners of these moral values in social exchange. It is the responsibility of organisation to encourage and facilitate its members to doubt because to doubt is good and desirable, so long as it is done to uphold moral values and attain the goal of organisation. For being good and desirable, doubt has to be based on reason and intelligence and not on emotions and passions. For this, members have to see things clearly, listen to others attentively, and ponder fair-mindedly before saying something. No member who values doubt can presume that his opinion is final and must, therefore, be accepted. While members ought to believe in themselves, at the same time they should generally stay away from claiming big and betting high. Bragging and boasting is contrariety, the converse of doubt, and cannot be good; it devalues the notion of doubt and creates conditions conducive to moral and intellectual blindness. Members of a hostage rescue organisation are trained to deal with complexity; they doubt to continue their search for certainty. Certainty is not there in complexity and uncertainty does not permit tall claims and big bets about a complex situation. Purpose of doubt is to understand a difficult problem clearly and solve it early by working collectively. It allows a group to reap the benefits of variety of ideas, richness of imaginations, and diversity of perspectives. It thwarts any attempts to create false unanimity, premature consensus, and forced agreement, which are neither necessary nor desirable in an organisation made to deal with complex crises.

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X Notion of doubt cannot be valued in a social setting without valuing the notion of question, for a doubt is expressed and shared by asking question. To doubt and to question are complementary; they make each other meaningful and lose their desirable purpose if not followed or preceded by one another. In a hostage rescue organisation, the notion of question must be valued because a question seeks more information for greater clarity, it is necessary to question in order to probe, and a probe is necessary to make sense of the unknown. In this sense, it is imperative to question when dealing with a complex problem. It is good and desirable to question in complex situations. Listening carefully to what others are saying and understanding their ideas in a way they do are the most important requirements of working in a group to solve a complex problem. A man who is preoccupied with his own ideas and thoughts remains in an attentional loop and fails to allocate his attentional resource to things others are trying to tell; he hears but does not listen, so to speak. Such self-obsession or self-occupation is antithetical to the very idea of question. All members must, therefore, learn to pay serious attention to each question and take all questions in good spirit and positive sense. By showing things in a different light and opening new lines and corners for enquiry, questions give an opportunity to explore more and explain further, which makes a better sense of events and ideas. By questioning, others only assist a man to dig deeper and improve further; their questions bring greater clarity and more certainty in the end. A member should, therefore, not only welcome questions but also actively seek them from fellow members. A man who values question does not self-censor his doubt either. He instead shares it with others, even if he is not asked to do so. Concerning organisational matters, there should be nothing that is known but cannot be shared with group members, nothing that can be shared later but not now, and nothing that can be shared with an outsider but not with group members. An illusion of unanimity can be created by self-censorship; both are bad and undesirable. No one needs to be right if the fear of being wrong is what stops one from speaking out; in matters of uncertainty, we do not search for definitive answers and correct explanations, for there are none at that point in time. We only strive to make sense of the unknown. All views in a complex situation are the outcomes of guesswork; all forecasts and projections are but the estimations of the reality, including those which in hindsight appear quite correct, for the reality itself is in the making in real time and, thus, cannot be known.



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It is the responsibility of person asking a question and also of person to whom a question is directed to follow and display a serious approach to problem-solving, which is the very purpose of this notion and for which it is valued. Firstly, the integrity of notion of question must be maintained by a man who is asking question. A need and desire to question must be felt internally and independently by him after giving a matter some thought in order to know more or to add more. No question shall be asked for the sake of asking it. No question that resides in mind shall be ignored or suppressed if there is an honest desire and genuine need for it. No question shall be asked with an intention only to expose, discredit, or run down someone. No question shall be asked for self-promotion and self-service, just to draw attention for gaining prominence. Once asked, it is the responsibility of person to whom a question is directed to give it a full attention and answer it with appropriate spirit and correct information. No question shall be ignored or berated if asked. No person shall be ridiculed and belittled for asking a question. It is not necessary to answer a question if you cannot answer it but, then say so and admit that you do not know instead of bluffing or deflecting. To prove a point is not the purpose of this valued notion. It is there to understanding a complex situation better and finding a workable solution sooner by working together. Human context is highly sensitive to stimuli which activate emotional responses. Art of phrasing and asking question, therefore, assumes a great significance in social life. A doubt can be expressed, a probe can be made, and information can be sought in several different ways, which might offend or enthuse a person to whom it is directed in varying degrees. While a question should generally be brief, clear, original, direct, and relevant, its construction and presentation in the choice of words, syntax, and tone should be inquisitive, calm, and respectful and the body language of questioner should be engaging. Loudness of voice, dramatic gestures, repeated interruption, not having an eye contact, communicating a sense of inattention, and more besides during a question-answer interaction can vitiate a friendly atmosphere and generate negative emotions, even among the best of friends by conveying a message of aggression, indifference, or contempt. Both verbal and nonverbal communication skills are, therefore, necessary. To give an idea of the art of talking, listening, asking questions, creating doubts, and presenting counterpoints in a friendly environment, I am inclined to recommend a reading of The Dialogues of Plato. Although it gives an impression of endless philosophical discussion done leisurely which does not fit in the context of crisis, it nevertheless gives an idea as to how a challenging discussion can

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be carried on for a long duration in a polite and civilised manner. I must caution, however, that the focus of reading should be on the manner of framing sentences and on the way of asking and answering questions and not necessarily on the contents of book, if that does not interest a reader. For a limited purpose of style of asking question, this classical piece may be made a part of training curriculum and taught to the new members of organisation by someone who understands its purpose well and is able to impart the skills of conversation through these remarkably sophisticated and amazing dialogues. Several scholars have translated this classical text into English from Greek but one I prefer and recommend is translated by British academician Benjamin Jowett. Besides, I also recommend The Art of Socratic Questioning by Richard Paul and Linda Elder which could be used as its companion for training individuals in the art of asking questions. Moral values which enable and empower a man to question and to answer when questioned are responsibility, integrity, honesty, fairness, humility, respect, and courage, among others. Valued notion of question, on its part, creates an environment conducive to practicing these moral values in social life. Where the notion of question is valued, new information and ideas are shared freely, frankly, and proactively. For it is good and desirable to question when it is done within the bounds of morality and to realise the goal of organisation, an organisation must encourage its members to question, teach them why it is good to question, and also how to question. Idea of question, however, is not aimed at and limited to others but it incorporates and is applied as much to self when valued. A man, thus, must know when to question himself, that it is good and desirable to question himself, and he must question his own intellect and morality, behaviour and affect when necessary. Doubting and questioning are the tools of establishing the truth and exposing lies. Those who dislike and discourage these notions are the agents and practitioners of lie. XI Notions of doubt and question cannot be valued and practiced in the absence of notion of tolerance. Tolerance is valued in a hostage rescue organisation in a sense that is defined by the above Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as “willingness to accept feelings, habits, or beliefs that are different from your own.” There are two aspects of tolerance—intellectual and cultural. Intellectual tolerance provides freedom and space for different ideas and thoughts. Cultural tolerance allows a harmonious coexistence of different ways of life.



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A tolerance for contrary opinions and opposite viewpoints is absolutely essential in a hostage rescue organisation which deals with the unknown, uncertain and unpredictable. A rescuer must override and overcome the negative influence of vicious emotions such as arrogance, anger, jealousy, fear, disappointment, sadness, anxiety, insecurity, and more besides when facing opposing views and difficult questions that might prove him wrong. Negative emotions disorient, distract, and confuse a man and make him vulnerable and dysfunctional. They block his access to reason and make a man to behave unreasonably and react irrationally. A man who values, practices, and internalises intellectual tolerance, on the other hand, achieves a stable state of composure and does not lose his cool and control when his ideas are challenged by others and he finds himself in a tight corner. His focus and attention remains on his thoughts all the same and he is able to think clearly and judge to the best of his intellectual ability. Valued notion of tolerance, thus, makes a rescuer resilient; he stays calm and remains focussed on understanding and resolving a complex crisis. Intellectual tolerance is grounded in awareness that no human being is perfect and infallible and so do I. I must, then, listen to and learn from what others have to say, for they might have some information that I have missed out and ideas that I could not think of. A tolerance for counterpoints and contrary views imparts a positive and creative outlook to problem-solving in a group. It makes members to accept, listen to, and work with each other amiably. Members of a hostage rescue organisation must show tolerance, for no one is omniscient, the dark side of a complex problem which they deal with is often not visible to everyone, and it could be just anyone who could somehow stumble upon the structure of complexity buried deep beneath its noise. By keeping them flexible and ready to change their previous views and positions in the light of new information, the notion of tolerance makes men and organisation adaptive—a sine qua non for this job. It keeps interpersonal bonds strong even in an atmosphere of critical enquiry and intellectual frankness. It develops synergy among members working in a group and maintains team spirit without suppressing the autonomy of individuals, thus bringing out the best in each member of group and also the best of them together as a group. In a larger context of organisational dynamics, the valued notion of tolerance does a great deal of service. It allows a conversation to proceed smoothly and progress meaningfully. It removes the possibilities of dominating, dictating, subverting, hijacking, or halting a discussion by an individual or a clique due to dark emotions, personal vices, and power play. Notion of tolerance also

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effectively limits the role of authority to directing and moderating discussions under the constraints of situation and time alone. Participants on their own behave and discuss in a restrained, responsible, and reasonable manner and it does not need an authority to maintain order and civility in a group. Given the decency of social exchange, authority is not given an opportunity by members to boss around, to shut people up, shout them down, or keep someone in his place. Authority, thus, does not get a chance to assert and space to develop a malevolent character to which its power naturally dips and drifts. Besides teaching and making them to value intellectual tolerance, organisation must mould and require its members to value cultural tolerance too. Cultural tolerance has a far greater significance in diverse multi-ethnic societies. In such societies, the members of organisation come from different ethnic stocks and cultural backgrounds, they have different ways of life and mannerisms, and they naturally bring their cultural baggage into organisational space. Such a place, then, develops a considerable potential for bad communication that might generate interpersonal strain and conflict as in social exchange, members might send unintended messages to each other if signals are interpreted differently and judged by different cultural yardsticks. In such a complicated and sensitive human situation, organisation has to strike a balance between the opposing needs of teaching new members its own way of life and tolerating their ways of life at the same time. Organisation has to show and advocate tolerance for cultural plurality in order to accommodate all members as they are, for the process of acculturation takes a long time. On the other hand, it must strive to achieve a workable cultural uniformity and reduce confusing cultural diversity by a continuous training and mentoring of new members for the modification of their variegated beliefs and behaviours. Organisation is responsible for providing an amiable environment to sensitive human beings to let them live and work with each other in harmony. Such harmonious state needs a standard worldview and a code of behaviour for social life so that people are able to understand and appreciate each other better and avoid interpersonal frictions in social exchange, which vitiate social life by causing hard feelings, hostilities, and animosities. This is the very purpose of culture—to know and trust one another—and every organisation must create its own culture with great care and total responsibility. Most interpersonal problems are addressed and resolved by shared morality taught by organisation. However, a more technical problem of language remains which needs to be dealt with separately. In order to avoid a misrepresentation or breakdown of communication between members and prevent regional or



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class consciousness from coalescing, it is imperative that social communication in organisational space is done in a language that all members can understand and speak well. In a multilingual society, the responsibility of standardising a language of communication and teaching it to all members falls on the shoulders of organisation. If that does not happen, a community runs a risk of social fragmentation by failing to prevent the emergence of social divisions crystallised by language such as parallel regional groupings and hierarchical elite and plebeian strata. While a standardisation of language is essential, it must be done with great care and due caution in view of its sensitivity. A standard language of organisation may be the mother tongue of some members and not of others. It is, therefore, a challenge to deal with the problem of common language in a diverse society. A reasonable approach to solve this problem is to find and work with what is most practical and easiest and what works best for all instead of following an ideological line. In a mixed language society which does not have a purist preference to language and uses a multilingual vocabulary instead, an organisation can do better by standardising words, phrases, and technical jargon and insisting that all members draw upon the same linguistic resources for communication. Such standardisation would facilitate communication and coexistence in organisational life without having to rely on an uncorrupted language. A nationalistic fervour attached to language is better avoided individually and collectively since language does have a divisive potential in a plural society. An attempt to pursue a purist approach, moreover, is unnecessary because it often renders communication more incomprehensible and sometimes even ridiculous. Not all languages in the world have evolved with time and some of them may not have technical terms and occupational jargon to communicate the exact meaning and sense of many relevant ideas, subjects, events, situations, systems, and equipments. In such cases, a liberal approach that tolerates the assimilation of vocabulary of another language in vogue, national or international, is wiser, sensible, and advisable. Purpose of language is communication. So long as it is achieved, the origins, character, and form of language does not matter. Politics of identity which mobilises social support in a struggle for power becomes meaningless in a hostage rescue organisation, for it is not a place for playing political games. It has a goal to achieve which is best achieved by the standardisation of general language spoken and understood by most people if not all. Notion of tolerance is the key to solving the problem of language in a multilingual society. A community cannot live in complete isolation in the modern world. For achieving competence, expertise, and excellence and for updating knowledge,

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skills, practices, and procedures, it must reach out to the world and find the best that there is. I, therefore, believe that a reliance of organisation on foreign languages, especially English in our times, is unavoidable. You cannot read this book and many other books which I have referred to if you do not want to do anything with English. It is a fact of our life and the obscurantism of identity politics and blindness caused by parochial passions can neither undo what has happened in the world in the last five centuries nor assist an organisation in achieving and sustaining expertise and excellence in our times. We have to accept and live with what is here and now. And, this is the meaning and message of cultural tolerance. In comparison to language standardisation, the standardisation of operational communication and commands is much more stringent and rigorous with very tight tolerances to leave no room for misrepresentation, misinterpretation, and confusion. So long as message and meaning is clearly communicated to all operators, language really does not matter. There is a catch in this assertion, though. Human behaviour in a life-threatening situation is radically different from normal times. British psychologist John Leach describes a reflexive response to emergency as “stereotypical behaviour” which is “initiated without reflection.” He writes, “When people are suddenly caught in a crisis or emergency or even when they are merely surprised or startled, they frequently respond by falling back on well-learned behaviour patterns no matter how inappropriate these may be to the prevailing circumstances. They perform without reflection.” He explains that the “repetitions of well-learnt behaviour have been frequently observed in people during emergencies. It appears that a person’s repertoire of appropriate behavioural responses to an emergency is dramatically reduced, severely limiting the degree of behavioural flexibility. In extreme cases the person may become locked into a stereotypical response thus repeating the same error again and again. During the early 1970s in offshore diving operations there was a tendency for diving teams to be made up from different nationalities. The diving companies turned away from this approach when it was discovered that divers who found themselves in difficulties, and sometimes became just mildly anxious, would begin speaking rapidly in their native tongue, a language which was often not spoken by the diving supervisor. This response compounded the difficulties and dangers.” This will remain a challenge to deal with in a multilingual society anyway because different people have different mother tongues and organisation has to rely on a lingua franca for interoperability between them. Leach, however, has not only pointed out a problem but also indicated its solution, for people tend to fall back on well learnt or stereotypical behaviour in crisis situations. Problem can, thus, be solved to an extent by repetitive practice



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in stressful conditions that causes a deeper assimilation and internalisation of operational phrases and makes standard operational communication a well learnt or stereotypical behaviour. Then, perhaps, standard communication protocols would not be disengaged from his awareness and remain accessible to a man for a sudden recall during a crisis. Notion of tolerance is scaffolded by the moral values of respect, humility, responsibility, and fairness, among others. Tolerance, in turn, shores up these virtues in social space and creates a flourishing culture and environment in organisation. Due to these reasons, it is imperative for a hostage rescue organisation to advocate and cultivate tolerance by and for all members, irrespective of their roles and positions in organisational structure. XII Transparency is a valued notion in the social life of a hostage rescue organisation, for transparency is a sine qua non for creating a culture of trust and a complex terrorist crisis cannot be resolved efficiently and accurately if rescuers do not trust each other. But trust is hard to build and easy to lose. What is trust? How does a man begin to trust another man? A man becomes trustworthy by means of transparency, by establishing that he tells what he feels and does what he thinks. If he is not transparent, a man cannot be known and, thus, cannot be trusted. Transparency of behaviours, thoughts, and emotions is essential for gaining trust. It is perpetually needed thereafter for sustaining trust, for though it takes a long time to gain, trust can be lost almost instantaneously. Experiences which build trust revolve around words such as reliability, dependability, and predictability. A man is considered dependable by another person if he is reliably predictable in terms of goals and interests which both of them share and work for and also if he can be predicted to ensure the well-being of that person. In other words, you can trust a man only if you know him in terms of his core beliefs that shape his thoughts, feelings, and behaviours and if you believe that he shall act in furtherance of shared goals and common interests and he shall neither harm your personal well-being nor shall act against your legitimate and rightful interests. A totality of this belief held by a man about another man is his trust in that man. How a man can trust his organisation, or any organisation, for that matter? When members trust each other, they also trust their organisation. In general, the sum total of a man’s trust in all members of organisation becomes his trust in organisation. In human terms, there is nothing beyond people in organisation.

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Valued notion of transparency acts at the interface between causal moral beliefs such as responsibility, respect, honesty, integrity, and fairness on the one hand and the resultant belief of trust on the other. Output of trust cannot be gained without the input of moral values. It is so because transparently irresponsible, disrespectful, unfair, and dishonest behaviours cannot yield trust. Transparency is a value neutral notion which is not good in and of itself and cannot achieve right ends independently. It becomes a valued notion only when it is harnessed to serve moral values. Confiding and lying in social life are the signs of distrust. In a group where people do not know each other or they know each other but cannot trust everyone, a culture of confiding and lying emerges naturally. Also, where not all members are considered worthy of knowing everything such as a stratified group founded on the notion of unequal dignity and graded respect of individual members determined by their positions in social hierarchy, confiding and lying in social life becomes commonplace. Both these conditions mostly coexist in a typical modern organisation. Consequently, it is not unusual to experience an underlying distrust in organisational space, impressive codified ideals and professed lofty norms observed on the surface notwithstanding. For two reasons I insist that a hostage rescue unit with the responsibility of resolving a complex terrorist crisis cannot exist as a typical organisation with a culture of confiding and lying. They also explain why a hostage rescue organisation must have an open and transparent culture. Firstly, an absolutist organisation requiring complete cooperation and the supreme sacrifice from its members must provide them a culture of total trust. Discrimination and competition in its social life cannot be permitted due to their countervailing effect on trust. It must realise a state in which all members know each other, believe in each other, and perceive each other trustworthy in all respects of social life. To cementing trust in social life, there are no different ways or short cuts. Human beings are very intelligent and sensitive individuals. They cannot be tricked into trusting others for long without their own repetitious and reinforcing experiences suggesting that they can trust others. At the very most, a man can be convinced of a premise that he needs to trust other members for the sake of accomplishing organisational goal. But the actual consolidation and crystallisation of trust would take a long period of time and it would be brought about only by such recursive experiences during social exchange that establish the trustworthiness of others, both individually and collectively, in his mind. Secondly, if it is people who make organisation and if people are organisation as we have deduced earlier, an organisation must, then, belong to all members equally; no individual or



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group can claim to belong there more. Every member has the same and equal stake in it although their roles are different. For being equal stakeholders in it, all members have the same right to know everything about and relevant to organisation, irrespective of role. Discrimination based on role and position is not permissible also because any violation or compromise of fundamental notion of equality of all members amounts to a negation of morality we have defined earlier for both individual rescuers and hostage rescue organisation. If an open and transparent way of life is a prerequisite for generating trust, then, the malaise of confiding and lying, which is caused by social distancing, differentiation, and discrimination and afflicts modern organisations universally, must be prevented from germinating in the social life of a hostage rescue organisation. There is another reason why transparency is absolutely essential in a hostage rescue organisation. Notion of transparency mandates and permits a free flow of information, ideas, opinions, and feelings. It is necessary not only for knowing each other but also for solving problems collectively. If a complete picture with all known pieces of information is not shared with all members, they cannot understand an ongoing situation completely, interpret emerging events correctly, and form their ideas and opinions properly. Their full potential cannot be tapped in a situation of deliberate opacity created by the negation of transparency. For an organisation which deals with complexity and uncertainty, such a choice is self-defeating. It has no choice but to embrace transparency as a valued notion and create a culture of total transparency. Notion of transparency not only underpins the morality of men but also undermines the pathology of organisation. It puts a restraint on authority, checks malfeasance, prevents malpractices, fights favouritism, and stalls the formation of cliques and competing subgroups within organisation. Interestingly, it stands in the way of a widely acclaimed notion of ‘need to know’ which in the minds of a select few who form an in-group and hold privileged information germinates a feeling of being special and being above all others. Discrimination by ‘need to know’ done in the name of professionalism demoralises the members of out-group formed naturally after the formation of an in-group. It all too often ends up breeding a subterranean organisational politics done through the undercurrents of grapevine, gossiping, posturing, and subverting, which a hostage rescue organisation must never allow and tolerate. For being a means of knowing others, gossip is integral to a human social organisation and to that extent it is acceptable. Gossip is rather necessary in

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a community of rescuers where the virtue of humility does not let individuals self-promote and talk too much about themselves. Notion of transparency, however, defines the nature of gossip and delimits it by permitting positive gossip but forbidding negative gossip. As gossip is done behind someone’s back, nothing that cannot be said to his face should be said behind his back. And, anyone who indulges in a negative gossip should be stopped short and told to sort it out with that man directly for the sake of transparency in social life. Notion of transparency apparently clashes with an essential occupational requirement of a hostage rescue organisation, that is, secrecy. A hostage rescue unit is required to be kept away from the sight and reach of the world. A closed system is essential for operational security which plays a significant role in its success by a denial of information to enemies and taking terrorists by surprise. A contained system is also necessary for the protection and preservation of its moral values and social norms in a practical world that values greed for power, wealth, and fame, chooses excess over temperance, prefers pleasure over sacrifice, and where the end justifies the means. Only a well insulated organisation can flourish and fulfil the ends of its existence. However, the opposing needs of external secrecy and internal transparency cause certain complications. For example, can a community of rescuers maintain secrecy without resorting to lies and deceit? Absolutely. A simple and standard statement such as ‘I cannot discuss and disclose anything’ or ‘I cannot discuss and disclose more than this’ can solve the problems of compromising or lying in virtually all situations. Notion of transparency does not necessarily compromise confidential information held by a man. On the contrary, it preserves both the moral value of responsibility as well as the moral values of honesty and integrity which seem to clash in handling secrecy. Does the notion of transparency play a positive and constructive role in an insular organisation? Yes, indeed. It brings about an early collective realisation of internal inadequacies and weaknesses of organisation in the face of an actual or conceivable challenge because men have no hesitation in openly admitting their limitations and inability to deal with a problem. This is a necessary precondition for becoming better by seeking expertise from where it lies—inside or outside. Notion of transparency, by making it easier for a group to break free from a self-imposed isolation and become adaptive whenever necessary to change, helps organisation and its members to embark on a path of continuous improvement and becomes a co-driver of excellence and resilience. At times, an unacceptable condition of secrecy is imposed on organisational command from outside—a commander is expected to get a job done without disclosing the exact details of a situation to the



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members of his organisation. Does a commander have a choice in such a predicament? Most certainly. In such a situation, a commander representing a hostage rescue organisation in a multi-agency forum has a choice that would reflect his moral courage and commitment to the core moral values of his organisation. He can clearly explain the culture of his organisation and plainly state his intent of sharing entire information known to him and relevant to his organisation with fellow members who plan and fight together. He can give his assurance that the operational security of mission would not be compromised, for all the members of his organisation are completely trustworthy. Nonetheless, if someone does not want some information to be shared with anyone other than people present there, it should not be shared with him too, for he is bound to share everything with the members of his organisation; if the secrecy of information is so very paramount, then, let some other unit which does not value transparency in its organisational life do this job. Such communication is necessary while dealing with politicians and also the members of intelligence and diplomatic communities who are not only in the habit of playing games, telling lies, and deceiving people but also expect others to follow their code and do what they do. A hostage rescue organisation does not carry out secret ‘black operations’ which cannot be defended publicly; it operates only, openly, and directly for the right and good cause of saving lives which does not leave any room for a moral dispute. Its much needed and valued notion of transparency cannot be compromised for the convenience of some people who come from different cultural backgrounds and do things different from what rescuers do. When the notion of transparency is valued, it pervades all facets of institutional arrangements. One such aspect of institutional transparency that I want to specifically flag here has subtle but far-reaching psychobehavioural consequences for the people of organisation. Owing to its commitment to morality and transparency, a hostage rescue organisation is expected to follow a policy of linguistic transparency. Idea of linguistic transparency is incongruent with the usage of sanitising euphemisms, unfeeling acronyms, and insensitive slang in organisational argot. Such convoluted language and clever jargon launder and mask the violent and brutal acts of torturing and killing done by the agents of State and resorted to positively redefining the destructive behaviours of select people in certain situations. A hostage rescue organisation must instead prefer to call a spade a spade and use a plain and simple language that conveys sense and meaning directly without any attempt to take the pain and suffering of hostile people away, howsoever cruel and callous they may be. A hostage rescue organisation must promote a plain and transparent expression congruent with its moral values and way of life

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and forbid the usage of sanitising words, devaluing terms, and euphemistic phrases in both formal and informal communication. XIII To err is human, to make mistakes is common, and it is a normal behaviour of human beings. But mistakes are not appreciated in human culture—so much so that some people and cultures have such a fear of mistakes that they develop an overcautious approach to life and begin to play overly safe at every step. Due to their aversion to risk-taking, such people and cultures cannot be effective in a crisis situation; they can only lead a controlled and orderly life, full of predictability and certainty. A hostage rescue organisation cannot afford to be like them. Learning from mistakes, therefore, is a valued notion of a hostage rescue organisation which rests on the philosophical ground prepared by the individual and collective fallibility of human beings and its admission by organisation and its members. While a hostage rescue organisation must take all steps to avert mistakes, it must not become averse to taking risks by fearing mistakes. A positive approach to mistakes can roll it on a path that leads towards a state of errorless execution of tasks by turning every mistake into an opportunity of learning for the future without developing an undue fear of failure. Final outcome of a creative approach to mistakes is personal and organisational resilience, that is, the ability of individuals and organisation to successfully deal with adversities and setbacks, to rebound after disruption and to reinvent after collapse. A constructive approach to mistakes also plays a contributing role in creating a culture of excellence. All told, by making the idea of learning from mistakes a valued notion, an organisation stands to gain a lot and lose nothing. Valued notion of learning from mistakes is set in opposition to a narrow and reductionist, punitive and unsparing approach to mistakes. To begin with, it does not see and treat a mistake as a mischief or sabotage done wilfully and deliberately. Instead, it is based on a belief that while a mistake is incorrect and wrong and its outcomes are undesirable and unwanted, it might not be intended and planned. Learning from mistakes also takes a wide view of problem. Factors that cause a mistake could be insufficient knowledge, incorrect skill, scarce means, faulty method, erroneous judgement, inattention, and unawareness that mistakes are possible during the execution of task. Fault of a man might as well be induced by other people, by the pressures of time and tasks, by a physical state such as hunger, thirst, fatigue, perspiration,



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shivering, irritation, inflammation, pain, sleeplessness, and sickness, and by the surge of emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety, jealousy, sadness, love, and lust. It might also have roots in the structure of organisation or in the nature of system. A positive and constructive approach to mistakes recognises the role of factors external to a man in causing his errors of knowledge, skills, method, judgement, and attention. It is grounded in a belief that the problem of mistakes can be solved, to a great extent, by fixing the problems of knowledge, skills, means, method, judgement, attention, awareness, environment, and experience, which together help a man become an expert. And, experts are known for their reliable and flawless performance. Valued notion of learning from mistakes is opposed to the individual and institutional denial of failure. It is against cover-ups and looking the other way. It does not ignore or condone any mistake. Instead, it confronts each mistake in order to reducing and minimising the probability of its occurrence in future. Its confrontation, however, is constructive in nature which begins with a psychological readiness of man to reporting and admitting a mistake and then treating it as a problem which must be fixed creatively by personal and collective efforts. Process that follows has several serial steps. First problemsolving step is to understand how and why a mistake has happened. In order to find correct answers, a dispassionate, in-depth, and analytical approach is required. After uncovering its nuts and bolts, a plan is formulated for the purpose of taking steps to change such ways and methods that had caused this mistake. Alternative proposals are examined carefully and subjected to failure analysis in terms of simplicity, viability, sustainability, reliability, and safety. New procedure is introduced and repeated in a compressed time frame to gain confidence, flow, and dexterity. A promise is made and remembered not to repeat such mistakes in future. In short, steps to correct a mistake are—report, admit, analyse, plan, practice, promise, and remember. Last three steps might have to be repeated over and over again until new solution is embedded in memory for reflexive recall and problem is solved reliably. Responsible and creative individuals are known to refine and perfect the ways and methods of doing things privately but their innovations mostly remain with them. We also know that it is always good not to reinvent the wheel and learn from the mistakes and creativity of others. Such private sources of knowledge which generally remain hidden from view can be effectively tapped by a creative approach to handling mistakes. An organisation that values learning from mistakes encourages a man to report his mistakes, share his plan to fix a mistake in future and prevent it from occurring, and tell about his innovative fixes to help others. Members are encouraged to share

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personal experiences and good practices with others in formal and informal settings. A forum devised for sharing personal stories and group interventions about all kinds of improvements and refinements made by members to make things more reliable and efficient could be a very effective instrument of learning from others. Members can also present their problems here and seek the ideas and assistance of others to solve them. Mistakes, thus, have a potential for instituting an interesting and essential educational programme. Notion of learning from mistakes does not advocate a limitless acceptance and unqualified tolerance of failures. A hostage rescue organisation must deal with wrongs and failures positively but firmly with a redline approach. It is not right to retain a man after a grave breach of moral or operational fundamentals on which organisation stands. It is not good to tolerate a man after the repeated or wilful violation of values, norms, and procedures that build and run organisation. While a final decision on the expulsion of a member is taken by command, for the sake of transparency, trustworthiness, and equal ownership of organisation, it is necessary that charges and findings are presented and the sense of all members is obtained in a general house. This occasion, thus, becomes a great opportunity of learning for all members in organisation. We must, however, exercise caution and show prudence when sitting in judgement on the conduct of a man. While it is necessary to assess and judge a man minutely, stringently, and regularly in a high-risk organisation, we must keep it in mind that moral, procedural, and technical lapses do occur here and there intermittently. In addition to seeing each case in isolation, we shall not lose sight of and set aside the overall character of man especially if he has been found habitually practicing values and procedures until now. Life as it is in the human world makes it a continuous struggle for a man of ideals. Probability of slips and falls on the way caused by temptations and difficulties remains high in our world and a man leads an effortful and strenuous life to stay on an ideal course. We should always be mindful of these challenges and the fallibility of man. We could have failed too as he did in that situation. That said, the nature and consequences of a breach are also important and not all transgressions can be excused and pardoned in organisational setting. In certain situations, a single failure is sufficient to destroy the character of a man, his trustworthiness and reliability. Valued notion of learning from mistakes is well grounded in the moral values of humility, responsibility, respect, courage, honesty, integrity, fairness, and forgiveness. It, in turn, creates conditions that make it easier to practice these values and help them to become the virtues of men.



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It was just a brief introduction but the problem of human error is so widespread and monumental that it requires an elaborate survey which I will do in the next chapter. XIV An organisation that values life creates a culture of safety and the announcement of anomaly is a valued notion in a culture of safety. A culture of safety is all the more necessary in a hostage rescue organisation, for it handles and plays with the means and machines of violence and destruction. An anomalous event is an event which is abnormal, unusual, unexpected, or unknown. All human errors are anomalous events. All mechanical irregularities and failures of machines and systems are anomalous events. All human actions forbidden by moral code are anomalous events. All disruptions and deviations are anomalous events. An announcement must be made instantly after noticing an anomaly to alert everyone and draw the attention of all concerned to it. Announcement of an anomalous event should be direct, crisp, loud, and clear; it should not be long, circular, subdued, and ambiguous. It should be done immediately without a delay. In order to minimise the diversity of language that might cause miscommunication or confusion and delay a remedial response, organisations should develop their communication protocols, general guidelines, training systems, and review mechanisms for the announcement of anomaly. Announcement of anomaly is followed by corrective action. First of all, immediate action is taken to contain its progress and stop an event if there is no doubt that it is a compromise of safety, standard procedure, or normative behaviour. In case of a novel and unstructured situation with no past experience, a quick assessment is made to ascertain its consequences and if any harm or damage is suspected, the course of event is arrested forthwith to bring a developing situation under control. Immediate action is followed by preventative action in order to understand why such situation had occurred and how to prevent its occurrence in future. A rigorous analytical path is followed to address the problem of false alarm and also to understand why certain events did not make sense at first sight. While reasons for a false alarm must be discovered and problem addressed, a man responsible for it must not be ridiculed or reprimanded because the announcement of anomaly is a valued notion. Moral values also do not permit a grudge or a backlash against a whistle-blower, even if his apprehension was wrong but action was done in good faith. To err on the side of caution is surely choiceworthy.

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It is important that preventative and analytical actions are taken early before memory begins to lapse. For information is either lost or gets corrupted as time elapses, it becomes difficult to recall original and authentic information after some time. A rigorous method of cross-examination and cross-checking is essential to reconstruct the reality and dig out the truth from the layers of perception and imagination. Also, what makes sense should not be accepted at face value without examining what disrupts sense-making. As the question of safety is paramount in a culture of safety, all anomalous events must be understood very clearly, leaving nothing to chance. It is not intention, trustworthiness, plan, or practice that matters a great deal; all that matters in the end is the actions of a man in the real world. All actions inconsistent with goal, morality, and safety ought to be noticed, challenged, and contained by immediate intervention. Everyone in organisation has every right to intervene in a situation of a compromise. Even superiors can and must be challenged on the strength and primacy of goal, morality, and safety. All should be treated as equals in this case and no one should feel bad about it. We know that the notion of virtue requires a full and complete commitment to moral values, it is realised by a three-dimensional integrity of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, and the actions of a virtuous rescuer cannot be inconsistent with values and goal. His inconsistent acts, then, are mistakes, not mischief. For he has not intended and just erred, it is the responsibility of his mates to bring the anomalies of his behaviour to his awareness for correction and he, in turn, should be grateful to those who help him stay on the course of ideals. Valued notion of announcement of anomaly is well grounded in a belief that rank and authority do not matter; only goal, morality, and safety matter. It supports and is supported by the moral values of responsibility, courage, humility, respect, and integrity. It is a companion to the valued notion of learning from mistakes. It is consistent with the age-old wisdom of humanity, crystallised in such maxims as nip in the bud and a stitch in time saves nine. It brings to light a breakdown in the making at an early stage and averts a major disruption at a later date. XV Individual autonomy and independence is another valued notion of a hostage rescue organisation. It is derived from the notions of trust and responsibility which we have discussed. We know that a man cannot keep a promise to do something, despite his good intent, hard work, and material means, if he lacks personal ability for want of knowledge, skills, experience, and judgement. In that case, he cannot be responsible and should not be given a role. There



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can be no dispute, thus, that the role and responsibility of organisation exists and acts between the role and responsibility of man. In other words, before assigning him a role and expecting him to act responsibly, organisation must mediate and act to prepare and enable him fully and completely. A reliable occupational ability is acquired over a period of time. In this process, man has to supply potential and commitment and organisation has to do the rest to enable and empower him for assuming a role and executing it reliably. His reliability is the basis and proof of his trustworthiness and only his trustworthiness can make him responsible for his role. Until this point, he cannot be given any role. Once there, his autonomy and independence cannot be doubted and questioned presumptively and he has to be respected by all in his role. Individual autonomy and independence is, thus, a product of trust and responsibility. They are inviolable and infringed at the cost of morality. Besides a moral argument, a case for individual autonomy and independence can also be made from a functional perspective which too we have discussed. There are two fundamentally different ways of organising. A typical organisation predominantly stands and depends on its robust backbone of central control which commands individuals from behind and herds them together. This model obtains the collaboration and cooperation of individuals for realising organisational goal by subjecting them to the direction and regulation of a hierarchical command structure. While the logic of centralisation gives an effective control over people, such organisation cannot effectively deal with a rapidly changing situation because the remote control of response produces a delay at distant leading edge which acts and interacts with problems directly but lacks initiative and clarity on the course of action decided remotely. A highly reactive-adaptive organisation which often faces the problems of complex and dynamic nature such as a hostage rescue organisation, thus, cannot depend on a rigid system of central command for the coordination and synchronisation of collective response. It must choose a different way of organising in which goal, principles, rules, and procedures shared by individuals bring and bind them together and inspire and guide them to act autonomously. Individuals in this distributed arrangement continually self-organise, self-direct, self-control, and self-correct by the force of their shared beliefs, principles, methods, and procedures. Autonomous character of individuals does not cause a disruption of organisation, for people collaborate and cooperate autonomously to achieve shared goal. Command structure surely exists but as a redundancy to fall back on in case of a severe breakdown necessitating a strategic revision. Beliefs, principles, methods, and procedures, not authority, tell people what to do in this self-organised world. It is founded

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on the notions of responsibility and trust; it respects, relies, and thrives on the autonomy and independence of individuals. Both rationales—moral and practical, ideal and operational—discussed above demand that the notion of individual autonomy and independence is valued in a hostage rescue organisation. Valued notion of individual autonomy and independence requires a complete clarity on the definitions and understanding of individual and team roles, areas of collaboration and independence, boundaries of decision-making, and limits of command and control. It is impossible to create a culture of responsibility without a robust regulatory mechanism of prospective and retrospective responsibility of each level and individual from the top to the bottom in organisation. However, the retrospective responsibility of a man is limited to his decisions and actions only. No man can be held responsible for the failures and faults of others if he has done his part of job impeccably. Notion of command responsibility, then, is not functional but moral in nature, so long as man at the top has not erred. This valued notion also shapes the character of authority in organisation. Unnecessary supervision and undue interference by a superior to show who is in charge is alien to a culture that values individual autonomy and independence. In such a culture, a man is hardly seen standing and telling others what and how to do. Authority here is not misused by a superior for personal gratification and subordinates are not demeaned and belittled by a boss. Valued notion of individual autonomy and independence, thus, restrains authority and stands in its way of becoming malevolent. This notion has an empowering message for individual agent too. A responsible man must demand autonomy and independence in his role. He must zealously guard his autonomy and independence and strongly resist its deliberate and repeated infringement by others, irrespective of their status and position. A man must learn to do his job independently and seek help of others only where it is necessary. Rule of thumb is that if you can do a job on your own without compromising outcome, efficiency, and safety, then do it yourself. Others should also show restraint and let a man do his job on his own. They should not offer their assistance unless they are asked by a man for their help. They should not intervene spontaneously unless they sense that something is going wrong. But no one should be hesitant to interceding either, for an intervention to prevent an undesirable event is permitted by the valued notion of announcement of anomaly and the core moral values of a rescuer which cannot be overridden by individual autonomy and independence.



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Valued notion of individual autonomy and independence exists in a symbiosis with the moral values of responsibility, respect, courage, and integrity. They both depend on each other. XVI Excellence is a valued notion of a hostage rescue organisation, for the excellence of both men and organisation is absolutely essential for achieving its goal. We have noted that much discussion in this chapter and also in the previous two chapters has repeatedly underlined the role of self in achieving such qualities and standards as required in men for executing a hostage rescue operation in a way that resolves a complex terrorist crisis with minimal loss. Self, therefore, is a pivot on and around which the occupational life of rescuer and the social life of rescue organisation revolve. Reliance on self is well grounded in the notion of intrinsic motivation. Its end result is the moral and occupational excellence of both men and organisation. Eighth edition of Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines ‘excellence’ as “the quality of being extremely good.” It defines ‘extreme’ as “very great in degree” while the twelfth edition of Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘extreme’ as “furthest from the centre of a given point.” For our subject matter deals with superlatives, the notion of excellence is directly related and relevant to it. Firstly, a complex terrorist crisis is a case of terrorist attack in the extreme which requires an extreme quality of counterterrorist response. Secondly, unlike in the sporting world, opponents in this case are not known. In reality, rescuers prepare to fight an unknown adversary who is only known to take them by surprise. Resultantly, there are no known, quantifiable, and reliable marks, bars, standards, or landmarks in this world to be crossed to win. Excellence, then, is the only way to achieving goal in a sea of uncertainty; it is desirable and valued in a hostage rescue organisation, thus. A state of excellence is achieved by an organisation through a process of continuous improvement—to make its men better bit by bit on end without ever coming to an end. Such ceaseless process of improvement can only be powered by the intrinsic motivation of men, which self-propels them towards excellence. American psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan have done considerable research on intrinsic motivation and suggest this definition: “Intrinsic motivation is the innate, natural propensity to engage one’s interests and exercise one’s capacities.” In addition to a natural inclination, I believe, intrinsic motivation is also generated by a strong belief and commitment of a man to an idea or a set of ideals. I, therefore, prefer to define intrinsic

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motivation as an internal drive of a man to do or achieve something which he values in his life in the absence of such external drivers as rewards and punishments. It could be innate or cultivated but such pursuit is always self-rewarding and fulfilling and it surely makes a man to experience joy and pleasure and flourish in life. Our experiences in life suggest that the freedom of a responsible man to make choices and take actions positively affects his intrinsic motivation; it is negatively affected by the control of others on his choices and actions. A responsible and self-driven man is mostly discouraged when subjected to control by others through such instruments as reward, punishment, surveillance, deadlines, evaluation, goal imposition, and competition. All these instruments of control have been widely studied by psychologists in both laboratory and field settings. On the basis of these findings, Deci and Ryan conclude that “extrinsic rewards and controls can affect people’s experience of selfdetermination.” They explain, “In such cases, the events will induce a shift in the perceived locus of causality from internal to external, a decrement in intrinsic motivation for the target behavior, less persistence at the activity in the absence of external contingencies, and less interest in and enjoyment of the activity.” They consider “the possibility of enhancing intrinsic motivation by allowing, rather than restricting, one’s self-determination” and assert that “when people are self-determining, they make choices and have the opportunity to become more fully involved with the activity itself. At such times, the perceived locus of causality is internal; people understand the activity to be something they want to do for its own sake. A greater opportunity for self-determination frees people to be more intrinsically motivated and should strengthen their perceptions of internal causality.” Research in a nutshell suggests that “when intrinsically motivated, people tend to perceive the locus of causality for their behavior to be internal, and they are guided more by their internal states. When extrinsically motivated, however, they tend to perceive the locus of causality to be external, and their behavior is more a function of external controls.” Only one type of external reward has been found to have a positive effect on intrinsic motivation. It has been revealed empirically that positive feedback or verbal reinforcements given by others enhances the intrinsic motivation of people in comparison to those who do not receive any positive verbal feedback. However, Deci and Ryan clarify that “positive feedback that was self-administered by virtue of being inherent in the task led to an even higher level of intrinsic motivation than positive feedback that was administered by the experimenter.” Negative feedback, on the other hand, has been found



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to lower intrinsic motivation. Deci and Ryan suggest that “any feedback that clearly signifies incompetence to the recipient will undermine intrinsic motivation, though all negative feedback need not imply incompetence. When working on an optimally challenging activity, for example, people will often make mistakes—in other words, they will get some negative feedback—and yet they remain highly intrinsically motivated for these activities. Indeed, many people feel challenged by modest amounts of negative feedback, particularly under conditions of internal perceived locus of causality for the behavior. With an external perceived locus of causality, even small amounts of negative feedback may decrease intrinsic motivation. . . . In sum, negative feedback that implies incompetence, whether derived from repeated failures or from persistent negative responses, is hypothesized to undermine intrinsic motivation, whereas negative feedback that facilitates one’s future competence, because, for example, it is relatively mild in the context of an internal perceived locus of causality, is hypothesized not to be deleterious to one’s intrinsic motivation.” I agree with and believe in this hypothesis of Deci and Ryan. These suggestions are crucial for a hostage rescue organisation. A man achieves occupational and moral excellence in life by getting into a continuous loop of self-motivation, self-direction, self-evaluation, selfreflection, and self-regulation in respect to goals. Power of self makes a man resilient—he is able to deal with adverse experiences, recover from disruptive events, and reinvent after a collapse in life. Given its capacity to do wonders, self is nurtured by an organisation that values excellence by creating conditions conducive to its flourishing. Organisation takes a number of measures in all areas of human activity and social interaction under its influence to motivate, enable, and empower a man’s self and strives for continuous improvement in all domains and aspects of his life. At the most fundamental level, it creates a strong commitment of its men to its core moral values, for the beliefs of men are the source of their intrinsic motivation. In general, there is a freedom of choice and an absence of external pressures in organisational space for every man. While individuals experience autonomy and independence, peers and superiors do not disengage and disappear completely, for the role of others is imperative and indispensable in cooperative life for the joint execution of complex tasks. Others must be there to teach and train a man who does not know everything, to enable and empower him for his role which he must do responsibly. They are also needed to assess his conduct and performance in the process of learning and help him to understand the meaning of negative events and to draw useful lessons from them for achieving the goal of organisation. As the process of learning is endless and to err is human, the constructive role of others always remains relevant. Their

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engagement and interventions, however, are always cautious and careful in a place where the notion of excellence is valued. People in such settings are quite sensitive about human situation and fully aware that they deal with intelligent human beings. Their intent and approach is limited to guiding a man in need and providing him a handhold where he cannot get over an obstruction by himself. Their non-verbal and verbal messages which might even be critical at times, thus, do not undermine his intrinsic motivation. Valued notion of excellence needs and breeds a culture of freedom and equality. Moral values that underpin the notion of excellence are responsibility, respect, courage, humility, honesty, and integrity. It seems to me that where the moral values and goal of organisation and its members are identical, external control is neither required nor it is experienced by individuals there; a perceived difference and distance between self-determined and control-determined behaviours too disappear and personal autonomy and command regulation merge with each other. Self, thus, imbibes organisation and organisation mirrors self. These transformations, then, achieve a state of equality and freedom in organisation and deliver the moral and occupational excellence of both men and organisation. This is an ideal state which each hostage rescue organisation must dream about and strive for. XVII Confession, I believe, is useful to a hostage rescue organisation which is built on moral foundations and must be valued by it. Let us consider some possibilities to begin with. A moral breach might have been committed privately by a man in his mind or in isolation without anyone’s knowledge. It might have been committed by a group whose members are holding it as their secret and those who disclosed it either did not reveal all the facts of an act or event or did not disclose the involvement of all the members in that act or event. It might have been committed recently or in a remote past. An allegation of such a breach might have been denied by a man previously. While others may not have any or complete knowledge, a man knows about his conduct and failings well and his choice of keeping it to himself compounds his moral fault. A man with a conscience, thus, carries the burden of guilt which can be offloaded only through a confession. In the light of these possibilities, confession can be defined as an act of disclosure and admission by a man of his hitherto unknown and undesirable actions, thoughts, and emotions to another person or a group of people. People to whom such disclosure is made are ‘significant others’ who know and trust this man, have a positive perception about him, and would not perhaps readily believe



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that he has committed a wrong of that nature in the absence of a proof or confession. Unknown and lesser-known persons do not matter much in the case of confession by a common man. A confession to an unknown person or a confession without disclosing personal identity becomes a ritual which requires the least amount of courage whereas the greatest courage is needed to openly confess to a person or a group directly affected by or concerned with a breach in an assembly of significant others. Such a confession ought to be the confession of choice of a man who chooses to live by morality. Notion of confession has a potential for producing paradoxical consequences. It exposes a breach of trust and might lead to a trust deficit. In a social environment of morality, however, an admission of a breach of trust can also become a means of gaining and generating trust, for although a confession reveals the dark side of a man, others get to know him better and more after his confession—he becomes more transparent than before and the likelihood of a similar breach by him in future comes down. There is a reason for this presumption. A confession is not limited to externally admitting a past moral breach and a guilt caused by it; its implications are wider and binding. While a confession does not have to include a promise of not repeating a fault in future, it surely is apologetic in nature. Due to an expression of regret and remorse, such a commitment is nevertheless implied, even if it is not declared and a confessor does make a tacit promise of not repeating a fault in future. In the absence of such promise, the act of confession loses its purpose and acquires the character of callous arrogance. Confession, thus, reinforces conscience and becomes a moral force that fights temptations, prevents similar moral faults, and inspires a man to stay on moral course. We need to know a few more things about confession. Confession is an idea which must be translated into action for it to become substantive; a thought of confession in the mind of a man cannot be called a confession. Confession is different from confiding which is done with a condition, understanding, or expectation that disclosed information would not be shared further with a third party. Confession is always unconditional. Its reward is internal. A culture of confession changes the perceived character of authority by exposing the ordinariness of superiors who, by virtue of their higher positions in a hierarchy, might be perceived as superior human beings with special attributes. It bolsters the notion of equality by conveying a message that human weakness, fallibility, and vulnerability are universal and common. It dilutes the charisma of the leader and cuts everyone down to the same human size. A culture of confession, thus, acts as a natural check on authority and

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indirectly reduces the probability of an abject submission by followers when a leader begins to acquire a pathological character. Notion of confession is a valued notion in an organisation that stands on morality and moves on trust. Organisation that values confession promotes it both in informal and formal settings. An institutionalised forum for confession is a good idea where people get a chance to release and resolve their pentup feelings at regular intervals. Moral values which encourage and promote the notion of confession are courage, respect, honesty, integrity, humility, and forgiveness. It is also supported by the valued notion of transparency. On its part, the notion of confession reinforces these moral values and transparency in life. XVIII Six moral values and nine valued notions discussed above along with behavioural norms are the strengths of organisation and they create a culture of freedom and equality in it. Working together, they bring out a state of moral uniformity and intellectual diversity of people in a hostage rescue organisation. While morality can check and counter all malevolent and perverted tendencies and forces present in organisational space, there still are a few powerful pitfalls in organisational life that each member must be aware of, for they are capable of failing a man in the crucible of circumstances. American-Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura has serious apprehension about the moral reliability of a man, his high personal moral standards notwithstanding, due to the influence of certain larger social mechanisms that reinterpret and recast his destructive conduct as choiceworthy and praiseworthy. He points to several processes which are employed to systematically rework and adjust the moral standards of man in a way that he can selectively activate self-sanctions to keep from harmful behaviours in one situation and disengage from these self-sanctions to carry out destructive actions in another situation. He writes, “The exercise of self-sanction plays a central role in the regulation of inhumane conduct. In the course of socialization, moral standards are adopted that serve as guides and deterrents for conduct. Once internalized control has developed, people regulate their actions by the sanctions they apply to themselves. They do things that give them self-satisfaction and a sense of self-worth. They refrain from behaving in ways that violate their moral standards because such behavior will bring self-condemnation. Self-sanctions thus keep conduct in line with internal standards. But moral standards do not function as fixed internal regulators of



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conduct. Self-regulatory mechanisms do not operate unless they are activated, and there are many processes by which self-sanctions can be disengaged from inhumane conduct. Selective activation or disengagement of self-reactive control permits different types of conduct, given the same moral standards.” Bandura explains more, “Self-sanctions can be disengaged by reconstruing detrimental conduct through moral justification, euphemistic labeling, and advantageous contrast with other inhumanities; by obscuring personal agency in detrimental activities through diffusion and displacement of responsibility; by disregarding or misrepresenting the harmful consequences of inhumane conduct; and by blaming and dehumanizing the victims. These mechanisms of moral disengagement operate not only in the preparation of inhumanities under extraordinary circumstances, but in everyday situations where people routinely perform activities that bring personal benefits at injurious costs to others. Given the many psychological devices for disengagement of moral control, societies cannot rely solely on individuals, however honourable their standards, to provide safeguards against inhumanities. To function humanely, societies must establish effective social safeguards against moral disengagement practices that foster exploitive and destructive conduct.” I believe that Bandura’s apprehension is very serious and grounded in what has been observed in real life. On the other hand, I have little doubt that moral values and valued notions discussed above would create a kind of man and culture that will not permit the processes of selective moral disengagement identified by Bandura to occur in organisational space. I also believe that so-called ‘morality’ which is acquired in the process of socialisation, the basis of Bandura’s analysis, is as such selective, skewed, and biased and cannot be trustworthy in the first place—so much so that it cannot even be called morality as we have defined and discussed in this book. As a result, a cognitive and emotional reconstruction of morality is absolutely essential after a man is selected for the role of rescuer. And, organisation is responsible for the transformation of his morality through the processes of moral education and practice. To address the problem of making a rescuer out of a man is the central theme of my book and the importance of Bandura’s apprehension in this context lies in knowing where, how, and why the moral reasoning and judgement of men can ignore and bypass morality. It sends a warning signal to both men and organisation—that they can give in and fall prey to the processes of selective activation of morality. It is, therefore, imperative for the members of a hostage rescue organisation to be aware of such dangers and for this purpose, I recommend the inclusion of Bandura’s analysis of selective activation and disengagement of moral control in training syllabus, a few references of which can be found in bibliography.

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Another serious danger that lurks naturally and works surreptitiously in social life comes from the vicious effects of informal subgroups in an organisation. Informal subgroups are formed spontaneously by the tendency of individuals to gravitate towards each other for different reasons. Once formed, a subgroup has a potential for exerting social pressure on individual members to compromise certain norms of organisation or resist organisational pressure to follow certain norms that have been formally agreed upon by all members. Informal subgroup can also gradually crystallise certain counter norms which can become more powerful than formal group norms. These counter norms exist to undermine organisational norms by encouraging individuals to collude and ensuring the inaction of those who do not. Social conformity imposed by an informal subgroup is mostly for undesirable behaviours that are not sanctioned by the morality, norms, rules, and procedures of a group. An informal subgroup can, thus, safeguard the personal interests of its members at the expense of organisation and those members who are not its part. It can protect deviant members from a corrective action of authority by blocking the flow of information. It can dilute the normative standards of organisation by ignoring or encouraging individual aberration and deviance. In its most benign form, a subgroup can deprive organisation from the benefits of diversity of views when deliberations are held formally by informal or formal pre-deliberations which can generate a representative view of its members and prematurely kill the differentiation of ideas and viewpoints. In its most malignant form, such subgroups can cause the social fragmentation of organisation by polarisation. An organisation, therefore, must check the formation of informal subgroups and alliances among its members. It should also discourage pre-deliberations in subgroups on issues which are scheduled for a general discussion for a free exchange of ideas. XIX Perhaps, most of us have seen that not many people come forward to decisively and immediately help a person or animal in need—some passers-by look the other way, some pause to look and then walk away, and some remain there but as onlookers. We need to understand this nature of human response in the context of hostage rescue and find a way around it, even though I do not expect inaction from my virtuous man. American psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané studied this phenomenon from a situational perspective and proposed an interesting hypothesis. They write, “When only one bystander is present in an emergency, if help is to come, it must come from him. Although he may choose to ignore it (out of concern for his



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personal safety, or desires ‘not to get involved’), any pressure to intervene focuses uniquely on him. When there are several observers present, however, the pressures to intervene do not focus on any one of the observers; instead the responsibility for intervention is shared among all the onlookers and is not unique to any one. As a result, no one helps. . . . A second possibility is that potential blame may be diffused. However much we may wish to think that an individual’s moral behavior is divorced from considerations of personal punishment or reward, there is both theory and evidence to the contrary. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that, under circumstances of group responsibility for a punishable act, the punishment or blame that accrues to any one individual is often slight or nonexistent. . . . Finally, if others are known to be present, but their behavior cannot be closely observed, any one bystander can assume that one of the other observers is already taking action to end the emergency. Therefore, his own intervention would be only redundant—perhaps harmfully or confusingly so. Thus, given the presence of other onlookers whose behavior cannot be observed, any given bystander can rationalize his own inaction by convincing himself that ‘somebody else must be doing something.’ . . . These considerations lead to the hypothesis that the more bystanders to an emergency, the less likely, or the more slowly, any one bystander will intervene to provide aid.” Laboratory and field studies conducted by them confirmed this situational hypothesis. Zimbardo remarks, “Their research generated a counterintuitive conclusion: the more people who witness an emergency, the less likely any of them will intervene to help. Being part of a passively observing group means that each individual assumes that others are available who could or will help, so there is less pressure to initiate action than there is when people are alone or with only one other observer. The mere presence of others diffuses the sense of personal responsibility of any individual to get involved.” Interestingly, the personality of subjects had little effect on their inaction. “Personality tests of participants showed no significant relationship between any particular personality characteristics and the speed or likelihood of intervening in staged emergencies.” Anyone of us can, therefore, fail to act in time when someone needs us the most. This is surely a scary message for a hostage rescue organisation but we can beat it too. Notwithstanding the power of situation and the insignificance of individual demonstrated by social psychologists time and time again, I still believe in the strength of human beings. I have no doubt that the ingrained inertia and inaction of humanity can be decisively defeated by the human strength of learning and believing. We know that mastery is an outcome of repetitive

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practice and social learning is a reproduction of observed and experienced behaviours. A man can, therefore, strengthen his moral beliefs, reasoning, judgement, and action by repeatedly practicing moral values and living in a community of moral practitioners. Bandura notes, “If people encounter essentially similar constellations of events time and again, they do not have to go through the same moral judgemental process of weighting and integrating moral factors each time before they act. Nor do they have to conjure up self-sanctions anticipatorily on each repeated occasion. They routinize their judgement and action to the point when they execute their behavior with little accompanying thought. However, significant changes in morally relevant factors reactivate evaluative processes for how to behave under the altered circumstances.” While novel situations are a matter of serious concern for us, I believe that a man can prepare to deal with them too. By repetitious practice, continuous self-reflection, and creative imagination, he can learn to drop his moral anchor in an unknown situation, choose a moral course of action based on moral reasoning and judgement, and ignore other competing considerations in that situation. All of it can happen in just a moment if someone has prepared to face unfamiliar and trying situations. Only those who encounter situational forces unprepared are taken aback and gripped by the evil of inaction. Real problem, then, is how to prepare a man to take a moral action in tight and confusing novel situations and not to find how he would behave when caught unawares in a situation. Let us try to find some answers to the problem of preparedness of a man for taking a moral action in unfamiliar and unstructured circumstances. Character of a man faces a test of situation when the interaction of personal beliefs with situational forces causes a conflict. It happens when his personal beliefs and situational forces tend to oppose each other and begin to strain him. Eventually, his choices and behaviours are either commanded by his internal beliefs or by external circumstances. A man by the strength of his beliefs either overcomes situational forces or they overwhelm him and his beliefs. What dominates and overwhelms what depends on the relative strength of competing and opposing forces. For external forces are not in control of a man, he can only strive to control his moral beliefs and rely on his moral strength to face these overwhelming situations that fail most of us. Morality, then, is the only answer. We have discussed that the moral reliability of a man cannot be taken for granted and organisation must reconstruct the morality of every member by imparting a formal education. It is mainly done by making moral education a part of induction training curriculum. But it does not end there. In order



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to transform the moral beliefs of men, moral values must be taught, revised, underlined, emphasised, and re-emphasised at each intersection of social exchange in organisational life. Process of moral education must pervade every aspect and the whole gamut of social life in organisation and it must continue perpetually. Informal settings are more important in making people learn organisational values and norms, for such learning is incidental, tacit, pervasive, and unlimited. Members learn not so much inside class rooms as they do just by ‘being there’ and observing and experiencing events happening around them. We learn continuously from what goes on around us in social environment. This has been the human way of learning for hundreds of thousands of years, much before the structured way of teaching was invented by humankind. Every little thing that goes on in organisation, thus, imparts learning and shapes its members. Hence, nothing that is contrary to its moral values should be said or done in organisation by its members, individually or collectively. There shall be no explicit or implicit penalty in formal or informal settings and in near or remote terms in organisation for leading a moral life by practicing and upholding the professed moral values and valued notions of organisation. Everything must be done in organisation with a great care and full sense of responsibility by all the members all the time. Organisational values, norms, and valued notions must be practiced and supported by all members everywhere, every day, and on all occasions. A culture of universal modelling is essential and everyone in organisation must become a role model without exception. This is what will determine organisational integrity and create a true harmony and congruence between its purpose and people. While the knowledge of moral values is necessary, it is not sufficient to generate the force of will to act morally. Moral knowledge is good only for moral reasoning, which is a cognitive process of deciding what is right and wrong in a situation. It provides a moral perspective in the process of choosing a course of action. A moral course of action, however, is not brought to bear on the world by moral reasoning but by the force of will produced by commitment to moral values. Until moral commitment is strong enough to effect a three-dimensional consolidation of thoughts, emotions, and actions, a man may not act morally in each opportunity of moral choice. A lack of moral integrity of man, then, is what explains Bandura’s apprehension of selective activation and disengagement of moral control. Opportunity of making a moral choice comes in the everyday personal and professional life of a man. Organisation, therefore, must allow its members to make these choices at the cost of other priorities of organisational life

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including command and control. For example, it must insist that its members practice the moral value of rescue at the expense of routine engagements, for nothing prepares a man for rescue as the real acts of rescue do. Thoughts, emotions, and actions of rescue must become the way of life of rescuers. However strange and counterintuitive it may sound but the act of rescuing a trapped animal on the way is more important and choiceworthy than reporting in time for a training session or a routine briefing. It is so because the notion of punctuality is subservient to the idea of leading a moral life due to the primacy of morality in such organisation. Merely preaching without practicing what is preached does not work with intelligent human beings. Compendiums and manuals of processes and procedures are even less effective; they mean nothing without practicing values that make the moral character of its men who stand behind every machine and execute every process. Gains accrued from this concession will cover all the risks of a blanket approval which seems to dilute many conventionally valued notions of organisational culture. I argue for such freedom on the basis of my belief that the morality of men and their unit is the best bet for terminating a complex terrorist crisis with minimal loss. Only by making their commitment to moral values absolute, an organisation can prepare its members to face absolute and unfamiliar situations and hope that they would live up to expectations. Only by a regular practice, imagination, and self-reflection of his role as a rescuer with a perpetual awareness of human fallibility, a man can prepare to act in the worst situations that might just suddenly emerge around him one day. Man is the only hope. An attempt can also be made to influence the family environment of its members. But society at large always remains outside the area of organisational influence. Such constraints offer tremendous friction and resistance to organisation in its efforts to transform its people by rebuilding their moral beliefs. The only way out, then, is to give an intensive and relentless emphasis on the importance and internalisation of moral values in all aspects of life, every single day and at each step, with an aim of making the commitment of individuals to these values absolute. Yuval Harari explains why this is the only solution to human dilemma: “A natural order is a stable order. There is no chance that gravity will cease to function tomorrow, even if people stop believing in it. In contrast, an imagined order is always in danger of collapse, because it depends upon myths, and myths vanish once people stop believing in them. In order to safeguard an imagined order, continuous and strenuous efforts are imperative.”



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XX American historian Christopher Browning wrote a disturbing history of German Reserve Police Battalion 101 which was formed from the ordinary middle-aged men of Hamburg who went on to shoot a minimum of thirtyeight thousand Jewish men, women, and children and deported a minimum of forty-five thousand of them to Treblinka extermination camp from July 1942 to November 1943 in Poland. He ends his book with these sagacious words: “What, then, is one to conclude? Most of all, one comes away from the story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 with great unease. This story of ordinary men is not the story of all men. The reserve policemen faced choices, and most of them committed terrible deeds. But those who killed cannot be absolved by the notion that anyone in the same situation would have done as they did. For even among them, some refused to kill and others stopped killing. Human responsibility is ultimately an individual matter.” He seems helpless too in his chilling conclusion: “The collective behavior of Reserve Police Battalion 101 has deeply disturbing implications. There are many societies afflicted by traditions of racism and caught in the siege mentality of war or threat of war. Everywhere society conditions people to respect and defer to authority. . . . Everywhere people seek career advancement. In every modern society, the complexity of life and the resulting bureaucratization and specialization attenuate the sense of personal responsibility of those implementing official policy. Within virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?” A group of men may not but a man can and Erwin Schulz was one such man. Richard Evans writes, “On being told at the beginning of August 1941 that Himmler had ordered all Jews not engaged in forced labour to be shot, Schulz requested an interview with the head of personnel at the Reich Security Head Office, who, after hearing Schulz’s objections to participating in the action, persuaded Heydrich to relieve the reluctant officer of his duties and return him to his old post at the Berlin Police Academy.” Erwin Schulz was the head of Task Unit 5 of Task Force C which by the end of October 1941 had killed “more than 100,000 Jewish men, women, and children.” Over such overwhelming social forces, there is no control and to their dangers, there seems no answer. Hope, if there is, lies only in a man and his beliefs and in hope that it can be done, I have presented the nature and function

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of morality at some length. But some may not agree still and ask why must we rely on the intricate matrix of moral values and the complex timeconsuming processes of their internalisation in order for values to become virtues, considering that there are other easier ways and rapid means for controlling human behaviour? After reflecting on the problem of human behaviour for a long time, I have come to believe that the behaviour of a man cannot be regulated desirably and dependably other than by means of morality and its virtues which self-regulate him from within. After years of reflection, I have little doubt today that all other solutions to this problem proposed by painstaking research in social sciences as well as smart tips and tricks offered by management and self-help scholars are destined to fail in the test of consistency and difficulty. If we continue to ignore morality, we would continue to fail as ever. That there are enormous risks and dangers of its misuse when power over the life, freedom, and dignity of other people is given to certain individuals and institutions, there is no doubt. On the military personnel and institutions of State, thus, checks and restraints are absolutely necessary, which are very much there in the form of laws and rules. Form, however, does not work without substance and substance is brought forth only by morality, by making moral virtues become the anchor of personal restraint and moral values the bulwark of institutional righteousness. As moral tools eventually operate at the personal level of agents and internally regulate their thoughts, feelings, and actions, moral mechanisms are more effective than legal restraints. For if authorities themselves do not activate the formal mechanisms of behaviour control for want of character, who can enforce what is right, written, and approved and in how many cases? Occasional trials and punishments in such cases as get out of hand cannot be considered enough when the colossal submerged mass of deviant behaviours is never brought to light due to tacit collusion or active connivance of all in a system to preserve it the way it is. Laws and rule books are not enough, then. And, we must build moral safeguards by effortfully constructing the character of men and the culture of organisation to preventing perversion from occurring in the first place and dealing with it decisively when it occurs none the less. Although the military machinery of State has the worst culture of freedom and autonomy, the problem of blind obedience and unscrupulous cohesion is not limited to uniformed forces and secret services alone; it is all-pervasive, in fact. I have routinely observed it with great personal discomfort how quickly and readily people from all walks of life give in to the ideas of authority and choose social conformity by suspending independent judgement and



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suppressing inner desire to express a frank and fair opinion. Silence, nodding, and seconding become norms in a culture where questioning is woefully missing, where reason is heresy and protest a mutiny. In such environment, lies creep in all walks of life, deception becomes the way of life, and the reality merges with illusion all over. When it happens, a community loses its moral compass and individuals their conscience. A hostage rescue organisation expected to deal with complex terrorist crises cannot exist and deliver in such environment and the only way out of this catch is the morality of its men. I have pointed it out that the culture and environment of a hostage rescue organisation should be such that the occupational expertise and moral mastery of its members coevolve. I must say, an education in morality and enabling conditions in organisation for practicing moral values alone are not enough for making its men virtuous. If values cannot be internalised and virtues not demonstrated by him over time despite enabling external factors, it is only for want of self-regulation and internal commitment of a man to become virtuous. Those who do not display such will through their feelings, thoughts, and actions and fail repeatedly and miserably to live a virtuous life, then, do not deserve a place in an organisation which is built on morality and stands for it. Responsibility of such organisation is not limited to providing a moral education and an environment conducive to practicing moral values in social life. Organisation is, in fact, responsible for making its members virtuous, which it must do by guiding through on the one hand and weeding out on the other. Blame for an eventual failure to cultivate virtues and build the moral character of men, then, must be apportioned between organisation and its members. Founders of every organisation bear a great responsibility on their shoulders for laying the foundations of their organisation on which its future rests. They make a choice if their organisation would stand for certain moral principles in times to come or run by the expediency of times and situations. They must bear it in mind while embarking on a founding path that choices made and decisions taken by a few men and women in the very beginning would influence the generations of men and women to come after them and determine the course of events and their outcomes for a long time after they are gone. While the intent of State might just be selfish and not altruistic in saving hostages from a complex terrorist stronghold as explained in first chapter, an organisation given this responsibility by and on behalf of State is under no obligation or compulsion to imitate the character of State. It can and ought to create a distinct culture that values life for its own sake in order to honour the responsibility of saving lives assigned to it

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and accomplish its mission every time in a way that cannot be questioned by many. In the end, it will always serve the purpose of State but in a way different from the usual ways of State. All members of such organisation must know it from their first day there that the idea of morality begins and ends with what is right and what is wrong. Logic of ‘I was only following orders’ or ‘doing my duty’ or ‘did it for the country’ or ‘everybody did it’ or any other justification based on the peculiarities of times and circumstances does not make wrong acts right. What is wrong remains wrong from beginning to end when viewed from the lens of morality. Visionary and committed generations can, of course, found and develop an organisation in a manner that its culture becomes vibrant and performance stellar. But even after having achieved such a state, there is no guarantee that it would always remain as such, for there are numerous critical variables which, if altered, can force an organisation to change its character and culture without fail. Howsoever mature and robust it may appear at a later date after its humble beginnings, an organisation always remains extremely sensitive to and dependent on certain initial conditions—so much so that its deterioration can be set off by intended or unintended changes internal or external to organisation which alter these initial conditions. Paradoxically, organisations need to be more watchful as they grow, for the more distant its present becomes from its origins, the more susceptible an organisation becomes to forgetting the purpose and role of its initial foundations. Certain fundamentals do not change with time, however much the world has changed around and we can even lose an organisation for want of them. Once lost, it is more likely that its excellence is lost forever, for somewhere on the path of decline exists a point of no return past which its original character can never be restored. Thereafter, a noble desire to achieve the past glory of organisation can only be fulfilled by another committed and visionary generation which starts over and sets out to build a new organisation from scratch, all over again, instead of fixing it. A perfect start and the early life of an organisation is no proof of its future reliability, for it can degrade more easily than continue on a course of excellence. In fact, the odds are stacked in favour of its degeneration over time than staying with a glorious past. Nothing that is built by us can be taken for granted, for it takes tremendous energy and efforts to build something in the first place and, perhaps, even more to keep it as it is ever after. In the human world, mediocrity is more stable and excellence less sustainable. For confusion is more commonplace than communication



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and complacency than vigilance, the existence and spread of decay due to the incremental normalisation of deviance from its original standards might not even be visible to or believed by people inside and outside organisation for quite some time until a catastrophe hits them one day—an event whose likelihood was known to and even predicted by many but rot had run so deep and become so normal everywhere that organisation could not be prevented from moving on a path to disaster. Everyone ought to be aware of this lurking danger in the life of organisation and must do what it takes not to harm something good that was built with great efforts and pains. While primary responsibility to avert this danger always lies with the members of organisation, forces external to organisation over which it has no control may also endanger it. If it is not possible to sustain an organisation in a changed reality, it is preferable to shut it down and let it die and pass into history with its glory intact than to run it down and force it to face an inglorious future. Do not do something if you cannot do it properly. Why spoil something that has achieved a greatness which makes people feel good and proud? If you cannot save it, have moral courage at least to tell the world that it is no longer the same entity which it used to be and should not be expected now to behave as it has done previously. And, that choice we can always make. XXI All that I have said thus far might wrongly suggest a quest for human infallibility, which it is not. A truly fail-safe state can be aspired but cannot be achieved despite everything. We might do everything that we have charted hitherto but its men and organisation can fail still. Failure is commonplace; things fail, people fail, and they fail more often than we hope. How do we understand it when something fails? If it is people who work and if people work things too, it is not unusual if it is people who seem to fail. People cannot be ignored, isolated, or insulated from failures in a world made by them. If our world is made and operated by human beings, then all the errors in this world must be human errors. This reality is somehow known to all and a man responsible for a failure is intuitively recognised by all. While our prejudice against a man on the edge of failure is understandable, we should not hurriedly impute blame to a most visible man, for a failure is not so simple every time and there might be wheels within wheels. It is imperative, thus, to explore the invisible depths of human error in order to deal with the problem of failing over and over again.

Chapter 7 Paths to Errors and Failures

I We all know that it is difficult to come to terms with a failure. It disappoints, angers, and shames us; it might as well fill us with a sense of guilt at times. Why do failures impact us so severely? Why is it that we need to explain failure each time while we do not explain but celebrate success? It is said that nothing succeeds like success. Its converse too seems to be true and it can be said that nothing fails like failure. In order to find answers to these questions and beliefs, we need to look into our experiences in the world. Most times, we live in a controllable world and lead an organised and predictable life. Sometimes, we experience turbulence in our otherwise orderly life and come face to face with an uncertain future. At times, we fail in the end to achieve what we wanted to and worked for. This is a common human experience shared by all; it is true for individuals and true for institutions. It suggests that a failure in human affairs is not normal; it is unusual instead. We habitually take a normal event as given, which needs no explanation; only an anomalous and unexpected event calls for an explanation. A failure for being an anomaly, therefore, needs an explanation. As human stories are often more complex than what they seem on the surface, we need to dig a little deeper to find answers. Success has to be ubiquitous for orderliness to exist, for in its absence, disorder will spread and overrun the world. Since our world is an organised, orderly, controllable, and predictable place, it is normal to experience success here. While all failures are abnormal, some successes are also unexpected and unusual. Both anomalous phenomena—failure as well as spectacular and serendipitous success—attract human attention and demand answers, thus. Interestingly, answers are not difficult to find. Myths invented by human beings help us 281

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make sense of unusual events rather quickly—spectacular successes give rise to extraordinary heroes and stark failures lay bare unwanted villains hiding among us. Heroes and villains, invented and constructed by us, make our world exciting, impart sense to anomalous events, and provide ready-made solutions to puzzling problems. Notions of hero and villain also reinforce our belief in the centrality of human beings in the cosmos. They, in our eyes, make the world revolve around, dependent on, and subservient to humanity. It is not unusual, then, if in crises, we anxiously long for heroes to save the day and in failures, we habitually hunt for villains to get some sense of closure. But heroes and villains—fabricated and manufactured by human societies—are exceptions encountered rather rarely and most people do not fall in this category. While we venerate success and despise failure, most of us are content with the banality of our existence located equidistant from both the extremes of heroic deeds and villainous acts—leading a normal life of succeeding routinely and failing occasionally in small and ordinary ways. If not only some heroes but all of us too seem to succeed in life most of the time, then, a shared belief in success would naturally shape the worldview of humanity. We are expected to succeed as a member of an orderly and interdependent society living in a controllable and predictable world. A failure is considered an aberration and a deviance—a departure from the normal of our experience base—because we fail occasionally and it impacts us negatively. Our society does not appreciate anomalous behaviours which are disruptive to order and predictability on which our comfortable and indulgent existence depends. A failure is a deviance that defies our control over the world. It undermines the fundamental basis of our anthropocentric civilisation. It questions and challenges our view of the world. It is undesirable and bad to fail in this world. Failure hurts, for it kills our expectations, destroys our plans, and steals our confidence in the future. It derails us from the tracks of stability and progress and plunges us into a sea of uncertainty, anxiety, fear, and despair. Thus, we do not tolerate failures easily and treat them unkindly and unsparingly. If the world is an orderly place, there cannot be anything wrong with it. A failure, then, can be only explained by attributing it to the fallibility and fault of human agents. To err is human, we admit, and so an error logically becomes a human error and a culprit must be a human being. Compulsively, we have to find someone to blame for a failure and typically, it is a man seen by all at the edge of failure whose errors explain failure. This is where our search usually ends and a closure is attained. This is how we readily and habitually react to failure, which is rooted in the culture and beliefs of humanity. That said, there is something intriguing about us. Although we consciously believe that the world is orderly



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and predictable, most of us, it seems, have a subconscious awareness of its uncertainties, uncontrollability, and the resultant inevitability of failure, which occasionally finds a fullest expression in our dreams. Our nightmares do seem to suggest something about human fragility in the world; our utter helplessness in our dreams reminds us of our primeval fear of living in a world without control. II Who does not want to succeed always in our world? Given the value our culture assigns to success, it becomes incumbent upon us to avoid failure. While no one wants to fail, some organisations and their members dread failure more than others. There are, then, those who are obsessed with failure and go to great lengths to avoid a failure—so much so that fail-safe operation becomes their greatest concern. I place the community of rescuers in this overcautious category. Given their preoccupation with failure and high-consequence assignment, it is imperative for rescuers to understand errors people make and how failures are made. It is also crucial for them to draw and learn right lessons from each failure and avoid similar mistakes next time. If we fail to understand a failure correctly, our understanding of it makes no difference to our vulnerability to another such failure in the future. Unfortunately, we often repeat the mistake of not understanding failures correctly, thus condemning ourselves to commit the same mistakes yet again. We react to errors and failures in a characteristic fashion but the validity of this habitual response is highly questionable. Here is an easy way to verify our erroneous judgement: Watch 1995 movie Apollo 13 which is based on true events that occurred in 1970. How would viewers react seeing command module pilot Jack Swigert perform a procedure to stir cryogenic tanks in service module on a command given by Mission Control, call sign Houston, which causes an explosion in the cryogenic system of vehicle, leading to the loss of several critical spacecraft functions and threatening the loss of spacecraft and its crew? Viewers would, most likely, gather an impression that Jack was responsible for a six-day long frightening ordeal of astronauts who valiantly struggled in space—more than four hundred thousand kilometres away from earth—to survive and get back home. Even other crew members in command module Odyssey seem to have such impression. If that is how we react, it is normal, but unconscionable. What in fact was responsible for this accident is recounted at the end of film by the commander of Apollo 13, Jim Lovell. He recalls, “In the following months, it was determined that

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a damaged coil built inside the oxygen tank sparked during our cryo stir and caused the explosion that crippled the Odyssey. It was a minor defect that occurred two years before I was even named the flight’s commander.” This is the intuitive pattern of reaction to errors and failures and it is often wrong, for reasons for failure often go deeper in time and lie scattered in space. Story of Apollo 13 sends a rather counterintuitive message that a man visible at the edge of a failure may just be a trigger and a victim, not the cause of failure. In a complex system that is built and shaped by the involvement of countless internal and external agents and decision-makers at various stages and times, his responsibility is often no greater than adding the last straw that broke the camel’s back. Purpose of this chapter is to develop a scientific understanding of phenomenon of failure. Such understanding is necessary for rescuers in order to be perpetually aware of a possibility of failure and their susceptibility to errors in a complex situation. Also, a correct understanding of failure is necessary to avoid failure methodically, to the extent possible, and to cope with a failure prudently, when it does occur just the same. But how do we do it and, if our common sense and folk view are misleading, then, where do we look for this knowledge? The only way to gather and gain this crucial knowledge, I believe, is by surveying academic literature available on failure and learning from people who have studied failures methodically. We can learn from many psychologists who have studied failure the most and from many sociologists who have made the most significant contributions to the study of failure. Scholarly insights into the mechanisms of failure available to us today have been drawn from a range of human activities involving linguistic and problem-solving experiments conducted in laboratories on the one hand and catastrophic accidents in complex technology environments such as nuclear power plants, large chemical plants, and space programmes on the other. I will draw upon this body of literature to introduce certain concepts and definitions related to failure and explain common ingredients and recipes for failure. I will also try to cull some important lessons from these discussions which can be applied in a wide variety of contexts and situations to avoid failure. III Social construct of failure is grounded in our belief in a controllable world. A failure, then, is an indication, realisation, and admission of our inability to control the world. This is just a broad philosophical conceptualisation of failure which can be defined and categorised in various ways. Let us



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first attempt it by understanding relationship between error and failure. An error—something incorrect or wrong—is not a failure, but errors may cause a failure. Errors reside in process and failures in outcome. A process is comprised of tasks—decisions and actions—performed by individuals, groups, or machines in order to achieve a goal. A goal is an end state that is intended to occur in a future after a series of coordinated decisions and actions taken by a person or a group, with or without the help of machines, to achieve it. Human efforts, which are directed to achieve an intended end state in a future, when fail to realise it in the end can be termed failure. Failure is not sabotage which is a result of deliberate steps taken by some human beings to organise a disruptive or destructive outcome. In this chapter, we are concerned with failures that no one wants or works for but happen all the same—failures that occur despite reasonable people acting rationally to achieve shared goals. All errors and failures are unintended and undesirable. Errors which do occur in the process but do not develop into a failure because their propagation towards failure is stopped in time can be called incidents. Failures which do bring harm and devastation can be called accidents. Accidents of severe nature can be defined as disasters. And, disasters can be said to have catastrophic consequences. When a person working alone and independently fails to achieve an intended personal goal, such outcome can be called personal failure. When many people working together for a short period of time to achieve an intended shared goal fail to realise it, such outcome can be called collective failure. When many people belonging to an organisation who either worked directly or indirectly or contributed recently or remotely to shape collective efforts directed towards an intended shared goal fail to achieve it, such outcome can be called institutional failure. When many people and several institutions working together and interdependently in space and time fail to achieve an intended shared goal, such outcome can be called systemic failure. A failure can occur due to actions taken by agents. It can also happen due to the absence of desirable actions which agents are responsible to take. In this sense, failure can be understood as an outcome of action or omission. In technical and bureaucratic settings, failures can make sense in terms standard procedures for executing defined tasks to achieve stated goals. failure can happen due to the violation of book. It can also occur due adherence to book in situations where certain adaptations are required real life.

of A to in

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We often experience a feeling of surprise after a failure because this outcome is not what we had wanted, worked for, or expected to happen. But word ‘surprise’ is not enough to capture sense in which we are surprised after each failure. One way to classify failures is by differentiating the feelings of surprise. A surprise can be partial. When a failure strikes us as a surprise not due to the absence of warning signals but due to our belief at the time that its indicators were innocent and inconsequential, it is a partial surprise. Our surprise in this case is partial because we were aware that something was brewing but we had rationalised, normalised, and ignored all clues prior to failure. It happens when we fail to connect available signals to failure in foresight what becomes quite clear in hindsight. A partial surprise is a failure of our intellect to read events correctly and attribute them to actual phenomenon prior to its revelation. Consequently, it is reflective of the past and humbling for self. A surprise can be optional too. We are surprised in a different manner when we had known that things could go wrong but believed that they would somehow not as they had so far not and instead of making serious and systematic efforts to change, we either continued to follow the easy and cosy path of status quo or chose the short paths of least energy and inconvenience to effect some quick, fragmented, and patchwork fixes. Such surprise does not disrupt our view of the world entirely but our experience does shatter a part of it which is made of an optimistic belief in the world. In our mind, such a failure was possible but not probable in a near future; it was known but not expected to occur too soon. It is, then, not so much a problem of foresight about a possibility of failure in the future but a problem of gambling on its rare probability in a near future. It, thus, qualifies for a judgemental label of optional surprise caused by our misplaced optimism. An optional surprise can have fatalistic and evasive reactions due to our belief in the rarity of event caused by the factor of chance. Role of chance factor, in turn, opens an escape route to internally avoid the questions of responsibility and guilt. Both the above cases are a result of failure of foresight, of limited or incorrect foresight. A surprise can also be total when there is an absence of foresight. However, only in case of a total absence of any warning sign or signal, cue or clue, whatsoever, can we call a surprise a total surprise, for such a failure would disorient us and disrupt our worldview totally and permanently. I believe that there is not much room for total surprises to happen in a world which is interconnected in the present and evolves from the past and understood fairly well by us. Nonetheless, if and when it occurs, the problem of total surprise is reconciled with the reality either by ignoring such failure as a rare anomaly or by a quest for new fundamentals that would eventually



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bring about a paradigm shift in our knowledge and beliefs and radically alter our view of the world. IV In this section, we will discuss the psychology of failure which brings to light certain personal limitations of human beings—the limitations of an individual standing alone and acting independently. It looks inwards and informs us about the problems of human perception and cognition. We have already discussed the basics of our cognitive structure and function in fourth chapter. We know that we perceive the world through our sensory system which gathers information and relays it through a neural network to brain where received information is processed, encoded, and stored. Total encoded information residing in brain that can be used in future forms a person’s memory which has two parts. Though the storage capacity of human brain is phenomenal, only a small cache is available for an instant access and rapid processing of information, which enables us to work in real time. This cache is the workspace of brain which is called working memory—the region and repository of attention—and seems to build a large part, if not all, of our awareness. But the main body of information is stored in longterm memory which is not readily available all the time. To bring it to bear on the world, it has to be retrieved and brought to working memory or awareness where it becomes available for online access and usage. While the intricate structures and intriguing mechanisms of human cognition constitute the strengths of human beings and form the basis of a profound success that our species has achieved in the world so far, the same mechanisms also create pitfalls for us and give rise to human errors and failures. Sensory perception and neural processing—reception, transmission, encoding, and storage—of information about the world have to be accurate and complete. If stored information in memory is inaccurate, imprecise, or incomplete, it can create problems when used in future. Also, information stored in memory must be retrieved timely in order for it to be useful when required. If it is not accessed in time, it might create problems. Owing to these real and routine possibilities, we always remain vulnerable to errors and failures. Human cognition is efficient but it is also imperfect and it can fail in intriguing ways. Lapses and slips are the common failures of attention and action. A lapse is an error of mind which occurs when memory cannot be brought to bear upon the world in time. Lapses are the “failures of memory,” writes British

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psychologist James Reason, which “do not necessarily manifest themselves in actual behaviour and may only be apparent to the person who experiences them.” In contrast, a slip is an error of action whose consequences are observed in the behaviour of a person and can be seen by others. Slips are “potentially observable as externalised actions-not-as-planned.” All of us are quite familiar with lapses and slips. We forget to do something that we intend to do when there is a delay between the formation of intent or the formulation of plan in mind and the execution of action in the world. A time lag between intent and action might be a busy interval—a period of thinking and doing some other things that claim and divert our attention and might make us forget a plan whose execution is pending. It is, then, a problem of sustained attention to a plan until its execution or inattention to a plan at the time of its intended execution. In other words, a scheduled or unscheduled delay in the execution of plan may bury it beneath the layers of our attention and our inattention to plan may be a consequence of our internal preoccupations and external distractions subsequent to the formulation of plan. Even more intriguing and irritating is a slip that happens midway after initiating a planned action. We execute an action sequence but abruptly stop midway, for we are at a loss and cannot recall goal we wanted to achieve; we do not remember what we had set out to do due to an internal preoccupation with something or an external distraction caused by something. Link between plan and goal goes missing from working memory and we struggle to retrieve it. If goal is recalled successfully, the sequence of actions is resumed and intended goal is achieved. Alternatively, we might decide to delay or abort the execution of plan after its recall. However, if we fail to recall goal, our plan remains unexecuted and goal unaccomplished. In other words, if somewhere along the pathway of execution, our plan-goal link goes missing from working memory due to our preoccupations or distractions, the execution of plan is suspended midway and the point of recovery lies after the point of interruption on timeline—if recalled, the plan is completed, delayed, or aborted; if not, it remains unexecuted. Another manifestation of this midway error is even more curious and hilarious. At times, we set out to do something and end up doing something else. We might, then, achieve an unintended goal instead of realising an intended goal. It often happens due to a strong habitual behaviour, which shares a part of action sequence or pathway of intended goal, intruding and taking over midway without our awareness. In other words, if the antecedent pathway



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of execution of a plan is common and its unique path begins only after a branching node, a strong habit may intrude due to our inattention and direct us on its pathway leading to an unintended goal. Error begins at branching node and ends at unintended outcome and somewhere between these two events lies the point of no return, prior to which events can be reversed and intended pathway regained but events become irreversible past this point and unintended goal is inexorably achieved. Our absent-mindedness remains opaque before branching node but it becomes observable after crossing it. A variant of slip is called post-completion error. “The key characteristic of this task structure is,” write American psychologists Michael Byrne and Susan Bovair, “that some action (retrieving the original, replacing the gas cap) is required to be performed after the main goal of the task (get copies, fill up) has been satisfied or completed.” This failure is also a consequence of inattention to the remainder step or subsequent goal of a task after achieving main goal. It is a problem of “goal loss from working memory . . . at the time the step is to be performed. . . . The error is made when the load on working memory is high, but will not be made when the load is low.” In short, it happens when we execute a plan and achieve a goal but forget to complete a subsequent task, for example, collect cash but leave card in machine. These are the common failures of everyday life experienced by all of us and can be explained by our absent-mindedness at the time of doing various tasks. They are the problems of attention or working memory. Attentional resource available to us is limited and such failures are caused by our inability to attend to several things at the same time or in a closely spaced region of time. It might be due to the asynchronous evolution of our genetic makeup and cultural life. Busy life of a civilised man presents the challenge of chasing multiple goals that compete for his attention at the same time while he is evolved and hardwired to allocate his attention only to one task at a time. Attentional failures are, then, inevitable and they are more likely to peak when life gets busier and more difficult, which overloads the working memory of man. While the attentional problem of human cognition is simpler to explain and easier to understand, a more intricate aspect of our cognition poses a much greater challenge for us in the modern world—of making the errors of judgement, also called mistakes. We gather information from environment and model the reality in mind to simulate and make sense of the world, gain certainty, come to conclusions, and take actions necessary to influence events and control the future of

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something. Mental model is an algorithmic tool that can be worked backwards and forwards from any point in time to know about the past, present, and future of the world. It helps us to understand a situation and predict the course of events and its future states. Armed with this information, we can plan our actions to influence and control events and the future state of the world. Our mental ability to model the world is not exclusive, for many animals can also model the reality in their mind and take decisions and actions to overcome and survive the challenges and contingencies of the world. While other animals can only model simple scenarios, we stand apart in our ability to construct and work with complex reality models. A mental model is rapidly constructed by matching certain cues and clues, indicators and calling conditions of a situation available to us with those of other reality models and schemas stored in memory which have been found correct and proven useful in the past. After scanning the repertoire of past models for similarity matching which happens at a phenomenal speed, one which appears most relevant is retrieved and situational information is fed into this apparently relevant but an old model to infer and interpret a new reality. It is the most remarkable ability of human cognition that has allowed us to survive and thrive in a complex world with limited physical and sensory abilities. At the same time, our modelling mechanism and its predictive ability, which provoke us to gamble on a future, are inherently risky and contain the seeds of human fallibility. Model-driven inferential interpretation supplies an imaginary view of a new world based on the experience and knowledge of an old world. Such interpretation is not the reality but a representation-based and projection dependent proposal of the reality which could be right or wrong. If a mental model is inaccurate, imprecise, or incomplete, our understanding of the reality based on the estimations of past, present, and future would be erroneous. Then, the actual future state of situation would vary and diverge from our estimated course and we would face a world different from one predicted by our mental model. As a result, planned actions based on this erroneous view of the world would not have intended effects and our intervention would fail to achieve its purpose. This is the problem of modelling and making judgements on its basis. Problem of human cognition and knowledge compounds the problem of mental model. To begin with, our information of the world may not be correct. While the faculty of vision is the most critical and powerful component of human sensory system which allows us to make sense of the world, we suffer



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from a severe perceptual limitation just the same. This limitation, however, is creatively compensated by our mind that produces what is called grand illusion in psychology. Vebjørn Ekroll, a Norwegian psychologist, explains, “When we look at the world around us, almost everything in our visual field appears clear, vivid and rich in detail but, in experiments, our objective ability to detect change is more suggestive of an observer with a bag on his head, with just a small hole through which to see anything. This observation hole can be moved around by the observer himself or it can be manipulated automatically when interesting events occur in the environment. But at any given moment, the observer sees the world only through a small hole in a bag. The essence of the grand illusion is that you have the impression of a clear view, while in reality you are limited by what you can see through the little hole in the bag over your head.” Our panoramic picture of the reality is actually stitched and stale, not undivided, unitary, and current as that of a camera. And, it also has a potential for being spurious and doctored. Perceptual limitation of a partially controlled keyhole viewport, then, combines with a short span of our working memory, limited attentional resource, preoccupation with past experience, and fidelity to suggestions. Together, they create conditions for “an incomplete or inaccurate mental model of the problem space,” writes Reason. He elaborates it further, “A useful image to conjure up when considering the problems of knowledge-based processing is that of a beam of light (the workspace) being directed onto a large screen (the mental representation of the problem space). Aside from the obvious fact that the knowledge represented on the screen may be incomplete and/ or inaccurate, the principal difficulties are that the illuminated portion of the screen is very small compared to its total extent, that the information potentially available on the screen is inadequately and inefficiently sampled by the tracking of the light beam and that, in any case, the beam changes direction in a manner that is only partially under the control of its operator. It is repeatedly drawn to certain parts of the screen, while other parts remain in darkness. Nor is it obvious that these favoured portions are necessarily the ones most helpful in finding a problem solution. The beam will be drawn to salient but irrelevant data and to the outputs of activated schema that may or may not bear upon the problem.” As a matter of fact, we have a tunnel vision, no matter how much we are convinced about seeing a panoramic view of the world. In 1999, two American psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris designed an interesting experiment to test the selective attention of human beings and its consequences on the perception of the reality in the form of inattentional blindness. Participants in this experiment were shown a video

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of six persons, three of them wearing white shirts and other three sporting black, thus making two teams and each team passing its own basketball to its members in a confined space in front of a landing entrance of three lifts. After some time, an all-black woman dressed up as a gorilla appears from right side, walks leisurely through players engaged in a passing game, pauses in the middle of activity space to face observer, beats her chest, then turns right, walks to the other end, and disappears. She is visible for nearly nine seconds and test ends some time after she disappears. Observers were asked to count how many times white players pass their basketball (see Selective Attention Test, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo&feature=youtu. be). Results of this study were consistent with the previous findings; only half of observers noticed gorilla appearing in the midst of players and remaining half failed to see her presence. Several variants of this test were given to about two hundred volunteers. Simons and Chabris concluded that “approximately half of observers fail to notice an ongoing and highly salient but unexpected event while they are engaged in a primary monitoring task.” They further said, “With each eye fixation, we experience a richly detailed visual world. Yet recent work on visual integration and change direction reveals that we are surprisingly unaware of the details of our environment from one view to the next: we often do not detect large changes to objects and scenes (‘change blindness’). Furthermore, without attention, we may not even perceive objects (‘inattentional blindness’). Taken together, these findings suggest that . . . unexpected events are often overlooked” and “we perceive and remember only those objects and details that receive focused attention. . . . Interestingly, spatial proximity of the critical unattended object to attended locations does not appear to affect detection, suggesting that observers attend to objects and events, not spatial positions.” Israeli-American psychologist Daniel Kahneman asserts that “the gorilla study illustrates two important facts about our minds: we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.” But not all agree with Kahneman, for they believe that this is a rather sweeping conclusion based on a ‘negative’ interpretation of experiment. Finnish-born business management scholar Teppo Felin contends it with his ‘positive’ interpretation. “The alternative interpretation says that what people are looking for – rather than what people are merely looking at – determines what is obvious. Obviousness is not self-evident. . . . It shows that humans attend to visual scenes in directed fashion, based on the questions and theories they have in mind (or that they’ve been primed with).” Whether we fail to see a part or we choose to see a part, in either case we do not see the whole and this is not an interpretation but a fact. And, failing to see events happening in the world indeed is a problem.



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As if our tunnel vision and inattentional blindness are not enough, there is, then, confirmation bias too which does not let us see what we look at. American psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt writes, “Confirmation bias is a mechanism that allows inaccurate beliefs to spread and persist. . . . People tend to seek out and attend to information that already confirms their beliefs. We find such information more trustworthy and are less critical of it, even when we are presented with credible, seemingly unassailable facts that suggest otherwise. Once we develop theories about how things operate, that framework is hard to dislodge.” Interestingly, American journalist Walter Lippmann had accurately described this problem of human cognition much before it became a legitimate subject of enquiry in psychology. He wrote, “For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see.” Call it our blindness or bias or a consequence of our questions or expectations, our mind does not let us see everything that takes place right in front of our eyes. On the other extreme, we might ‘see’ things that did not happen in the world just because we wanted them to happen and our brain fabricated them in our mind’s eye. Studies in cognitive psychology indisputably point to the constraints of human perception of the reality. It is a serious constraint, for if our perception itself is defective, our view of the world based on it cannot be but defective. It is akin to classic computing problem GIGO. If word ‘rationality’ suggests a behaviour that is appropriate for achieving a goal, then the keyhole view of the world severely constrains the notion of rationality in a perfect sense. If you do not see the whole world together at the same time, you cannot know it in its entirety at any point in time. So, your view of the world that shapes your decisions and actions to achieve a goal remains incomplete and your behaviour cannot be called entirely rational vis-à-vis goal. To make things worse, it combines with a host of other constraints which then leave us with the reality of bounded rationality. American psychologist Herbert Simon defines the problem of bounded rationality in a nutshell, “Bounded rationality is simply the idea that the choices people make are determined not only by some consistent overall goal and the properties of the external world, but also by the knowledge that decision makers do and don’t have of the world, their ability or inability to evoke that knowledge when it is relevant, to work out the consequences of their actions, to conjure up possible courses of action, to cope with uncertainty (including uncertainty deriving from the possible responses of other actors), and to adjudicate among their many competing wants. Rationality is bounded because these abilities are severely limited. Consequently, rational behavior in

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the real world is as much determined by the ‘inner environment’ of people’s minds, both their memory contents and their processes, as by the ‘outer environment’ of the world on which they act, and which acts on them.” German psychologist Dietrich Dörner sums up our psychological limitations, “The slowness of our thinking and the small amount of information we can process at any one time, our tendency to protect our sense of our competence, the limited inflow capacity of our memory, and our tendency to focus only on immediately pressing problems—these are the simple causes of the mistakes we make in dealing with complex systems.” I recommend a careful reading of James Reason’s widely acclaimed work Human Error for a more detailed discussion on psychological constraints and pathologies, perceptual, cognitive, intellectual, and emotional biases a man may suffer from, which make him vulnerable to errors and failures. Let us now briefly look at the external world and problems it poses to a self-embattled man. Limitations and problems of human cognition and knowledge are vastly compounded by the intricate architecture and complex processes of the modern human world. It generates countless visible and invisible, near and far, direct and indirect, fixed and fluctuating relationships, interconnections, and interdependencies, brings the large numbers of agents, agencies, and technologies to bear on each other and upon the world, and makes events occur at the same time or in rapid succession and move endlessly and unstoppably at a fast pace. Intricacy of its structure as well as the possibilities, pace, and propagation of events happening in it make this world largely unknowable and theoretically uncontrollable. Such complexity, then, creates the conditions for local rationality. Limiting idea of local rationality insists that a man can, at best, know only a part of the reality that exists in his proximity—which makes sense to him and makes a world around him. He cannot know the wider world beyond, which his world is a part of and connected to and which greatly influences his surroundings. A man, thus, can only be locally rational; he cannot know the full extent of the global reality, most of which lies beyond his reach and remains invisible and inaccessible to him. It suggests that although the big picture can still be known by a man, a complete picture of the world cannot conceivably be known by anyone. Ironically, we live in such world with an illusion of familiarity and control but the truth is that we have assembled a strange place, full of uncertainties. In such a world, behaviour cannot be totally rational and failure is inevitable. That we do not fail frequently in our complex, fast paced, and uncertain world is wondrously strange.



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American cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach write, “For humans, ignorance is inevitable: It’s our natural state. There’s too much complexity in the world for any individual to master. Ignorance can be frustrating, but the problem is not ignorance per se. It’s the trouble we get into by not recognizing it.” We get into troubles because “we all suffer, to a greater or lesser extent, from an illusion of understanding, an illusion that we understand how things work when in fact our understanding is meager.” Experts or laypersons, they warn everyone, “Individual knowledge is remarkably shallow, only scratching the surface of the true complexity of the world, and yet we often don’t realize how little we understand. The result is that we are often overconfident, sure we are right about things we know little about.” This, in brief, is what the psychology of failure has to tell us. It seems that the possibilities of errors and failures are intrinsic to our biological design and constitution, structure and function. It naturally creates a doubt on the brilliance of our brain. If none of these findings are doubtful, then should we see our innate ability to model the world in mind with all its limitations as a dysfunctional property? Not indeed. On the contrary, to quote Reason, “the very rapid handling of information characteristic of human cognition is possible because the regularities of the world, as well as our routine dealings with them, have been represented internally as schemata. The price we pay for this largely automatic processing of information is that perceptions, memories, thoughts and actions have a tendency to err in the direction of the familiar and the expected.” Evidently, problem is not an imperfect human ability to model the world but humankind itself, which demands superhuman efforts from ordinary human beings, which is blind, averse, and intolerant to human fallibility. Unfortunately, most of us do not ever realise that the weakness of reality modelling is a necessary trade-off, for our fallibility, as Reason said, is “rooted in the essential and adaptive properties of human cognition. They are the penalties that must be paid for our remarkable ability to model the regularities of the world and then to use these stored representations to simplify complex informationhandling tasks.” Errors of judgement or mistakes arising from the intrinsic weakness of modelling the reality, then, are akin to the harmful side effects of a life-saving drug that we must make our peace and learn to live with. V While all the reasons for human failure painstakingly discovered by psychologists do plausibly explain how underlying faulty and erroneous

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knowledge, perceptions, emotions, judgements, and behaviours come about and overcome a man, they do not tell the whole human story. In fact, it cannot be told without understanding the sociology of failure which investigates the limitations of a man working under the influence and control of external social and situational forces. This perspective is essential, for no man exists in a void. He leads a social life, collaborates and cooperates actively in his life, and he is moulded and shaped by social and cultural settings and by other people to a great extent both in the long and short terms. In other words, other people and social environment significantly shape a man’s worldview, personality, habits, decisions, and actions. In order to understand the sociology of human failure, however, we have to understand how the human world works and what powers human civilisation. These questions inevitably take us into the realm of philosophy, which is the mother of all sciences and has capacity to understand a phenomenon at the most fundamental level. Let us, therefore, briefly discuss the philosophical basis of sociological explanation of failure before coming to it. We are a form of life and share the same origins with all other life forms on earth. It is not strange, then, if we, as living organisms, possess the same innate drive for replication, security, and comfort in life, which is unmistakably witnessed everywhere, without exception. These three predispositions of earthlings fuel the living world and also power human civilisation. But they do not entirely explain the basis of human organisation and our success and domination of the whole planet. We certainly seek to reproduce our copies and we are indeed driven to lead a secure and comfortable life under the spell of an indomitable instinctual life force as every living thing does, but we serve these ends by harnessing our unparalleled intelligence, far superior to anything ever evolved on our planet, and by leveraging a matchless ability to generate fictitious ideas—the myths of our mind—for enlisting cooperation from others. We are not only able to imagine things which are not real and do not exist in the world but we are also able to communicate and transmit these imagined ideas or myths to the other members of our species. We also somehow begin to believe in these myths and fictions—individually as well as collectively—as if they are real. These fictions, then, become our shared beliefs, construct a collective view of the world, and enlist the cooperation of large numbers of human beings for voluntarily directing their efforts to achieve certain goals sanctioned by these beliefs, thus altering the world around us. We are also powerfully driven by an acute awareness—perhaps, a unique and exclusive one—of the transience of life and its mortality. It imparts a powerful sense of time to us and makes us experience resultant anxieties and fears too. Our existential awareness too decisively manipulates our



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intelligence and efforts towards certain objectives. What we call civilisation, I believe, is a condition produced by these fundamental forces, for our beliefs and capabilities shape our efforts which then shape the world. Our perpetual quest for replication, security, and comfort—in the light of our elevated consciousness of the world, of our transient existence, and of everflowing time—can only be satisfied by access to resources, that is, materials and means available in nature and invented by humanity for making and manipulating the world. We have, thus, assigned an unquestionable value to a wide variety of resources—material, land, labour, power, knowledge, technology, machinery, tools, among other things, and above all, money and time—and fruits and products thereof. Our need for resources and their crucial role in our way of life has, in turn, generated a value system that approves accumulation—the more the merrier. An aggressive extraction and exploitation of and easy and assured access to valuable resources is made possible only by our unstinting and uncompromising belief in the notions of control, success, and conformity. These three ideas, then, can be said to be the axles, wheels, and linchpins of unstoppable chariot of human civilisation; they can also be likened to the main engines of our astonishing achievements, of endless and ever-growing consumption of resources by us. Remove them from underneath civilisation and the whole edifice will break up, the hustle and bustle of the world will cease, and civilisation, as we know it, will vanish into thin air. Resources are finite and scarce. Only earth and sun in our solar system are the primary sources of everything relevant to us. Physical boundary of our planet makes resources finite and an unlimited demand of humanity makes them scarce. Time is also limited in view of our mortality; it, moreover, always ticks and runs away. Resources are extracted, exploited, and transformed in innumerable ways by the whole of humanity all over the world. We do it by coming and working together in many different organised groups called organisations which pursue different goals. Interestingly, the complex and convoluted culture of humanity generates multiple goals to be pursued by each organisation—by the same people in the same situation at the same time and place. Pursuit of any goal requires a provision and supply of resources, which, as we know, are finite and scarce. Different goals, therefore, compete for limited resources available at a time and create a conflict of interests, for all goals cannot be given all the required resources simultaneously by any organisation. Goal-resource conflict is resolved by assigning priorities and allocating resources commensurate to the priority of each goal. This judgement is ultimately an outcome of the beliefs, values, and worldviews

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of people involved in decision-making at all levels. All individuals working together, however, do not have identical beliefs. It causes further conflict as ideas themselves compete for recognition, acceptance, priority, and primacy. In the end, the view of the most powerful person or group in a social setting prevails; a goal viewed as the most important by the most important person receives a better deal and gets a bigger piece of the pie while other goals are relegated to a back seat and forced to make do with inadequate resources. In other words, the problem of clash of ideas, conflict of goals, and competition for resources is resolved by the play of power in organisations. This is why our world is the way it is and this is how it works. Let us now turn to the sociology of failure. Sociology of failure looks beyond human beings and their personal limitations. It points out that a scarcity of necessary resources required to achieve a goal creates conditions for failure. There is little doubt that goal priorities and the allocation of differential resources make organisations move. But the very same decisions which make compromises to make an organisation work and function at one time might also create initial conditions for its failure at another time. American sociologist Diane Vaughan meticulously revisited events leading to the accident of Space Shuttle Challenger. She discusses the problem of resources under ‘the structural origins of disaster’ in her highly acclaimed book The Challenger Launch Decision. She writes, “Budgetary constraints also plagued shuttle development. NASA’s original plans called for a fully reusable shuttle with estimated development costs of $10 billion and an annual budget of approximately $2 billion. Surprisingly, the principal cost at the outset was predicted to be, not the necessary hardware, but the people required to do the job. . . . Salaries . . . were estimated at the outset at nearly $1 billion per year. Nonetheless, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in an effort to moderate NASA’s planning for what critics called ‘a Cadillac of space shuttles,’ severely limited NASA’s annual budget, with no possibility of budget increases during the succeeding five years. . . . OMB’s funding restrictions meant NASA could not develop the shuttle it had been planning. The allocation was half of what NASA had requested. . . . The power struggles between NASA, OMB, Congress, and the administration directly affected shuttle design. Compromise was necessary to get the program going. . . . Development costs had to be low in order to secure the funding to get the program started, but in many cases, an economical design decision would result in higher operating costs. . . . The final design was far from NASA’s original conceptualization. Although NASA was given the responsibility for meeting the nation’s goals for space exploration, the



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ability to accomplish them was constrained by other organizations in NASA’s environment, each seeking to fulfill its own political mandate. Alex Roland, space historian, observed: ‘Congress, OMB, the Air Force, and NASA had all pulled in different directions: Congress toward cost recovery, OMB toward low development costs, the Air Force toward operational capabilities, and NASA toward a future of manned spaceflight. Instead of a horse, NASA got a camel—better than no transportation at all and indeed well suited for certain jobs, but hardly the steed it would have chosen.’” Starting from its inception, resource constraints and their cascading effects continued ever after and a series of “untenable compromises” were made until Challenger disintegrated into pieces and burnt in the sky with all seven crew members onboard mission 51-L, just 73 seconds after its lift off from Kennedy Space Centre on January 28, 1986. Seventeen years later, history repeated itself when Space Shuttle Columbia broke up and burnt in the sky during its re-entry on February 1, 2003 killing all seven crew members of mission STS-107 on their way back home. Columbia Accident Investigation Board restated the old problem of resource constraints in its report. It emphatically pronounced that “history is not just a backdrop or a scene-setter. History is cause. History set the Columbia and Challenger accidents in motion. . . . The Board’s investigation of what caused the Columbia accident thus begins in the fields of East Texas but reaches more than 30 years into the past, to a series of economically and politically driven decisions that cast the Shuttle program in a role that its nascent technology could not support. To understand the cause of the Columbia accident is to understand how a program promising reliability and cost efficiency resulted instead in a developmental vehicle that never achieved the fully operational status NASA and the nation accorded it.” It concluded that the “causes of this accident are rooted in the Space Shuttle Program’s history and culture, including the original compromises that were required to gain approval for the Shuttle, subsequent years of resource constraints, fluctuating priorities, schedule pressures, mischaracterization of the Shuttle as operational rather than developmental, and lack of an agreed national vision for human space flight.” Above all, “the Shuttle emerged from a series of political compromises that produced unreasonable expectations – even myths – about its performance. . . . The constraints under which the agency has operated throughout the Shuttle Program have contributed to both Shuttle accidents. Although NASA leaders have played an important role, these constraints were not entirely of NASA’s own making. The White House and Congress must recognize the role of their decisions in this accident and take responsibility for safety in the future.” It warned strategic decision-makers that “if these persistent,

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systemic flaws are not resolved, the scene is set for another accident.” In this way, the sociology of failure takes the question and causes of failure beyond a few persons who are seen to be responsible for it. Decisions and actions taken under constraints are often erroneous and fall into a special class of errors. Let us discuss the theory of such errors before exploring the sociology of failure further. Faulty conditions produced and perpetuated in a system without any adverse consequences are called latent errors. They are latent in a sense that while these conditions are faulty and may cause a failure, they do not precipitate a failure immediately. However, if a failure happens at a later date, its underlying causes and inevitability can be traced back to certain strategic compromises and errors made in the past, which somehow remained dormant until some other events came together and caused the breakdown of an apparently functional system. Reason sees them as resident pathogens in a system. “The resident pathogen metaphor,” he writes, “emphasises the significance of causal factors present in the system before an accident sequence actually begins.” They are “latent errors whose adverse consequences may lie dormant within the system for a long time, only becoming evident when they combine with other factors to breach the system’s defences.” Nature of latent errors is such, explain American psychologist David Woods and his colleagues specialising in human factors and safety, that their “consequences are not revealed or activated until some other enabling condition is met,” for they “require a trigger, that is, an initiating or enabling event, that activates its effects or consequences.” Writing in the context of complex technological systems, Reason notes that latent errors are “most likely to be spawned by those whose activities are removed in both time and space from the direct control interface: designers, high-level decision makers, construction workers, managers and maintenance personnel.” However, the agents of latent errors are no different in other organisations—they are invariably those whose actions are crucial and removed from a failure temporally and spatially. A system that carries latent errors also harbours latent failure invisible to most people both insiders and outsiders. While it may seem healthy and vigorous, such a system is destined to fail. Apollo 13 failure described above is an example of latent failure. We know, how ‘impersonal’ factors such as resource scarcity and latent errors can unwittingly cause failures in addition to human factors. Another such contributory factor in failure is information. We have discussed above the problem of knowledge and information from psychological perspective. It also has a sociological side that I will introduce briefly. I advise readers to refer to Man-made Disasters, a classic book of British sociologist



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Barry Turner, for a better understanding of the problem of information in the context of failure from sociological perspective. An organisation is made successful by a large number of people associated with it who work together and towards its goals. It fails when these people fail to coordinate their thoughts and actions in time. At the heart of organisational coordination lies the flow of information. A failure occurs when this flow is disrupted, becomes dysfunctional, and combines with other causal factors. Let us see some of the studied, recorded, and verified cases of failure where the flow and sense of information had a crucial role. Summerland leisure centre in Douglas on the British Isle of Man caught fire on August 2, 1973 in which 50 adults and children were killed. Turner has quoted an interesting part of the Report of the Summerland Fire Commission. Mr De Lorka thought it was for Mr Harding to organize an evacuation procedure, but he never discussed it with him … Mr Harding thought it was for the heads of departments to organize their own evacuation procedure but he gave them no instructions about it. Mr Paxton, the Deputy Managing Director of Trust Houses Forte Leisure Ltd, thought it was for Mr Harding to organize an evacuation procedure and for Mr De Lorka to make sure that he did it. Mr Dixon, the supervising Fire and Safety Officer of Trust Houses Forte Leisure Ltd … thought it was Mr De Lorka’s duty … and no part of Mr Harding’s duty. Mr De Lorka, in evidence, accepted that if a fire occurred, he relied on members of staff using their own initiative as to what to do to get people out safely.

Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident in its report also notes it. The decision to launch the Challenger was flawed. Those who made that decision were unaware of the recent history of problems concerning the O-rings and the joint and were unaware of the initial written recommendation of the contractor advising against the launch at temperatures below 53 degrees Fahrenheit and the continuing opposition of the engineers at Thiokol after the management reversed its position. They did not have a clear understanding of Rockwell’s concern that it was not safe to launch because of ice on the pad. If the decisionmakers had known all of the facts, it is highly unlikely that they would have decided to launch 51-L on January 28, 1986. That testimony reveals failures in communication that resulted in a decision to launch 51-L based on incomplete and sometimes misleading information, a conflict between engineering data and management judgments, and a

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Dignity of Life NASA management structure that permitted internal flight safety problems to bypass key Shuttle managers. . . . Neither the launch constraint, the reason for it, or the six consecutive waivers prior to 51-L were known to Moore (Level I) or Aldrich (Level II) or Thomas at the time of the Flight Readiness Review process for 51-L.

Arnold D. Aldrich, Manager, Space Transportation Systems Programme, in his testimony given to the above commission, said: The . . . breakdown in communications . . . that I personally am concerned about is the situation of the variety of reviews that were conducted last summer between the NASA Headquarters Organization and the Marshall Organization on the same technical area and the fact that that was not brought through my office in either direction-that is, it was not worked through-by the NASA Headquarters Organization nor when the Marshall Organization brought these concerns to be reported were we involved. . . . And I believe that is a critical breakdown in process and I think it is also against the documented reporting channels that the program is supposed to operate to.

While it is doubtful that Challenger accident would have been averted only if the top management of NASA had received information it said it did not, there is no doubt that the complexities and shortcomings of information handling and processing were one of the main reasons for this accident. 9/11 Commission investigated one the most earthshaking events of our time—2001 terrorist attacks on US mainland—that changed international order established after Second World War and Cold War which followed it as nothing had done before. Its report also reveals the same banal story. “The system was blinking red” during the summer of 2001. Officials were alerted across the world. Many were doing everything they possibly could to respond to the threats. . . . Yet no one working on these late leads in the summer of 2001 connected the case in his or her in-box to the threat reports agitating senior officials and being briefed to the President. Thus, these individual cases did not become national priorities. As the CIA supervisor “John” told us, no one looked at the bigger picture; no analytic work foresaw the lightening that could connect the thundercloud to the ground. . . . We see little evidence that the progress of the plot was disturbed by any government action. The U.S. government was unable to capitalize on mistakes made by al Qaeda. Time ran out. The FBI did not have the capability to link the collective knowledge of agents in the field to national priorities. . . . Other agencies deferred to the FBI. . . . No one looked behind the curtain.



Paths to Errors and Failures 303 Information was not shared. . . . Analysis was not pooled. Effective operations were not launched. Often the handoffs of information were lost across the divide separating the foreign and domestic agencies of the government.

It gives a curious account of two terrorists involved in 9/11 attacks who came on CIA radar and then fell off. The National Security Agency (NSA) analyzed communications. . . . Working-level officials in the intelligence community knew little more. . . . They correctly concluded . . . that “something nefarious might be afoot.” . . . The NSA did not think its job was to research these identities. It saw itself as an agency to support intelligence consumers, such as CIA. The NSA tried to respond energetically to any request made. But it waited to be asked. . . . The head of the CIA’s al Qaeda unit told his bosses that surveillance . . . was continuing. . . . There is no evidence of any tracking efforts actually being undertaken by anyone. . . . No other effort was made to create other opportunities to spot these Arab travelers. . . . Just from the evidence in . . . passport, one of the logical possible destinations and interdiction points would have been the United States. Yet no one alerted the INS or the FBI to look for these individuals. They arrived unnoticed, in Los Angeles on January 15. . . . In early March 2000, Bangkok reported that Nawaf al Hazmi, now identified for the first time with his full name, had departed on January 15 on a United Airlines flight to Los Angeles. Since the CIA did not appreciate the significance of that name or notice the cable, we have found no evidence that this information was sent to the FBI. . . . From the details of this case, . . . one can see how hard it is for the intelligence community to assemble enough of the puzzle pieces gathered by different agencies to make some sense of them. Who had the job of managing the case to make sure these things were done? One answer is that everyone had the job. The CIA’s deputy director for operations, James Pavitt, stressed to us that the responsibility resided with all involved. Above all he emphasized the primacy of the field. The field had the lead in managing operations. The job of headquarters, he stressed, was to support the field, and do so without delay. If the field asked for information or other support, the job of headquarters was to get it—right away. . . . This is a traditional perspective on operations. . . . When asked about how this traditional structure would adapt to the challenge of managing a transnational case, one that hopped from place to place as this one did, the deputy director argued that all involved were responsible for making it work. Pavitt underscored the responsibility of the particular field location where the suspects were being tracked at any given time. On the other hand, he also said that the Counterterrorist Center was supposed to manage all the moving parts, while what

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Dignity of Life happened on the ground was the responsibility of managers in the field. . . . Headquarters tended to support and facilitate. . . . But headquarters never really took responsibility for the successful management of this case. Hence the managers at CIA headquarters did not realize that omissions in planning had occurred, and they scarcely knew that the case had fallen apart. . . . The director of the Counterterrorist Center . . . recalled to us that this operation was one among many and that, at the time, it was “considered interesting, but not heavy water yet.” He recalled the failure to get the word to Bangkok fast enough, but has no evident recollection of why the case then dissolved, unnoticed. . . . The next level down, the director of the al Qaeda unit in CIA . . . recalled that he did not think it was his job to direct what should or should not be done. He did not pay attention when the individuals dispersed and things fell apart. There was no conscious decision to stop the operation after the trail was temporarily lost in Bangkok. He acknowledged, however, that perhaps there had been a letdown for his overworked staff after the extreme tension and long hours in the period of the millennium alert.

9/11 Commission also cites another interesting case of routine information handling. On December 4, 1998, DCI . . . issued a directive to several CIA officials and his deputy for community management, stating: “We are at war. I want no resources or people spared in this effort, either inside CIA or the Community.” The memorandum had little overall effect on mobilizing the CIA or the intelligence community. . . . The memo was addressed only to CIA officials and the deputy for community management. . . . She faxed the memo to the heads of the major intelligence agencies. . . . Only a handful of people received it. The NSA director . . . believed the memo applied only to the CIA and not the NSA, because no one had informed him of any NSA shortcomings. For their part, CIA officials thought the memorandum was intended for the rest of the intelligence community, given that they were already doing all they could and believed that the rest of the community needed to pull its weight.

Columbia Accident Investigation Board observes thus: Generally, the higher information is transmitted in a hierarchy, the more it gets “rolled-up,” abbreviated, and simplified. Sometimes information gets lost altogether, as weak signals drop from memos, problem identification systems, and formal presentations. The same conclusions, repeated over time, can result in problems eventually being deemed non-problems. An extraordinary example of this phenomenon is how Shuttle Program managers assumed the foam strike on STS-112 was not a warning sign.



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Turner cites the Report of the Public Inquiry into the Accident at Hixon Level Crossing on 6 January 1968 which aptly sums up the daunting problem of information handling and processing in the complex modern world. The number of officers within the Ministry who have been concerned with the matter over the years have been far more numerous than those who are now available as witnesses. Moreover the Ministry consists of a number of large departments, each of whom may gain a piece of knowledge which, added to what another department knows, might produce realization of a particular fact, but it is sometimes inevitable, to use the words of one witness that ‘with the best of intentions on the part of the individuals concerned, something is likely to fall between the interstices of the administrative net’.

Intentions, however, do not matter much to the unfortunate victims of failures, only consequences do. Be that as it may, these are just a few failure stories but the same theme runs through all failures in all cultural contexts and organisational settings. That the management of information is a serious problem and an ever-present challenge in each organisation is beyond dispute. In fact, the questions of role clarity and responsibility raised in the above findings also finally boil down to the basic question of information and worldview and the way they are generated and shared. Information and knowledge are closely related and complementary to each other. As a result, the problem of information causes the problem of knowledge and the problem of knowledge creates the problem of information. Together, they precipitate the problem of realisation—failure of a person to realise if there is a problem or what is that problem. Turner rightly tells us that “a way of seeing is always also a way of not seeing.” He warns, “Part of the effectiveness of organizations lies in the way in which they are able to bring together large numbers of people and imbue them for a sufficient time with a sufficient similarity of approach, outlook and priorities to enable them to achieve collective, sustained responses which would be impossible if a group of unorganized individuals were to face the same problem. However, this very property also brings with it the dangers of a collective blindness to important issues, the danger that some vital factors may be left outside the bounds of organizational perception.” He further writes, “When a pervasive and structural set of beliefs bias the knowledge and ignorance of an organization and its members, these beliefs do not merely show up in the attitudes and perceptions of the men and women within the organization, but they also affect the decision-taking procedures within the organization. . . . Additionally they affect the organizational arrangements and provisions. . . . Thus, there is a possibility of a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle growing up where it is

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generally believed that an area is not important or problematic.” This, then, is a structural problem intrinsic to organisations. There is another structural aspect of information handling in modern organisations which is both the strength and shortcoming of these entities. Let us begin with the basic theory of communication, for understanding it is necessary to grasp the structural limitations of organisational communication. Meaning is not intrinsic to a message but revealed to the mind of interpreter of message and, thus, the same message can be read differently by different readers. Communication is a process and outcome of an exchange of information between two or more individuals. It transpires by encoding, transmission, and decoding of a message sent from a sender to one or more receivers. It fails if intended information is not sent timely, does not reach its target in time, not sent to right person or persons, does not reach right person or persons, or it is not sent at all, in part or full. These are the problems of transmission. Distortion can also take place at both ends, that is, in the processes of encoding and decoding a message, which might create a gap between the intended and perceived meanings of message. Such distortions are often caused by the presumptions and preconceptions of persons and inferences and interpretations drawn from different ways of looking at the world. Due to these possibilities, interpersonal communication is always a challenge. It is not unusual, then, to experience communication failures in the most mundane affairs of everyday life, which handle the simplest of information flowing through the most direct channels of communication. All of us know it for a fact as we frequently face the problems and failures of ordinary and routine communication in all roles and settings. Turner acknowledges the existence of communication barriers in organisational context and concludes that “perfect communication will never be possible in any but the simplest of systems.” However, I tend to agree more with American sociologist William Freudenburg who asserts that “the basic fact is that communication is always an imperfect process.” All modern organisations are structured hierarchically and follow bureaucratic procedures in a Weberian sense, that is, in the sense of bureaucratic administration conceived by German sociologist Max Weber which is devoid of negative connotations and pejorative overtones of press and the public. Problem of information is inbuilt in bureaucratic communication and accordingly, all organisations experience frequent breakdowns in communication, most of them being unintended, innocent, and harmless. Occasionally, though, such breakdowns cause calamitous outcomes too. Freudenburg calls this problem



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“bureaucratic attenuation of information flows.” He explains that “the greater the number of ‘links’ in a communication chain, the greater the likelihood that important pieces of the information will fail to get through. The common illustration of rumor transmission provides an example: If a ‘secret’ is whispered to one person, who then transmits it to another, who transmits it to still another, the message is often unrecognizable by the time it gets around the room. It is also possible to illustrate the problem quantitatively: If we make the relatively generous assumption that there will be a 0.7 correlation between what any given person in an organization knows and what that same person’s supervisor will know about the same issue, this means that just two organizational ‘links’ would reduce the correlation between the specialists’ understanding of a technology and their supervisors’ to less than 0.5 (0.7 x 0.7 = 0.49), and seven links would reduce the correlation to less than 0.1 (0.77 = .082).” Evidently, the problem of bureaucratic attenuation of information flows afflicts larger organisations much more than smaller ones. Vaughan adds more to this discussion and sees it as a problem of “structural secrecy.” She bares the complexity of modern organisations thus: Secrecy is built into the very structure of organizations. As organizations grow large, actions are, for the most part, not observable. The division of labor between subunits, hierarchy, and geographical dispersion segregate knowledge about tasks and goals. Distance—both physical and social— interferes with the efforts of those at the top to “know” the behavior of others in the organization—and vice versa. Specialized knowledge further inhibits knowing. People in one department or division lack the expertise to understand the work in another or, for that matter, the work of other specialists in their own unit. The language associated with a different task, even in the same organization, can be wondrously opaque. Changing technology also interferes with knowing, for assessing information requires keeping pace with these changes—a difficult prospect when it takes time away from one’s primary job responsibilities. To circumvent these obstacles, organizations take steps to increase the flow of information—and, hypothetically, knowledge. They make rules designating when, what, and to whom information is to be conveyed. Information exchange grows more formal, complex, and impersonal, perhaps overwhelmingly so, as organizations institute computer transaction systems to record, monitor, process, and transmit information from one part of the organization to another. Ironically, efforts to communicate more can result in knowing less. Rules that guarantee wide distribution of information can increase the amount to the point that a lot is not read. Transaction systems, designed to promote knowing, can also be a source of structural secrecy, concealing even as they

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Vaughan had to offer a theoretical explanation for she was convinced that “at NASA, structural secrecy concealed the seriousness of the O-ring problem, contributing to the persistence of the scientific paradigm on which the belief in acceptable risk was based.” An awareness of inhibitory effect of culture on organisational communication is necessary in order to understand information problem that organisations



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and their members create and live with. “Information, views of the world, norms and beliefs about appropriate behaviour,” writes Turner, “all vary from organization to organization, from department to department and from office to office.” Even “the precise assumptions about what may be regarded as ‘reasonable’ and ‘rational’ will vary from department to department within the organization, and they will also be subject to modification over time.” Communication may, then, become a casualty of cultural codes and constructs shared and understood by a group but not by others. Important information may be lost, for culture specific and knowledge dependent language—consisting of jargons and acronyms and relying on assumptions and preconceptions for the extraction of meaning—unwittingly obfuscates and masks the intended meaning of a formal message and interferes with the formation of a clear picture in the mind of an outsider trying to interpret and understand it. Turner makes an important point that the problem of information in the case of ill-structured and ill-defined phenomena is also a consequence of resource scarcity and, to that extent, it is impossible to address the question of information completely by any other means. He observes, “In the complex information handling situation, . . . several groups are involved, trying to manipulate a state of affairs for which they are unable to agree upon a single, authoritative description. Because each person has access to slightly different information, each one tends to construct slightly differing ‘theories’ about what is happening and what needs to be done. It is possible, of course, to reconcile all of the conflicting aspects of these theories to produce an agreed one, if sufficient time, money and energy is available, but it is typically the case in such situations that while complexity and uncertainty are considerable, time, money and energy are scarce. . . . The general condition is thus one in which the amount of information which can be generated or attended to with available resources is far less than the amount needed to describe or take account of the complexity of the situation in full. Relevant information . . . itself becomes a scarce resource in such circumstances, so that the cost of obtaining one piece of information has to be balanced against the lost opportunity of locating another piece of information.” A most likely consequence of ambiguous and incomplete information in complex scenarios is an underestimation of a potential hazard or a failure of realisation of true nature of evolving threat. Turner explains, “Given the complexity and vagueness of ill-defined problems, it is often difficult for one party with one view of a hazard to convince another party of the validity of that view. Characteristically, we therefore find a tendency to undervalue or ignore the conflicting diagnosis of a dangerous situation offered by other groups. . . . A whole range of possible strategies may be adopted by individuals

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dealing with an ill-structured problem, when confronted with other people’s conflicting beliefs: they may devalue the problem, so that any conflict which does emerge is seen as unimportant; they may fail to follow through clearly the implications of conflicting views; they may develop rationalizations, which explain away the other parties’ views; they may tacitly ignore or avoid contact with the kinds of information which might force them to reappraise the situation . . . or they may handle the conflict . . . by making statements about the problem area which seem to indicate agreement, but which in fact are ambiguous.” Personal and departmental biases are often too strong and insecurities too high—so much so that “when the full scale of the possible danger is finally realized, the apparently straightforward response of admitting this and taking the appropriate precautions does not always occur. A defensive attitude may be adopted by one group, or others may begin to take steps to absolve themselves from responsibility.” These subterfuges unfortunately divert much needed attention and efforts elsewhere without changing anything on the ground; time runs out and the labyrinths of civilisation become the misfortune of innocent victims of man-made disasters. Even if a problem is well structured and well defined and relevant information is available, it is possible that due to human error—lapse, slip, or mistake— available information is not shared, misleading or wrong information is sent out, or right information is sent to wrong people while right people do not get relevant information. Turner lists many other challenges of information handling in organisations. It is quite possible that “the recipient may fail to attend to the information because it is only presented at the moment of crisis” when attentional resource is channelled elsewhere. It is also possible “that people may be inhibited from communicating about the problem which eventually causes a failure, because their attention is fully occupied in dealing with more clearly defined problems. These problems, which may be important ones in themselves, act as ‘decoys’ to draw their attention away.” In addition, the “pressure of work or other distractions draw their attention away from the emerging signs of danger.” There is yet another possibility that “the relevant information may be buried in a mass of irrelevant information.” It happens “when selective communication is evaded by sending all the information to all parties.” People, then, tend to overlook such information and do not pay careful attention necessary to absorb and make sense of information, for they are often occupied with the more important concerns of their own and find it irrelevant to problems in hand. There also exists a possibility of what Turner calls “a ‘passive mode of administration’ which follows a philosophy of ‘don’t look for trouble’.” He explains, “When individuals receive communications which they regard as not



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central to their main concerns, their response may be to avoid taking any action with regard to such peripheral matter unless comment is actively invited. Thus, communications which are sent under the heading ‘for information’ are sometimes not treated as information at all.” A related but more dangerous phenomenon is labelled by Freudenburg as “not-my-department problem.” It is a cause and consequence of “diffraction of responsibility” found in modern organisations based on the division of labour, hierarchy, and specialisation. Organisational stratification and compartmentalisation not only obstructs the flow of information but also kills initiative. Freudenburg writes, “In addition to creating a possibility that a given piece of known information will fail to get through, organizations can create a significant possibility that an important piece of information will remain unknown or unrecognized. . . . The specialized division of responsibility creates not just the possibility that a single weak link will cause the entire ‘chain’ to fail, but it also increases the possibility that one or more links will have been forgotten altogether. Not only is each office or division expected to do its job properly — to make its own ‘link’ of the chain adequately strong — but each is freed of responsibility for other links of the chain. The common, if generally understandable excuse, becomes, ‘That’s not my department.’” After discussing the passive property of bureaucratic administration which kills the processing of information, Turner inverts this argument to propose its converse which brings out a subtle but meaningful difference—the absence of “a more active response to administrative problems.” In this case, “the recipient may fail to put the information together creatively.” For want of interest and initiative, a creative problem-solving approach is often missing. Result is a failure of foresight. 9/11 Commission concluded that “the most important failure was one of imagination.” Much before this, a very similar statement was made in a different country and context—United Kingdom’s 1968 Hixon level crossing accident. Turner discusses the testimony of an official given to enquiry committee. “Mr Scott-Malden, under-secretary in charge of the Railways Group, referred to ‘an omission resulting from lack of imagination’, when pointing out that the Railway Inspectorate and the Bridges Engineering Design Standards Division possessed, before January 1968, all the knowledge necessary to anticipate or foresee such an accident as happened, but though their officers were competent and intelligent men, no-one foresaw precisely the nature of the problem.” The above official, in his testimony said, “I think the two pieces of knowledge … had to come together in one person’s mind, and he would have to see the connection between them. That is what could have happened really anywhere in the Ministry or indeed in quite a lot of other places. But that linking, and that,

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as it were, flash of imagination did not happen.” Turner further elaborates that “this issue becomes more acute as larger organizations and more complex problems increase the possibility that the decisions leading to major accidents are taken by those remote from the scene at which the accident is likely to take place, so that their normal response to imminent danger may be dulled.” As human beings, we cannot insulate ourselves from emotions, for our thoughts and actions, perceptions and experiences, all are susceptible to emotional responses and reactions. This is quintessentially human. It is also reflected in the behaviours of organisations for being the aggregates of human beings. Freudenburg rightly draws parallels between a person and an organisation, “Just as individuals can differ greatly in terms of personality, competence, motivation, and so forth, so too can organizations.” There is, thus, an affective side of information problem too in organisational life, that is, a conscious and deliberate decision made by a person, department, or organisation to withhold available information instead of sharing with others, which would otherwise have been shared, formally or informally. Underlying reason for such decision can be traced back to insecurities, personal or collective, that human beings suffer from, which, in turn, produce emotions such as fear, anxiety, frustration, disappointment, anger, jealousy, dislike, hatred, and revengefulness—the psychological repercussions of social interactions. Under the influence of negative emotions caused by real or imagined insecurities, individuals and groups take wilful recourse to dishonest, incomplete, or deceptive communication. Turner highlights this dimension of information problem too. “There is a further kind of inhibition of information-flows which needs to be noted separately. We are excluding from our discussion the kinds of damage wilfully caused by enemy forces or saboteurs, but it is possible for individuals who may not have intended to create any kind of damage or disruption to conceal or withhold information which might have brought an incubation period to an end without damage or disruption. They may have a whole range of personal or idiosyncratic motives for withholding the information.” He notes, “Information transfer may also be inhibited because of poor communication between two particular individuals, arising from personality or other differences. A closely associated phenomenon would seem to be the emotional response which may accompany or be provoked by communications between individuals or groups when these do take place.” Freudenburg elaborates interpersonal dynamics further, “In some organizations, . . . the bureaucratic attenuation will be even more severe, particularly in the case of ‘bad news.’ While organizations may no longer literally follow the practice of executing the bearers of bad news, most people do not enjoy hearing bad news, and the disinclination to be confronted by



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discouraging words may be especially high in organizations characterized by a strong commitment to goals. Goal commitment is generally helpful or functional for an organization — it helps people to work harder and in a more coordinated fashion, for example — but it tends to exacerbate an unfortunate problem with respect to risk management. ‘Don’t tell me about problems,’ supervisors are sometimes heard to say, ‘Tell me what we can do about them.’ Unfortunately, in the case of many areas of risk management, what the organization can do about a risk is often something the organization would rather not do. . . . To make matters still worse, the voices of caution are often referring to accidents that could happen, not that will happen — to probabilities that are uncomfortably high rather than to those that are certainties. It is one thing to risk the wrath of one’s goal-oriented superior when one is convinced that a given course of action will lead to disaster; it is quite another to risk acquiring the reputation as a person who cries ‘wolf’ about a problem that may still have a 70% probability of not occurring. Overall, both the Challenger disaster and the broader body of experience with organizational behavior would tend to suggest that when the problems being identified are serious and unpopular, and when the available ‘solutions’ are even less acceptable, the outcome is likely to be a systematic filtering of bad news and a corresponding ‘emphasis on the positive’ in the news that is actually passed up the chain of command to superiors’ superiors.” Even if everything goes well with communication, which is highly unlikely, at times, information itself is incomplete or wrong which then causes the problem of communication from the outset. Possibility of vague, incomplete, or wrong information gathering and sharing increases in the case of complex environments and ongoing unambiguous situations. It also happens while dealing with a novel and unstructured problem without any precedent and past experience to fall back on. So, as we have seen, the problem of information remains one way or another. In a problematic situation of information, imagination might play a decisive role but, as 9/11 Commission notes, “Imagination is not a gift usually associated with bureaucracies.” Freudenburg explains why, “One of the reasons we build organizations is to simplify decisions. It is in the nature of organizations to institute routines for handling decisions. These routines then become the templates through which organizations filter information, and hence organize action. Organizations are, in fact, organized to be inflexible.” Sociology of failure has also brought to light the fact of sustained deterioration and systematic lowering of standards in organisations, which is generally not visible in the glitter of organisational success. Post-failure enquiries routinely

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reveal a culture of ‘normalisation of deviance’ in organisations—a tendency of treating things once considered undesirable and unacceptable as normal. Relaxations are approved and compromises are made formally and informally in order to accomplish certain goals with greater ease and convenience or under the constraints of the real world. For instance, as Dörner writes about Chernobyl nuclear disaster, “The violations of the safety rules were by no means ‘exceptions’ committed here for the first time. They had all been committed before . . . without consequences. They had become established habits in an established routine. The operators did things this way because it was the way they had always done them before.” Such organisational behaviour is indeed quite normal and found in all settings. It is so often encountered that it can be said to be the way of organisational life. Danish human factors expert Jens Rasmussen writes, “Considering the problem of the frequent deviation from normative work instructions and rules, it is no wonder that it is often concluded in accident reviews that ‘human error’ is a determining factor in 70-80% of the cases.” It was Vaughan who had coined the phrase normalisation of deviance in the technocratic context of NASA where she found a systematic process of incrementally expanding the threshold of ‘acceptable risk,’ which eventually and abruptly culminated in Challenger disaster. I am, however, using this phrase in a much broader sense of making incremental compromises in the face of constraints of the real world to get things done. These compromises, often made for expediency or for avoiding resource-intensive fixes, do bring off success in the short term but simultaneously lower initial standards and relax the ideal norms of behaviour in an organisation. Over time, these deviations, guided by certain counter norms, become the standard ways of doing things, known and acceptable to all but in contravention to the original philosophy and rationale of organisation, which might, ironically, still be seen in official documents or heard in formal statements made by organisational leadership. Once a deviation is normalised, baseline shifts; it is no longer seen as an anomaly and only subsequent deviations remain to be dealt with under the constraints of the real world that never end. Then, by the same rationale, the next deviation is allowed, accepted, and normalised, which shifts baseline yet again. Once there, the process of normalising deviance and shifting baseline itself becomes a way of life and the deviant way of doing things a culture of organisation. While all seems to be quite functional due to the incremental and insidious nature of normalisation of deviance, in reality, system after each deviation operates at a greater risk of failure than before and keeps quietly inching towards a breakdown. As French writer

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Éric Vuillard wrote, “Great catastrophes often creep up on us in tiny steps.” This phenomenon is shown schematically below. Figure 7.1 shows that incremental deviation from initial standards after success becomes normal and no one sees it as deviance. Subsequent deviation is made with reference to this new normal, not initial normal. Figure 7.2 shows that the habit of making incremental deviation at a time considerably lowers initial standards over a period of time. Slowly but surely, it creates a gaping hole in initial standards without anyone realising the overall seriousness of situation. Declining standards are masked by success. Normalisation of deviance could be done with an elaborate and documented rationale, as shown by Vaughan, but it is more likely to occur, especially in nontechnical settings, with a tacit agreement or informal understanding between the members of an organisation or a subgroup while its leadership chooses to look the other way for its own convenience. Failure of an organisation, then, is a failure of the shared view of the world and also of the approved expedient ways of doing things evolved over a period of time, the sources of approval being power, culture, conformity, and success. N0

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Power plays a crucial role in human organisation. I take the work of Barry Turner very seriously, for he did not study one or two, ten or twenty failures, but eighty-four accidents and disasters to come to his conclusions and no reasonable man can brush them off saying that they are not relevant to his

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case or situation. So, let us see what he has to say about power. Turner flags the role of power in bringing about a change or maintaining the status quo. “Only when a non-catastrophic realization is achieved by a powerful and prestigious body can a cultural redefinition arise without the impetus of a large-scale physical precipitating event. A review of safety in an hotel which is to be used by visiting royalty may produce results in the improvement of safety which could only otherwise have followed on a major fire.” But the play of power is often risky, if not malevolent. People are not able to prevent a disaster, he writes pointing a finger at power, either because of “a failure to realize the significance of one particular portion of” critical information “or because of a failure to convince those in power, those in the most influential positions, of the validity of the information.” After a failure, we nearly always discover that many people had actually known and warned that a failure was waiting in the wings and every time we invariably find that no one took those who warned about it seriously before it actually happened. On the other hand, it is common knowledge that clever and overawed people constituting a vast majority of organisational members do



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not speak their mind and do not question decisions that they are aware are faulty. Turner says that “all accidents are unexpected, or surprising, but some are unexpected only in the sense that no-one knows exactly when the incident will occur, or where it is to occur.” One reason is “the inability or the unwillingness of individuals concerned with routine jobs to question the logic of the system to which they contribute may lead to disaster.” Insiders prefer staying silent and outsiders are not heard; warnings given by outsiders are dismissed due to the arrogant and contemptuous nature of power—“an attitude that those within the organization knew better than outsiders about the hazards of the situation with which they were dealing” is found all too often. Power is certainly a reason why whistle-blowers, insiders or outsiders, are not heard in time. “Hazards may also be underestimated in ill-structured situations if one party forces acceptance of its definition of the level of hazard, by the use of power which may derive from control over resources, from status, from an ‘expert stance’, or from the ability to impose secrecy in crucial areas.” Power in collusion with money, he hints, has ability to rig the minds of men and sap their morality who, then, stop seeing what is obvious and deny the reality. “There may be confrontations between those who present an official definition of hazards and others who think that the situation is different, which is to say, in virtually all cases, more dangerous. . . . The manner in which hazards are perceived will also vary to some extent according to the vested interests which those concerned have in different aspects of the dangerous situation. . . . There is thus an overlay of differential power distributions which will affect knowledge, perceptions and expectations of accidents.” Freudenburg also comments on the role of vested interests in decision-making, “When new challenges and emergencies do arise, moreover, they are likely to be viewed not just with an eye to the organization’s stated goals, but also with an eye to the implications for next year’s budget, for the ongoing turf wars with competing or complementary organizations, and/or for the question of what other person or division might be induced to take on the added workload instead.” Let us find out more about how power becomes a causal force and a bulwark of deviance in organisations. Organisational leadership wields power to set goals in conformance to a system and in agreement with an ideology. But it often sets multiple goals which may be difficult to achieve simultaneously and some of which may also be mutually incompatible and irreconcilable. Woods and his associates give an interesting example: “NASA’s ‘Faster, Better, Cheaper’ organizational philosophy in the late 1990s epitomized how multiple, contradictory goals

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are simultaneously present and active. . . . People argued that NASA should pick any two from the three goals. Faster and cheaper would not mean better. Better and cheaper would mean slower. Faster and better would be more expensive.” The only problem is that such arguments, howsoever reasonable they may be, make no difference to the actual reality faced by the members of organisation who are required to pursue and achieve all the goals simultaneously because leadership and also system at large want them to do so. Woods and co-authors also comment on the consequences of NASA’s inconsistent organisational philosophy. “Goal conflicts between safer, better, and cheaper were reconciled by doing the work more cheaply, superficially better (brushing over gouges), and apparently without cost to safety. . . . What was normal versus what was problem was no longer so clear.” Allocation of limited resources between competing goals is again a function of power, which not only creates differential capacities for achieving different goals but also defines a stated, implied, or inferred order of priority, which continues to influence subsequent decisions on conflict resolution between competing goals in all situations and at all levels. Exercise of resource allocation, thus, acquires a structural and institutional character. Freudenburg writes, “Virtually all of the persons within an organization are likely to have complained at some time of being ‘overworked,’ or of having too many demands placed upon them, relative to the resources with which they are provided. In fact, it is essentially part of the job description of an efficient manager to get the department to do more with less; if complaints of overwork are not forthcoming, some observers would take this as indicating that the manager might not be pushing the department hard enough. When the available resources provide ‘not quite enough to go around,’ however, the best guess is that functions seen by the department as less central or more peripheral — such as keeping oil spill clean-up equipment at the ready, as opposed to filling the oil tankers quickly — will be among the first to slip.” Vaughan too admits that “cost, schedule, and safety were weighed in the decision making, and compromises were made” in Space Transportation System programme by NASA. When a compromise is sanctioned by power, targeted activity is pushed into the background for all practical purposes. Power, thus, becomes an arbiter and generator of deviance and its normalisation in organisations. Human reactions and adaptations to anomalies and deviations sanctioned by power—institutional or social, structural or informal—are varied and intriguing. It is true that when deterioration creeps in slowly and gradually, little by little and bit by bit, it is not seen and bothered by many. Vaughan



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writes that “in the years preceding the Challenger launch, engineers and managers together developed a definition of the situation that allowed them to carry on as if nothing was wrong when they continually faced evidence that something was wrong. This is the problem of the normalization of deviance.” American environmental activist and politician Al Gore puts it interestingly, “One reason it doesn’t consistently demand our attention can be illustrated by the classic story about an old science experiment involving a frog that jumps into a pot of boiling water and immediately jumps out again because it instantly recognizes the danger. The same frog, finding itself in a pot of lukewarm water that is being slowly brought to a boil, will simply stay in the water—in spite of the danger.” A normalised deviance falls within the ‘experience base’ of members of a group, it is known not to hurt, and, therefore, not seen by most as an anomalous or unprecedented condition. While these explanations are valid, they do not tell full human story, for human beings are not frogs; they possess a sharp intelligence and a fine analytic ability to understand the reality. So, at least some people do see it, then choose to overlook it in order to avoid unnecessary troubles in life and avert a real or perceived harm to their pursuit of personal gains; peace and success are better achieved by quietly floating with current, maintaining stoic passivity, and actively seeing the world through the eyes of powerful people. In all cultures and societies, we find a number of proverbs imparting age-old wisdom to all and sundry to not ruffle any feathers. It is said that the boss is always right, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, swim with the tide, see which way the wind is blowing, and discretion is the better part of valour. We are expected and trained to follow authority and be with herd since childhood to preserve order and perpetuate existing power relations. The net result of such pragmatic learning in life is that people give in to the whims and wishes, decisions and desires of those in power and become their obedient followers by suspending their independent judgement, whenever and wherever it comes into conflict with the views of powerful persons. Also, no matter how obliquely and discreetly leadership communicates its intent, ‘wise’ followers somehow or other sense its mind right sooner rather than later and behave as expected of them. American physicist Richard Feynman, a nonconformist member of Presidential Commission appointed to investigate Challenger accident, captures this human quality and writes incisively, “By the time the commission was over, I understood much better the character of operations in Washington and in NASA. I learned, by seeing how they worked, that the people in a big system like NASA know what has to be done—without being told.” Freudenburg agrees that “it is decidedly not necessary for persons at the top of an organization to

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have issued orders to ignore or override safety concerns for persons lower in the organization to behave as if precisely such orders had been given. . . . There is little debate about the value of loyal employees in general, particularly about those who ‘know what needs to be done, and do it without asking.’ . . . Even if no one in the organization has ever said the workers should take on unnecessary risks, however, corporate leaders rarely complain about employees who do too much for the firm, more often voicing complaints about those who do too little.” If this is what people do without being told, where priorities are defined and communicated clearly by a man in charge, there remains hardly any doubt as to which path to follow in the end. Power motivates or coerces people to behave in such fashion. American writer Upton Sinclair famously used to say, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” It explains in terms of power why people do not see, hear, and speak, and why do they choose not to resist a deviance which has the express or tacit approval of authority or majority. A few who have intellectual and moral integrity to see deviance and say something critical openly may not be heard and may find themselves isolated, marginalised, and ostracised within their group; they might also be silenced by coercion, forced to quit, or thrown out by force for crying ‘wolf.’ All such treatments meted out to dissenters are essentially mediated by power to preserve conformity, maintain harmony, sustain domination within a group, and achieve the ends of reigning ideology. The more cohesive is the group or the bigger the stakes, the greater is the resolve and intervention of power to weed out and hush up any dissent or discord. While disruption is contained by the mediation of power, the real world remains unaffected—deviance piles up and organisation diverges progressively from its initial conditions. Stage is, then, set for failure, waiting only for certain conditions to come together and combine and when that happens, prevailing order and stability trusted and boasted by the votaries of ‘all’s well’ collapses all of a sudden like a sand castle and people find themselves in the middle of a disaster. Ilan Kelman, a London-based disaster researcher asserts, “Disasters are not natural. We—humanity and society—create them and we can choose to prevent them.” He insists, “Nature does not choose, but we do. We can choose to avoid disasters, and that means disasters are not natural.” Turner too reminds us that “it is the resulting discrepancies between the way in which the world is believed to be, and the way that it really is, which contain the seeds of disaster.” But the seeds of failure might have been sown by power. Columbia Accident Investigation Board notes, “Structure and hierarchy represent power and status. For both Challenger and Columbia, employees’ positions in the organization determined the weight



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given to their information, by their own judgment and in the eyes of others. As a result, many signals of danger were missed. Relevant information that could have altered the course of events was available but was not presented. . . . It is obvious but worth acknowledging that people who are marginal and powerless in organizations may have useful information or opinions that they don’t express. Even when these people are encouraged to speak, they find it intimidating to contradict a leader’s strategy or a group consensus.” Power matters a great deal in human affairs but it has its limits. Feynman had filed a dissenting report incorporated as ‘personal observations’ in official document in which he draws attention to the role of power in fabricating an imagined reality which was shattered finally by Challenger disaster. He gave a sagacious advice, “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” Operating at the higher levels of risk, an organisation may go on successfully for any length of time, so long as luck is on its side, but sooner or later, luck runs out and the reality catches up. Power might shape the view of the world but it does not control the world. Interestingly, there is a world beyond institutional power in each organisation. Cut and dried rules and standard operating procedures prescribed by organisational command are often not followed by members who execute work because they cannot be followed in the real world with infinite possibilities and umpteen constraints. Rasmussen explains, “The problem is that all work situations leave many degrees of freedom to the actors for choice of means and time for action even when the objectives of work are fulfilled and a task instruction or standard operating procedure in terms of a sequence of acts cannot be used as a reference of judging behaviour.” Authors of such instructions “cannot . . . foresee all local contingencies of the work context and, in particular, a rule or instruction is often designed separately for a particular task in isolation whereas, in the actual situation, several tasks are active in a time sharing mode. . . . In consequence, rules, laws, and instructions practically speaking are never followed to the letter.” Job still gets done and goal is nonetheless achieved, even when official rules, procedures, and the norms of work are not followed, because a subterranean counterculture emerges to get things done. British sociologist Brian Wynne asserts that, in reality, organisations operate with “a different, more ambiguous set of rules than is given in the public account.” He explains that “the real operating system” does not follow “the rules by which it ‘officially’ operates” because “if the rules were followed to the letter, the system would grind to a halt.” Woods and

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colleagues observe that “in most operational work, the distance between formal, externally dictated logics of action and actual work is bridged with the help of those who have been there before, who have learned how to get the job done (without apparent safety consequences), and who are proud to share their professional experience with younger, newer workers. Actual practice settles at a distance from the formal description of the job. Informal networks may characterize work, including informal hierarchies of teachers and apprentices and informal documentation of how to actually get work done. The notion of an incident, of something that was worthy of reporting (a defect) becomes blurred against a background of routine nonconformity.” There is, thus, an underworld in each organisation that exists and thrives right under the nose of powerful persons but stays elusive to their watchful eyes and remains out of their reach and control. It can become another breeding ground for deviance and its normalisation. Specialisation, opacity, secrecy, workload, time constraint, spatial distance, and limited attention span together leave sufficient autonomy with individuals and subgroups to make certain decisions independent of central command. Individuals, task groups, or work groups, working within the available autonomous space of decision-making, may be motivated to make locally or personally rational choices to achieve certain goals in the short term at the expense of formal norms, official procedures, long-term interest, and the ultimate purpose of organisation. People do it, for they generally work under the constraints of conflicting goals, scarce resources, time pressures, performance targets, and personal limitations. Woods and his collaborators call it double bind. “A crucial dilemma that plays a role in incidents and accidents involves the relationship between authority and responsibility. Responsibility-authority double binds are situations in which practitioners have the responsibility for the outcome but lack the authority to take the actions they see as necessary. In these situations practitioners’ authority to act is constrained while they remain vulnerable to penalties for bad outcomes.” Operators’ dilemma is well known and expressed by saying damned if you do and damned if you don’t. It was noticed in a study cited by them that “workers coped with the double bind by developing a ‘covert work system’ that involved, as one worker put it, ‘doing what the boss wanted, not what he said.’” In addition to constraints, convenience can also be a motivating factor for deviance and its normalisation at local level. Also, the big picture may not be known to all, especially those who stay at a distance spatially or hierarchically and do not have the advantage of a bird’s-eye view, and most people may not be able to imagine the distant and long-term implications of their local actions on system as a whole.



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Local rationality of a subgroup is fraught with danger, in that it may create incongruous changes in a system, thereby causing its asynchronous evolution— parts evolving differently and independently as against the organic growth of the whole system. Incongruous and asynchronous growth weakens the integrity of a system and decreases its harmony by altering initial relationships between parts and the whole responsible for its stable equilibrium, thus shrinking the range of its operational stability, introducing the unknown regions of uncertainty in its operations, and shifting system closer to the edge of order and chaos. These faults and dangers might remain buried and invisible in normal times but when such system experiences the powerful waves of perturbation caused by a string of high-tempo and high-load events happening in a compressed region of time, it suddenly tips over due to the inability of its components to cooperate and synchronise their actions timely. Its order, then, begins to break down and a chaotic behaviour sets in which makes it buckle and collapse in no time, leaving everyone in that situation baffled, helpless, and shocked. Woods and co-authors note, “Degradation of the safety-control structure over time can be due to asynchronous evolution, where one part of a system changes without the related necessary changes in other parts. Changes to subsystems may have been carefully planned and executed in isolation, but consideration of their effects on other parts of the system, including the role they play in overall safety control, may remain neglected or inadequate. Asynchronous evolution can occur too when one part of a properly designed system deteriorates independent of other parts. In both cases, erroneous expectations of users or system components about the behavior of the changed or degraded subsystem may lead to accidents.” Asynchronous evolution is more likely in large-scale organisations where too much specialisation and rigid compartmentalisation is normal. It is less likely if we adopt a holistic approach, generalist knowledge, and fluid organisation to undertake the smaller scales of operation. Power or a lack of it coupled with local rationality can cause deviance to occur but it is success which sustains it afterwards. No other factor is more critical and pivotal to the normalisation of deviance than success. Success is the soul of normalised deviance, for it indeed lasts only, so long as it delivers success and does not meet a failure. Turner explains, “Where a person’s past decisions have been satisfactory, and appear to offer a good basis for future decision-making, each successive round of decision-making increases the information about, and raises that individual’s level of certainty with regard to, the consequences of the known alternatives and their variations, and the range of alternatives looked at is

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likely to remain small.” Experience of past success is the greatest enemy of managing future risks. Feynman writes, “The Challenger flight is an excellent example: there are several references to previous flights; the acceptance and success of these flights are taken as evidence of safety. But erosion and blowby are not what the design expected. They are warnings that something is wrong. The equipment is not operating as expected, and therefore there is a danger that it can operate with even wider deviations in this unexpected and not thoroughly understood way. The fact that this danger did not lead to a catastrophe before is no guarantee that it will not the next time, unless it is completely understood. . . . The origin and consequences of the erosion and blowby were not understood. Erosion and blowby did not occur equally on all flights or in all joints: sometimes there was more, sometimes less. Why not sometime, when whatever conditions determined it were right, wouldn’t there be still more, leading to catastrophe? . . . In spite of these variations from case to case, officials behaved as if they understood them, giving apparently logical arguments to each other—often citing the ‘success’ of previous flights.” Columbia Accident Investigation Board also notes that “in both situations,” that is, Challenger and Columbia accidents, “all new information was weighed and interpreted against past experience.” This is the way we work: Everything that seems to have some relation to experience base is seen as conforming and confirming and anything which is contrarian is brushed aside as irrelevant for being outside of past experience. Dutch-born human factors expert Sidney Dekker remarks, “The key to the normalization of deviance is that this process, this algorithm, repeats itself. And that successful outcomes keep giving the impression that risk is under control. Success typically leads to subsequent decisions, setting in motion a steady progression of incremental steps toward greater risk. Each step away from the previous norm that meets with empirical success (and no obvious sacrifice of safety) is used as the next basis from which to depart just that little bit more again. It is this decrementalism that makes distinguishing the abnormal from the normal so difficult. If the difference between what ‘should be done’ (or what was done successfully yesterday) and what is done successfully today is minute, then this slight departure from an earlier established norm is not worth remarking or reporting on. Decrementalism is about continued normalization: It allows normalization and rationalizes it.” American organisational theorists Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe warn us of dangers of success. “Success narrows perceptions, changes attitudes, reinforces a single way of doing things, breeds overconfidence in current



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practices, and reduces acceptance of opposing points of view. The problem is that if people assume that success demonstrates competence, they are more likely to drift into complacency and inattention. What they don’t realize is that complacency also increases the likelihood that unexpected events will go undetected longer and accumulate into bigger problems.” Most of us do not realise it because nothing succeeds like success—no questions are asked and no criticisms are heeded, so long as someone or something is successful. Our world seems to be a loosely organised strange place with amazing functional flexibility and great tolerance for accommodating and absorbing deviance and it is so much forgiving that most of us get away with most of things most of the time. Consequently, as Freudenburg puts it, “adrenaline . . . does not keep on pumping forever” after a failure and we quickly revert to business as usual. It seems to me that the conceptualisation of problem and its formulation in terms of ‘normalisation of deviance’ by Vaughan is one of the most significant and meaningful developments in organisational theory. Not that it was discovered by Vaughan or, for that matter, noticed by sociologists for the first time; this phenomenon is found in virtually all organisations everywhere and known to every intelligent member of organisation. But Vaughan compressed the whole phenomenon into a wondrously simple, concise, and descriptive phrase that has since given us a vocabulary to understand and explain in plain language the omnipresent organisational problem of incrementally accepting compromises and diluted standards and treating them as normal, thus following a spiralling path to failure. Although I do not agree with Vaughan—who downplays the role of power in the normalisation of deviance at NASA and instead prefers a technocratic explanation—and find my position closer to those who explain it in terms of power, such as American sociologist Charles Perrow who insists that “this was not the normalization of deviance or the banality of bureaucratic procedures and hierarchy or the product of an engineering ‘culture’; it was the exercise of organizational power,” I do believe still that the postulation and popularisation of phrase ‘normalisation of deviance’ itself is a great contribution of Vaughan to social sciences. Before winding up discussion on the sociology of failure, let us understand the problem of scientific knowledge, data, and technology too, for it can also be a contributory and causative factor in the evolution of failure. But first, let us understand how precise and perfect is the world of science on which we have so much faith.

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Dignity of Life There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same—his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an “Independent Press”! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.

The above statement, “copied from an Eastern paper” in The New Republic by E. J. Schellhous published in 1883, is attributed to “a prominent New York journalist,” most likely John Swinton, who is believed to have said it in a press dinner in the same year. It sounds so familiar to us, even after nearly a century and a half because he had incisively captured the essence and spirit of capitalistic control of thought. Ironically, such control is so subtle and invisible that system gets away with it rather easily and its propagandists are able to boast of and harp on freedom that is available to individuals all the time. It sounds so familiar to us, for most of us are in its grip today and capitalist system now makes our world move more than ever before. That Swinton was not talking through his hat and nothing has changed since is proved by a notable and painstaking analysis presented in Manufacturing Consent by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, published over a century later in 1988. It is not only true of the profession of journalism but true of all fields of organised human activities, including science. Achievements of science abound and they are known to all, owing to everyone’s personal experience in life and also due to a wide publicity given to the dominant narrative of science. But all that glitters is not gold and there is a dark side of science too—comprised of its limitations and vulnerabilities, mostly hidden from the sight of public. In fact, the public perception of objectivity, neutrality, and finality of science is faulty and misleading; it is a



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result of a sustained campaign carried out by the practitioners and advocates of science since the beginning. American historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn argues that the activities of ‘normal science’ are carried out by scientific communities within certain ‘paradigms’ they are committed to. A paradigm “stands for the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community.” He writes that the “law, theory, application, and instrumentation” of a paradigm together “provide models from which spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research.” Normal science, then, makes “an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies. No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others. Instead, normal-scientific research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies.” As a consequence, scientific enterprise has a “drastically restricted vision.” German theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder questions, rather bluntly, the way theoretical physics is organised and conducted today. Who doesn’t like a pretty idea? Physicists certainly do. In the foundations of physics, it has become accepted practice to prefer hypotheses that are aesthetically pleasing. Physicists believe that their motivations don’t matter because hypotheses, after all, must be tested. But most of their beautiful ideas are hard or impossible to test. And whenever an experiment comes back empty-handed, physicists can amend their theories to accommodate the null results. . . . This has been going on for about 40 years. In these 40 years, aesthetic arguments have flourished into research programmes – such as supersymmetry, the multiverse and grand unification – that now occupy thousands of scientists. In these 40 years, society spent billions of dollars on experiments that found no evidence to support the beautiful ideas. And in these 40 years, there has not been a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics. . . . My colleagues argue that criteria of beauty are experience-based. The most fundamental theories we currently have – the standard model of particle physics and Albert Einstein’s general relativity – are beautiful in specific ways. I agree it was worth a try to assume that more fundamental theories are beautiful in similar ways. But, well, we tried, and it didn’t work. Nevertheless, physicists continue to select theories based on the same three criteria of beauty: simplicity, naturalness, and elegance. . . . Physicists currently consider a theory promising if it’s beautiful

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Dignity of Life according to these three criteria. This led them to predict, for example, that protons should be able to decay. Experiments have looked for this since the 1980s, but so far nobody has seen a proton decay. Theorists also predicted that we should be able to detect dark matter particles, such as axions or weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). We have commissioned dozens of experiments but haven’t found any of the hypothetical particles – at least not so far. The same criteria of symmetry and naturalness led many physicists to believe that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) should see something new besides the Higgs boson, for example so-called ‘supersymmetric’ particles or additional dimensions of space. But none have been found so far. . . . I think it’s time we take a lesson from the history of science. Beauty does not have a good track record as a guide for theory-development. Many beautiful hypotheses were just wrong, like Johannes Kepler’s idea that planetary orbits are stacked in regular polyhedrons known as ‘Platonic solids’, or that atoms are knots in an invisible aether, or that the Universe is in a ‘steady state’ rather than undergoing expansion. . . . And other theories that were once considered ugly have stood the test of time. . . . My conclusion from this long line of null results is that when physics tries to rectify a perceived lack of beauty, we waste time on problems that aren’t really problems. Physicists must rethink their methods, now – before we start discussing whether the world needs a next larger particle collider or yet another dark matter search. . . . It’s no use, and not good scientific practice, to demand that nature conform to our ideals of beauty. We should let evidence lead the way to new laws of nature.

Particle physics is considered the most elite field of enquiry and its hardnosed practitioners are known to arrogantly claim that they do better and purer science than all other scientists, including their fellow physicists working in other fields. Its reality, however, is laid bare by American physicist and astronomer Adam Frank. He rightfully questions the much hyped rationality of science at the most fundamental level and tears into it unsparingly. Like most physicists, I learned how to ignore the weirdness of quantum physics. . . . But behind quantum mechanics’ unequaled calculational precision lie profound, stubbornly persistent questions about what those quantum rules imply about the nature of reality – including our place in it. . . . Albert Einstein and Max Planck introduced the idea of the quantum at the beginning of the 20th century, sweeping away the old classical view of reality. We have never managed to come up with a definitive new reality to take its place. The interpretation of quantum physics remains as up for grabs as ever. . . . For physicists, the ambiguity over matter boils down to what we call the measurement problem, and its relationship to an entity known as the wave function. . . . When calculations are done with the



Paths to Errors and Failures 329 Schrödinger equation, what’s left is not the Newtonian state of exact position and velocity. Instead, you get what is called the wave function (physicists refer to it as psi after the Greek symbol Ψ used to denote it). Unlike the Newtonian state, which can be clearly imagined in a commonsense way, the wave function is an epistemological and ontological mess. The wave function does not give you a specific measurement of location and velocity for a particle; it gives you only probabilities at the root level of reality. Psi appears to tell you that, at any moment, the particle has many positions and many velocities. In effect, the bits of matter from Newtonian physics are smeared out into sets of potentials or possibilities. . . . It’s not just position and velocity that get smeared out. The wave function treats all properties of the particle (electric charge, energy, spin, etc) the same way. They all become probabilities holding many possible values at the same time. Taken at face value, it’s as if the particle doesn’t have definite properties at all. This is what the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, meant when he advised people not to think of atoms as ‘things’. Even at this basic level, the quantum perspective adds a lot of blur to any materialist convictions of what the world is built from. . . . Then things get weirder still. According to the standard way of treating the quantum calculus, the act of making a measurement on the particle kills off all pieces of the wave function, except the one your instruments register. The wave function is said to collapse as all the smearedout, potential positions or velocities vanish in the act of measurement. It’s like the Schrödinger equation, which does such a great job of describing the smeared-out particle before the measurement is made, suddenly gets a pink slip. . . . You can see how this throws a monkey wrench into a simple, physics-based view of an objective materialist world. How can there be one mathematical rule for the external objective world before a measurement is made, and another that jumps in after the measurement occurs? For a hundred years now, physicists and philosophers have been beating the crap out of each other (and themselves) trying to figure out how to interpret the wave function and its associated measurement problem. What exactly is quantum mechanics telling us about the world? What does the wave function describe? What really happens when a measurement occurs? Above all, what is matter? . . . There are today no definitive answers to these questions. There is not even a consensus about what the answers should look like. Rather, there are multiple interpretations of quantum theory, each of which corresponds to a very different way of regarding matter and everything made of it – which, of course, means  everything. . . . Here is an even more important point: as yet there is no way to experimentally distinguish between these widely varying interpretations. Which one you choose is mainly a matter of philosophical temperament. As the American theorist Christopher Fuchs  puts  it, on one side there are the  psi-ontologists  who want the wave function to describe the objective

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Dignity of Life world ‘out there’. On the other side, there are the  psi-epistemologists  who see the wave function as a description of our knowledge and its limits. Right now, there is almost no way to settle the dispute scientifically. . . . This arbitrariness of deciding which interpretation to hold completely undermines the strict materialist position. . . . The real problem is that, in each case, proponents are free to single out one interpretation over others because … well … they like it. Everyone, on all sides, is in the same boat. There can be no appeal to the authority of ‘what quantum mechanics says’, because quantum mechanics doesn’t say much of anything with regard to its own interpretation. . . . It is in this sense that the unfinished business of quantum mechanics levels the playing field. The high ground of materialism deflates when followed to its quantum mechanical roots, because it then demands the acceptance of metaphysical possibilities that seem no more ‘reasonable’ than other alternatives.

A damning story on how condescending epidemiologists goofed up the definition of aerosol, filed in May 2021 by American science journalist Megan Molteni in Wired, carries a deserving headline: “The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill.” It is about how “the line between droplets and aerosols at 5 microns” was drawn, which defined that “any infectious particle smaller than 5 microns in diameter is an aerosol; anything bigger is a droplet.” Such characterisation of droplet and preventive guidelines predicated on it were erroneous, arbitrary, and absurd, for the “reality is far messier, with particles much larger than 5 microns staying afloat and behaving like aerosols, depending on heat, humidity, and airspeed.” A mistake that happened decades ago and the dogma of 5-micron boundary that came to be in science as a result led authorities and experts to ignore the possibility of covid’s airborne transmission—their focus and efforts to prevent the spread of infection remained largely on washing hands, maintaining social distance, and disinfecting surfaces; not as much on wearing masks and ventilating rooms. The fact of airborne transmission of covid was admitted and accepted by academia, reluctantly and belatedly, only much later owing to the sustained efforts of aerosol scientists worldwide. Millions of people the whole world over unfortunately paid the price for a defective view of the world passed as science in this case. In early 2020, Chemistry World, citing a research paper published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, reported that a team of chemists led by Geoffroy Hautier at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium shockingly discovered after ninety years that rules for predicting and rationalising the crystal structures of ionic compounds, developed by American chemist Linus Pauling in 1929 and trusted and taught ever since,



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are not rules at all but “more like loose guidelines.” Hautier says, “These rules, despite being taught in every chemistry textbook, have a much lower predictive power than one would think.” His team came to this conclusion after testing five Pauling rules on five thousand oxide structures and finding “that just 13% satisfied four of the five rules” simultaneously. Ironically, they were accepted as ‘empirical rules’ without any statistical assessment of their actual performance. But statistical analysis itself is problematic. Swiss zoologist Valentin Amrhein and his American co-authors, statistical epidemiologist Sander Greenland and statistical methodologist Blake McShane, question the data analytics of science based on P value or statistical significance in Nature. For several generations, researchers have been warned that a statistically non-significant result does not ‘prove’ the null hypothesis (the hypothesis that there is no difference between groups or no effect of a treatment on some measured outcome). Nor do statistically significant results ‘prove’ some other hypothesis. Such misconceptions have famously warped the literature with overstated claims and, less famously, led to claims of conflicts between studies where none exists. Unfortunately, the false belief that crossing the threshold of statistical significance is enough to show that a result is ‘real’ has led scientists and journal editors to privilege such results, thereby distorting the literature. Statistically significant estimates are biased upwards in magnitude and potentially to a large degree, whereas statistically non-significant estimates are biased downwards in magnitude. Consequently, any discussion that focuses on estimates chosen for their significance will be biased. On top of this, the rigid focus on statistical significance encourages researchers to choose data and methods that yield statistical significance for some desired (or simply publishable) result, or that yield statistical non-significance for an undesired result, such as potential side effects of drugs — thereby invalidating conclusions.

There is more to it than meets the eye, for the limitations of science are not only structural and methodical—due to the capture of scientists by the paradigms of science—but also personal and banal. American chemist Irving Langmuir once gave a talk on what he called pathological science—“the science of things that aren’t so.” Langmuir explained that in the cases of pathological science, “there is no dishonesty involved but . . . people are tricked into false results by a lack of understanding about what human beings can do to themselves in the way of being led astray by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions.” He cited three classic cases—Davis-Barnes

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experiment, N-rays and, mitogenetic rays. “These are examples of pathological science. These are things that attracted a great deal of attention. Usually hundreds of papers have been published upon them. Sometimes they have lasted for fifteen or twenty years and then they gradually die away.” Langmuir’s talk on pathological science was transcribed and edited by Robert Hall, an American applied physicist and inventor, who cautioned, “Pathological science is by no means a thing of the past. In fact, a number of examples can be found among current literature, and it is reasonable to suppose that the incidence of this kind of ‘science’ will increase at least linearly with the increase in  scientific activity.” American science writer Gary Taubes agrees, “Where experimental investigation is prohibitively expensive or impossible to do, mistaken assumptions, misconceived paradigms and pathological science can survive indefinitely.” British psychologist Dorothy Bishop warns about both problems, “All-toohuman cognitive biases can lead us to see results that aren’t there. Faulty reasoning results in shoddy science, even when the intentions are good. . . . Researchers need to become more aware of these pitfalls. Just as lab scientists are not allowed to handle dangerous substances without safety training, researchers should not be allowed anywhere near a P value or similar measure of statistical probability until they have demonstrated that they understand what it means. . . . We all tend to overlook evidence that contradicts our views. When confronted with new data, our pre-existing ideas can cause us to see structure that isn’t there. This is a form of confirmation bias, whereby we look for and recall information that fits with what we already think.” American biologist, palaeontologist, and science historian Stephen Jay Gould draws our attention to the underlying social and political biases of scientists and their scientific arguments. He notes, “Science is no inexorable march to truth, mediated by the collection of objective information and the destruction of ancient superstition. Scientists, as ordinary human beings, unconsciously reflect in their theories the social and political constraints of their times.” Given the history of science, it can be said that an expression of scientific opinion may be “a political rather than a scientific act—and that scientists tend to behave in a conservative way by providing ‘objectivity’ for what society at large wants to hear. . . . Debates based on no evidence are among the most revealing in the history of science, for in the absence of factual constraints, the cultural biases that affect all thought (and which scientists try so assiduously to deny) lie nakedly exposed.”



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Although it is a minor problem in science but laypersons who believe it to be an immaculate activity carried out with an abundance of perfection— the public definition of science—would find it inconceivable that hundreds of papers full of gibberish making no sense at all, scientific or otherwise, were accepted and published in conferences and journals despite there being vaunted peer review and editorial oversight mechanisms. Nature Briefing reported this in May 2021: “Nonsensical research papers generated by a computer program are still popping up in the scientific literature many years after the problem was first seen. . . . The issue began in 2005, when three PhD students created paper-generating software called SCIgen for ‘maximum amusement’, and to show that some conferences would accept meaningless papers. The program cobbles together words to generate research articles with random titles, text and charts, easily spotted as gibberish by a human reader. It is free to download, and anyone can use it.” This is the reality of science which is very different from an image that exists in the minds of laypeople. We can still reconcile to the quirky world that we have and live with its weirdness; we can also understand and come to terms with the personal limitations of human beings, their predispositions and biases, only if the problems of science end there. But ‘scientific’ story does not end there and becomes absolutely banal when narrated in the sociological background of human civilisation. Their weirdness and weaknesses notwithstanding, the nature of the world, the philosophical choices of its practitioners, and the scientific dogma of community do not undermine scientific enterprise seriously. It continues to deliver reliably just the same. In fact, the deepest fissures in scientific objectivity, impartiality, and reliability are created by the intrusion of power and money. On political interference in the science of global warming by American president George W. Bush and his officials, American author Elizabeth Kolbert writes, “Administration officials are quick to point to the scientific uncertainties that remain about global warming, of which there are many. But where there is broad agreement, they are reluctant to acknowledge it. ‘When we make decisions, we want to make sure we do so on sound science,’ the president said, announcing his new approach to global warming in February 2002. Just a few months later, the Environmental Protection Agency delivered a two hundred and sixty-three page report to the U.N. that stated, ‘Continuing growth in greenhouse gas emissions is likely to lead to annual average warming over the United States that could be as much as several degrees Celsius (roughly 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit) during the 21st century.’ The president dismissed the report—the product of years of work by federal researchers—as something

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‘put out by the bureaucracy.’ The following spring, the EPA made another effort to give an objective summary of climate science, in a report on the state of the environment. The White House interfered so insistently in the writing of the global warming section—at one point, it tried to insert excerpts from a study partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute—that, in an internal memo, agency staff members complained that the section ‘no longer accurately represents scientific consensus.’ (When the EPA finally published the report, the climate-science section was missing entirely.) In June 2005, the New York Times revealed that a White House official named Philip Cooney had repeatedly edited government reports on climate change in order to make their findings seem less alarming. In one instance, Cooney received a report stating: ‘Many scientific observations point to the conclusion that the Earth is undergoing a period of relatively rapid change.’ He revised this statement to read: ‘Many scientific observations indicate that the Earth may be undergoing a period of relatively rapid change.’ Shortly after his editing efforts were disclosed, Cooney resigned from his White House post and took a job with ExxonMobil.” In modern democratic societies, it is customary to obtain public legitimacy for decisions taken by political leadership. Such legitimacy is more easily gained by an idea or argument when it is emphatically supported by statistical and scientific data. In the human game of power and legitimacy, scientific knowledge and statistical data play a crucial role as a result of widespread respectability commanded by the objectivity, impartiality, and certainty of science. A widely accepted and highly acclaimed scientific objectivity, neutrality, and finality, however, is nothing but a myth arrogantly created and vigorously propagated by the practitioners, philosophers, historians, and writers of science from the very beginning. The fact, on the contrary to its public image, is that scientific knowledge at any point in time is not final but incomplete and, therefore, provisional and not definitive, by extension. Similarly, it is not as value neutral and non-ideological field of human endeavour as myth would have us believe. In the same way as agreement and consensus are forged or extorted and opinions and perceptions are manufactured and manipulated by the play of power, scientific knowledge and data are produced, selected, disclosed, and interpreted by the intrusion and intervention of power. Generation of amount and quality of scientific knowledge is a product of allocation of resources and investment of capital in a particular field of interest and enquiry; it does not happen just like that and certainly not in this day and age. Scientific knowledge, then, is nothing but a function of power and wealth and an adjunct to politics and business in the final analysis. No wonder that, to a large extent, instead of disinterestedly pursuing the ideal



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of increasing our knowledge of nature, sciences actually serve the interests of their rich and powerful masters who control resources and fund research. American science historian Clifford Conner has busted the myth of science and its heroes most comprehensively in his provocative and compelling book A People’s History of Science. He writes, “Science had long been touted by its proponents as a superior form of knowledge, with its truth value guaranteed by the impartiality and disinterestedness of its practitioners. But the attack on Silent Spring revealed—to all but the willfully blind—a highly partisan Big Science acting as the mouthpiece for corporate interests. The ‘union of capital and science’ had long exerted a corrupting influence on science, but now the mechanisms of corruption had been exposed and were more obvious than ever. Despite their protestations of objectivity, scientists in corporate employ are increasingly perceived as having sold their souls to Mammon.” American marine biologist Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published in 1962. Unlike the esoteric writings of scientists, it was written in a language familiar to common people. Its scary details opened the public’s eyes to the fact of severe ecological degradation caused by a massive and reckless use of pesticides in agriculture, exposed the false claims of chemical industry, bared the collusion of public authorities, and gave rise to modern environmental movement. Due to the public awareness of conflict of interests and the fact of science being a political tool or a profit-making enterprise, scientists, writes Conner, “are now widely perceived to be fallible—and arrogant in their unwillingness to acknowledge their fallibility. They are also frequently thought of as paid apologists for the interests of giant corporations or governmental bureaucracies.” He makes us aware that “in the United States, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists are charged with protecting the public from unsafe drugs. The FDA, however, has developed into ‘an agency where conflicts of interest have become normalized in the process of drug evaluation.’ . . . In November 2004, David Graham, an FDA safety officer for twenty years, testified before the U.S. Senate that his supervisors had tried to ‘silence him and pressure him to limit his criticism of the safety of some drugs.’ Although FDA officials denied Graham’s allegations, the latter were corroborated one month later by a report of the Health and Human Services Department’s inspector general. The report stated that ‘the work environment at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research either allowed little dissent or stifled scientific dissent entirely.’ Of three hundred sixty FDA scientists surveyed, sixty-three reported having been ‘pressured to approve or recommend approval for a (new drug application) despite reservations about the safety, efficacy or quality of the drug.’ The federal agency did not intend to make the results of its investigation public;

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the report was forced into the open through the efforts of two science information groups: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Union of Concerned Scientists.” Scandalous behaviour of scientists, however, is not limited to pharmaceutical and biomedical research. Conner writes, “It is profoundly ironic that physics is held up as the paragon of scientific objectivity while nuclear physicists have been among the worst offenders in allowing their science to be falsified and used by self-serving external interests.” British physician Richard Horton, the editor of prestigious medical journal The Lancet, calls contemporary scientific enterprise ‘McScience’ and remarks, “Universities have reinvented themselves as corporations. Scientists are coming to accept, and in many cases enjoy, their enhanced status as entrepreneurs.” For a better understanding of point that I am making here, readers are advised to go through Little Science, Big Science, and Beyond by Derek J. de Solla Price, Science, Money, and Politics by Daniel Greenberg, Science in the Private Interest by Sheldon Krimsky, Big Science edited by Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly, Science Fictions by Stuart Ritchie, Bending Science by Thomas O. McGarity and Wendy E. Wagner, Deceit and Denial by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, Nuclear Madness as well as The New Nuclear Danger, both written by Helen Caldicott, Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway with the 2014 documentary film of the same name made on their book, The Cigarette by Sarah Milov, Golden Holocaust by Robert Proctor, Doubt is Their Product and The Triumph of Doubt by David Michaels, The Truth About the Drug Companies by Marcia Angell, Pharma by Gerald Posner, Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre, Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime by Peter Gøtzsche, The Illusion of EvidenceBased Medicine by Jon Jureidini and Leemon McHenry, Soda Politics and Unsavory Truth by Marion Nestle, Trust Us, We’re Experts by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil, The World According to Monsanto written by Marie-Monique Robin as well as the 2008 documentary film of the same name directed by her, Universities in the Marketplace by Derek Bok, Superior by Angela Saini, and a macabre history of science The Icepick Surgeon by Sam Kean in addition to classic Silent Spring. It is indeed not very difficult to understand what is eclipsing and ailing science in capitalistic-bureaucratic systems but even more profoundly ironic is the fact that science was similarly subservient to power and a tool of politics in Soviet-bureaucratic system that was free of a sinister drive for profit maximisation. For a glimpse into science and politics in Soviet Union, I recommend a reading of How Not to Network a Nation by Benjamin Peters. Under a Green Sky by Peter Ward gives a frank account of opinions passed as science and of politics of fame and funding, of fudging and finagling



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in science. So much revealing are these books and films that it is not unusual if a shocked reader or viewer is left thinking—if such is the state of affairs in countries which are believed to have systems most functional and societies most powerful, what all must not be happening elsewhere in the world where human life has little value? Nearly always my usual cheerful self has involuntarily receded into the depths of melancholy and hopelessness, with my thoughts freezing and mind going numb each time, after reading and watching such works that manage to steal the dark secrets of humanity from places out of bounds and show us a glimpse of dirty games that are played interminably in the corridors of power and wealth. No matter how very much some people try to disseminate them and how inconceivably communications technologies shrink our world and patch us with each other, efforts to tell the truth somehow remain on the fringes of our world and out of reach of most people in the world. Now that we have caught a glimpse of the scientific world hidden from the general public, let us find out how robust and reliable are its methods and tools, and knowledge and information they produce. Coming back to the story of failures, it has been repeatedly found that not only the availability of scientific data for decision-making is significantly influenced by power but also the selection, disclosure, and interpretation of available data is largely determined by vested interests. Challenger and Columbia accidents—the former while going out and the latter while coming in—are the classic examples of how it can happen even in a highly technical public enterprise ostensibly pursuing the lofty goals of science and humanity by relying on pure sciences and state-of-the-art technologies. Space Shuttle was a developmental vehicle which had been marketed as a fully developed operational vehicle by NASA. Feynman, in his dissenting appendix, brought out its consequences and how this basic contradiction and associated uncertainties were resolved by NASA, “It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from working engineers, and the very low figures come from management.” Although Challenger was destroyed due to the failure of pressure seal in the aft field joint of right Solid Rocket Motor, Feynman learned from engineers “that some of the people who worked on the engines always had their fingers crossed on each flight, and the moment they saw the shuttle explode, they were sure it was the engines.” Such reactions were not without reason because “engineers at Rocketdyne, the manufacturer, estimate the total probability as 1/10,000.

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Engineers at Marshall estimate it as l/300, while NASA management, to whom these engineers report, claims it is 1/100,000. An independent engineer consulting for NASA thought 1 or 2 per 100 a reasonable estimate.” Politics of scientific judgement and engineering data generated differential figures for the purpose of convincingly and resolutely pursuing the priority goal of NASA—keep flying and delivering on its promise. Feynman notes, “We have also found that certification criteria used in flight readiness reviews often develop a gradually decreasing strictness. The argument that the same risk was flown before without failure is often accepted as an argument for the safety of accepting it again. Because of this, obvious weaknesses are accepted again and again—sometimes without a sufficiently serious attempt to remedy them, sometimes without a flight delay because of their continued presence. . . . In fact, previous NASA experience had shown, on occasion, just such difficulties, near accidents, and even accidents, all giving warning that the probability of flight failure was not so very small.” He adds, “If we are to replace standard numerical probability usage with engineering judgment, why do we find such an enormous disparity between the management estimate and the judgment of the engineers? It would appear that, for whatever purpose—be it for internal or external consumption—the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product to the point of fantasy.” Purpose was rather obvious—the priority and centrality of launch. “If a reasonable launch schedule is to be maintained, engineering often cannot be done fast enough to keep up with the expectations of the originally conservative certification criteria designed to guarantee a very safe vehicle. In such situations, safety criteria are altered subtly—and with often apparently logical arguments—so that flights can still be certified in time. The shuttle therefore flies in a relatively unsafe condition, with a chance of failure on the order of a percent. . . . Official management, on the other hand, claims to believe the probability of failure is a thousand times less. One reason for this may be an attempt to assure the government of NASA’s perfection and success in order to ensure the supply of funds.” Presidential Commission on Challenger accident found certain other uncertainties and ambiguities too that did not cause a disaster but brought to light how questionable judgements, supposedly based on scientific analysis, were made to choose schedule over safety. Commission describes unusual conditions before the scheduled launch of vehicle. “During the night and early morning of January 28, another problem was developing due to the extreme cold weather, predicted to be in the low 20s for approximately 11 hours. Reaction control system heaters on the Orbiter were activated and the Solid



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Rocket Booster recovery batteries were checked and found to be functioning within specifications. There were no serious concerns regarding the External Tank. The freeze protection plan for the launch pad was implemented, but the results were not what had been anticipated. The freeze protection plan usually involves completely draining the water system. However, this was not possible because of the imminent launch of 51-L. In order to prevent pipes from freezing, a decision was made to allow water to run slowly from the system. This had never been done before, and the combination of freezing temperatures and stiff winds caused large amounts of ice to form below the 240-foot level of the fixed service structure including the access to the crew emergency egress slide wire baskets. Ice also was forming in the water trays beneath the vehicle.” Then, it cites the revealing testimonies of president Rocco Petrone and three vice presidents Robert Glaysher, Martin Cioffoletti, and John Peller of Rockwell International Corporation’s Space Transportation Systems Division, a private contractor responsible for the design and development of Space Shuttle Orbiter, on their opinions solicited by NASA to determine if it was safe to launch in unusual ice conditions on launch pad on that fateful day. Petrone told, “I . . . said we could not recommend launching from here, from what we see. We think the tiles would be endangered. . . . I said let’s make sure that NASA understands that Rockwell feels it is not safe to launch.” Glaysher said that his recommendation to NASA was that “Rockwell could not 100 percent assure that it is safe to fly which I quickly changed to Rockwell cannot assure that it is safe to fly.” Cioffoletti told, “I was asked by Arnie Aldrich, the program manager, to give him the results of our analysis, and I essentially told him what I just told you and felt that we did not have a sufficient data base to absolutely assure that nothing would strike the vehicle, and so we could not lend our 100 percent credence, if you will, to the fact that it was safe to fly. . . . I said I could not predict the trajectory that the ice on the mobile launch platform would take at SRB ignition. . . . I felt that by telling them we did not have a sufficient data base and could not analyze the trajectory of the ice, I felt he understood that Rockwell was not giving a positive indication that we were for the launch.” Peller testified that he was asked, “Did I think that it was likely that the vehicle would take safety critical damage?” He said, “there’s a probability in a sense that it was probably an unlikely event, but I could not prove that it wouldn’t happen. . . . I never used the words ‘no-go’ for launch. I did use the words that we cannot prove it is safe.” Eventually NASA went ahead with launch as scheduled based on its own internal calculations. Commission, however, did not agree with NASA’s decision to launch in such uncertain and ambiguous conditions. “Given the extent of the ice on the pad, . . .

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the admitted unknown effect of the Solid Rocket Motor and Space Shuttle Main Engines ignition on the ice, as well as the fact that debris striking the Orbiter was a potential flight safety hazard, the Commission finds the decision to launch questionable under those circumstances. In this situation, NASA appeared to be requiring a contractor to prove that it was not safe to launch, rather than proving it was safe.” Columbia Accident Investigation Board reported similar findings seventeen years later. “The physical cause of the loss of Columbia and its crew was a breach in the Thermal Protection System on the leading edge of the left wing, caused by a piece of insulating foam which separated from the left bipod ramp section of the External Tank at 81.7 seconds after launch, and struck the wing in the vicinity of the lower half of Reinforced Carbon-Carbon panel number 8. During re-entry this breach in the Thermal Protection System allowed superheated air to penetrate through the leading edge insulation and progressively melt the aluminum structure of the left wing, resulting in a weakening of the structure until increasing aerodynamic forces caused loss of control, failure of the wing, and break-up of the Orbiter.” It happened notwithstanding a ‘scientific judgement’ made by NASA that foam strike was not serious and re-entry would not be fatal. Board revealed the truth of NASA’s science and engineering behind its technical judgements. It notes, “It was – and still is – impossible to conduct a ground-based, simultaneous, fullscale simulation of the combination of loads, airflows, temperatures, pressures, vibration, and acoustics the External Tank experiences during launch and ascent. Therefore, the qualification testing did not truly reflect the combination of factors the bipod would experience during flight.” Foam application on External Tank added to these uncertainties. “While foam is sprayed according to approved procedures, these procedures may be questionable if the people who devised them did not have a sufficient understanding of the properties of the foam.” Consequently, foam shedding happened frequently but unpredictably and its nature could not be understood reliably. “Foam loss has occurred on more than 80 percent of the 79 missions for which imagery is available, and foam was lost from the left bipod ramp on nearly 10 percent of missions where the left bipod ramp was visible following External Tank separation. For about 30 percent of all missions, there is no way to determine if foam was lost; these were either night launches, or the External Tank bipod ramp areas were not in view when the images were taken. The External Tank was not designed to be instrumented or recovered after separation, which deprives NASA of physical evidence that could help pinpoint why foam separates from it.” Board concluded that “NASA does not fully understand the mechanisms that cause foam loss on



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almost all flights from larger areas of foam coverage and from areas that are sculpted by hand.” Ironically, “early in the Space Shuttle Program, foam loss was considered a dangerous problem. Design engineers were extremely concerned about potential damage to the Orbiter and its fragile Thermal Protection System, parts of which are so vulnerable to impacts that lightly pressing a thumbnail into them leaves a mark.” But “with each successful landing, it appears that NASA engineers and managers increasingly regarded the foam-shedding as inevitable, and as either unlikely to jeopardize safety or simply an acceptable risk.” They had developed a scientific rationale to support their position. “The NASA Headquarters Safety Office presented a report that estimated a 99 percent probability of foam not being shed from the same area, even though no corrective action had been taken following the STS-112 foam-shedding. The ostensible justification for the 99 percent figure was a calculation of the actual rate of bipod loss over 61 flights. This calculation was a sleight-of-hand effort to make the probability of bipod foam loss appear low rather than a serious grappling with the probability of bipod ramp foam separating. For one thing, the calculation equates the probability of left and right bipod loss, when right bipod loss has never been observed, and the amount of imagery available for left and right bipod events differs. The calculation also miscounts the actual number of bipod ramp losses in two ways. First, by restricting the sample size to flights between STS-112 and the last known bipod ramp loss, it excludes known bipod ramp losses from STS-7, STS-32R, and STS-50. Second, by failing to project the statistical rate of bipod loss across the many missions for which no bipod imagery is available, the calculation assumes a ‘what you don’t see won’t hurt you’ mentality when in fact the reverse is true. When the statistical rate of bipod foam loss is projected across missions for which imagery is not available, and the sample size is extended to include every mission from STS-1 on, the probability of bipod loss increases dramatically. The Board’s review after STS-107, which included the discovery of two additional bipod ramp losses that NASA had not previously noted, concluded that bipod foam loss occurred on approximately 10 percent of all missions.” People in NASA, especially those who made decisions, were so confident of their scientific knowledge that “when a debris strike was discovered on Flight Day Two of STS-107, Shuttle Program management declined to have the crew inspect the Orbiter for damage, declined to request on-orbit imaging, and ultimately discounted the possibility of a burn-through.” Investigation board tells an interesting story of how damage caused to Space Shuttle Columbia was technically minimised after foam strike was observed and its consequences on Orbiter were discussed. “Until STS-107, Crater

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was normally used only to predict whether small debris, usually ice on the External Tank, would pose a threat to the Orbiter during launch. The use of Crater to assess the damage caused by foam during the launch of STS-107 was the first use of the model while a mission was on orbit. Also of note is that engineers used Crater during STS-107 to analyze a piece of debris that was at maximum 640 times larger in volume than the pieces of debris used to calibrate and validate the Crater model (the Board’s best estimate is that it actually was 400 times larger). Therefore, the use of Crater in this new and very different situation compromised NASA’s ability to accurately predict debris damage in ways that Debris Assessment Team engineers did not fully comprehend. . . . Over the weekend, an engineer certified by Boeing to use Crater entered the two estimated debris dimensions, the estimated debris velocity, and the estimated angle of impact. The engineer had received formal training on Crater from senior Houston-based Boeing engineering staff, but he had only used the program twice before, and had reservations about using it to model the piece of foam debris that struck Columbia. The engineer did not consult with more experienced engineers from Boeing’s Huntington Beach, California, facility, who up until the time of STS-107 had performed or overseen Crater analysis. . . . For the Thermal Protection System tile, Crater predicted damage deeper than the actual tile thickness. This seemingly alarming result suggested that the debris that struck Columbia would have exposed the Orbiter’s underlying aluminum airframe to extreme temperatures, resulting in a possible burn-through during re-entry. Debris Assessment Team engineers discounted the possibility of burn through for two reasons. First, the results of calibration tests with small projectiles showed that Crater predicted a deeper penetration than would actually occur. Second, the Crater equation does not take into account the increased density of a tile’s lower ‘densified’ layer, which is much stronger than tile’s fragile outer layer. Therefore, engineers judged that the actual damage from the large piece of foam lost on STS-107 would not be as severe as Crater predicted, and assumed that the debris did not penetrate the Orbiter’s skin. This uncertainty, however, meant that determining the precise location of the impact was paramount for an accurate damage estimate. Some areas on the Orbiter’s lower surface, such as the seals around the landing gear doors, are more vulnerable than others. Only by knowing precisely where the debris struck could the analysts more accurately determine if the Orbiter had been damaged. . . . To determine potential RCC damage, analysts used a Crater-like algorithm that was calibrated in 1984 by impact data from ice projectiles. At the time the algorithm was empirically tested, ice was considered the only realistic threat to RCC integrity. . . . The Debris Assessment Team analysis indicated that



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impact angles greater than 15 degrees would result in RCC penetration. A separate ‘transport’ analysis, which attempts to determine the path the debris took, identified 15 strike regions and angles of impact. Twelve transport scenarios predicted an impact in regions of Shuttle tile. Only one scenario predicted an impact on the RCC leading edge, at a 21-degree angle. Because the foam that struck Columbia was less dense than ice, Debris Assessment Team analysts used a qualitative extrapolation of the test data and engineering judgment to conclude that a foam impact angle up to 21 degrees would not penetrate the RCC. Although some engineers were uncomfortable with this extrapolation, no other analyses were performed to assess RCC damage. The Debris Assessment Team focused on analyzing the impact at locations other than the RCC leading edge.” It also reported that “the Debris Assessment Team tile expert was so influential that his word was taken as gospel, though he lacked the requisite expertise, data, or analysis to evaluate damage to RCC.” In contrast, “for those with lesser standing, the requirement for data was stringent and inhibiting, resulted in information that warned of danger not being passed up the chain.” Columbia Accident Investigation Board carried out a comparative study of Challenger and Columbia accidents and found interesting similarities which shed light on the politics of science and technology. “In both cases, engineers and managers conducting risk assessments continually normalized the technical deviations they found. In all official engineering analyses and launch recommendations prior to the accidents, evidence that the design was not performing as expected was reinterpreted as acceptable and nondeviant, which diminished perceptions of risk throughout the agency. . . . The initial Shuttle design predicted neither foam debris problems nor poor sealing action of the Solid Rocket Booster joints. To experience either on a mission was a violation of design specifications. These anomalies were signals of potential danger, not something to be tolerated, but in both cases after the first incident the engineering analysis concluded that the design could tolerate the damage. These engineers decided to implement a temporary fix and/or accept the risk, and fly. For both O-rings and foam, that first decision was a turning point. It established a precedent for accepting, rather than eliminating, these technical deviations. As a result of this new classification, subsequent incidents of O-ring erosion or foam debris strikes were not defined as signals of danger, but as evidence that the design was now acting as predicted. Engineers and managers incorporated worsening anomalies into the engineering experience base, which functioned as an elastic waistband, expanding to hold larger deviations from the original design. Anomalies

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that did not lead to catastrophic failure were treated as a source of valid engineering data that justified further flights. These anomalies were translated into a safety margin that was extremely influential, allowing engineers and managers to add incrementally to the amount and seriousness of damage that was acceptable. Both O-ring erosion and foam debris events were repeatedly ‘addressed’ in NASA’s Flight Readiness Reviews but never fully resolved. In both cases, the engineering analysis was incomplete and inadequate. Engineers understood what was happening, but they never understood why. NASA continued to implement a series of small corrective actions, living with the problems until it was too late. . . . In both situations, all new information was weighed and interpreted against past experience. Formal categories and cultural beliefs provide a consistent frame of reference in which people view and interpret information and experiences. Pre-existing definitions of risk shaped the actions taken and not taken. Worried engineers in 1986 and again in 2003 found it impossible to reverse the Flight Readiness Review risk assessments that foam and O-rings did not pose safety-of-flight concerns. These engineers could not prove that foam strikes and cold temperatures were unsafe, even though the previous analyses that declared them safe had been incomplete and were based on insufficient data and testing. Engineers’ failed attempts were not just a matter of psychological frames and interpretations. The obstacles these engineers faced were political and organizational. . . . In both situations, upper-level managers and engineering teams working the O-ring and foam strike problems held opposing definitions of risk. This was demonstrated immediately, as engineers reacted with urgency to the immediate safety implications: Thiokol engineers scrambled to put together an engineering assessment for the teleconference, Langley Research Center engineers initiated simulations of landings that were run after hours at Ames Research Center, and Boeing analysts worked through the weekend on the debris impact analysis. But key managers were responding to additional demands of cost and schedule, which competed with their safety concerns. NASA’s conflicting goals put engineers at a disadvantage before these new situations even arose. In neither case did they have good data as a basis for decision-making. Because both problems had been previously normalized, resources sufficient for testing or hardware were not dedicated. The Space Shuttle Program had not produced good data on the correlation between cold temperature and O-ring resilience or good data on the potential effect of bipod ramp foam debris hits. . . . In both cases, engineers initially presented concerns as well as possible solutions – a request for images, a recommendation to place temperature constraints on launch. Management did not listen to what their engineers were telling them. Instead, rules and procedures took



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priority. . . . Both Challenger and Columbia engineering teams were held to the usual quantitative standard of proof. But it was a reverse of the usual circumstance: instead of having to prove it was safe to fly, they were asked to prove that it was unsafe to fly. . . . A critical turning point in both decisions hung on the discussion of contractor risk assessments. Although both Thiokol and Boeing engineering assessments were replete with uncertainties, NASA ultimately accepted each. Thiokol’s initial recommendation against the launch of Challenger was at first criticized by Marshall as flawed and unacceptable. Thiokol was recommending an unheard-of delay on the eve of a launch, with schedule ramifications and NASA-contractor relationship repercussions. In the Thiokol off-line caucus, a senior vice president who seldom participated in these engineering discussions championed the Marshall engineering rationale for flight. When he told the managers present to ‘Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat,’ they reversed the position their own engineers had taken. Marshall engineers then accepted this assessment, deferring to the expertise of the contractor. NASA was dependent on Thiokol for the risk assessment, but the decision process was affected by the contractor’s dependence on NASA. Not willing to be responsible for a delay, and swayed by the strength of Marshall’s argument, the contractor did not act in the best interests of safety. Boeing’s Crater analysis was performed in the context of the Debris Assessment Team, which was a collaborative effort that included Johnson, United Space Alliance, and Boeing. In this case, the decision process was also affected by NASA’s dependence on the contractor. Unfamiliar with Crater, NASA engineers and managers had to rely on Boeing for interpretation and analysis, and did not have the training necessary to evaluate the results. They accepted Boeing engineers’ use of Crater to model a debris impact 400 times outside validated limits.” In 2018-19, two brand new Boeing 737 MAX 8 passenger planes crashed within a span of four and a half months from each other in Indonesia and Ethiopia killing a total of three hundred and forty-six persons onboard. While official investigations were still on, the dogged pursuit of press had made startling revelations one after another, uncovering the same old story of human greed, of power and profit. A story filed by David Gelles, Natalie Kitroeff, Jack Nicas, and Rebecca Ruiz in The New York Times once again implicated managers for putting undue pressure on engineers and pushing them to do more with less. “Engineers were pushed to submit technical drawings and designs at roughly double the normal pace, former employees said. Facing tight deadlines and strict budgets, managers quickly pulled workers from other departments when someone left the Max project. . . . ‘The timeline

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was extremely compressed,’ the engineer said. ‘It was go, go, go.’ . . . One former designer on the team working on flight controls for the Max said the group had at times produced 16 technical drawings a week, double the normal rate. . . . A technician who assembles wiring on the Max said that in the first months of development, rushed designers were delivering sloppy blueprints to him. He was told that the instructions for the wiring would be cleaned up later in the process, he said. . . . His internal assembly designs for the Max, he said, still include omissions today, like not specifying which tools to use to install a certain wire, a situation that could lead to a faulty connection. Normally such blueprints include intricate instructions.” After carrying out his investigation, Dominic Gates, the aerospace reporter of The Seattle Times, indicated the “failed oversight” of US regulatory body responsible for the safety certification of commercial aircrafts. It now seemed that the flight control system of aircraft, a software programme called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, was faulty. But it was considered and certified as safe. “As Boeing hustled in 2015 to catch up to Airbus and certify its new 737 MAX,” writes Gates,  “Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) managers pushed the agency’s safety engineers to delegate safety assessments to Boeing itself, and to speedily approve the resulting analysis. . . . The FAA, citing lack of funding and resources, has over the years delegated increasing authority to Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes.” Interestingly, it was done “with congressional approval”—with the very consent of elected representatives of people—as pointed out by John Cassidy of The New Yorker who rightly questioned, “How can a manufacturer of something as complex and potentially dangerous as a passenger jet be allowed to play such a large role in deciding whether its product is safe?” The answer is not difficult to find, though, as “Boeing has delivered three hundred and seventy-six of these planes to airlines around the world,” more than five thousand of which had been ordered before these failures—it is profit maximisation at the cost of life, for it is profit not people that drives our world. Now, of course, many believe, writes Gates, “that the agency’s delegation of airplane certification has gone too far, and that it’s inappropriate for Boeing employees to have  so much authority over safety analyses of Boeing jets.” But will anything change? Motivation for profit making seems to be behind certain assumptions and decisions made by Boeing too. As Gates pointed out, only “after the Lion Air crash, 737 MAX pilots around the world were notified about the existence of MCAS and what to do if the system is triggered inappropriately. . . . Since MCAS was supposed to activate only in extreme circumstances far outside the normal flight envelope, Boeing decided that 737 pilots needed no extra training on



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the system — and indeed that they didn’t even need to know about it. It was not mentioned in their flight manuals. . . . That stance allowed the new jet to earn a common ‘type rating’ with existing 737 models, allowing airlines  to minimize training of pilots moving to the MAX. . . . Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the  Allied Pilots Association at American Airlines, said his training on moving from the old 737 NG model cockpit to the new 737 MAX consisted of little more than a one-hour session on an iPad, with no simulator training. . . . Minimizing MAX pilot transition training was an important cost saving for Boeing’s airline customers, a key selling point for the jet, which has racked up more than 5,000 orders. . . . The company’s website pitched the jet to airlines with a promise that ‘as you build your 737 MAX fleet, millions of dollars will be saved because of its commonality with the Next-Generation 737.’ . . . In the aftermath of the crash, officials at the unions for both American and Southwest Airlines pilots criticized Boeing for providing no information about MCAS, or its possible malfunction,  in the 737 MAX pilot manuals. . . . An FAA safety engineer said the lack of prior information could have been crucial in the Lion Air crash. . . . Boeing’s safety analysis of the system assumed that ‘the pilots would recognize what was happening as a runaway and cut off the switches,’ said the engineer. ‘The assumptions in here are incorrect. The human factors were not properly evaluated.’” Here comes the role of public regulator which seems to have been subverted and compromised systematically. Unsurprisingly, then, Gates had to tell the same banal story of engineers, managers, and poor safety that gets caught in between, “Early on in certification of the 737 MAX, the FAA safety engineering team divided up the technical assessments that would be delegated to Boeing versus those they considered more critical and would be retained within the FAA. . . . As certification proceeded, managers prodded them to speed the process. Development of the MAX was lagging nine months behind the rival Airbus A320neo. Time was of the essence for Boeing. . . . A former FAA safety engineer who was directly involved in certifying the MAX said that halfway through the certification process, ‘we were asked by management to re-evaluate what would be delegated. Management thought we had retained too much at the FAA.’ . . . ‘There was constant pressure to re-evaluate our initial decisions,’ the former engineer said. ‘And even after we had reassessed it … there was continued discussion by management about delegating even more items down to the Boeing Company.’ . . . Even the work that was retained, such as reviewing technical documents provided by Boeing, was sometimes curtailed. . . . ‘There wasn’t a complete and proper review of the documents,’ the former engineer added. ‘Review was rushed to reach certain certification

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dates.’ . . . When time was too short for FAA technical staff to complete a review, sometimes managers either signed off on the documents themselves or delegated their review back to Boeing. . . . ‘The FAA managers, not the agency technical experts, have final authority on delegation,’ the engineer said.” There is a reason why it is so everywhere, for it is the way the world works. As Gelles and his collaborators informed, “Boeing now makes a record 52 737s a month — most of them Maxes — and aims to reach 57 by April. As fuselages and plane skeletons continued to chug into the factory by train this past week, crews worked around the clock to make thousands more.” Greed is indeed what makes the world of humans move. Still more disturbing was a report that those who were charged with the responsibility of saving lives were aware of this problem but chose to gamble on the rarity of certain ‘unusual’ situations and went ahead to certify the safety of vehicle— by hiding behind a shield of favourable presumption and at the same time turning a blind eye to the fact on hand. Expert public regulators, thus, played with the lives of unsuspecting laypeople. This was what Jamie Freed, the aviation and defence correspondent of Reuters, revealed. “U.S. and European regulators knew at least two years before a Lion Air crash that the usual method for controlling the Boeing 737 MAX’s nose angle might not work in conditions similar to those in two recent disasters. . . . The European Aviation and Space Agency (EASA) certified the plane as safe in part because it said additional procedures and training would ‘clearly explain’ to pilots the ‘unusual’ situations in which they would need to manipulate a rarely used manual wheel to control, or ‘trim,’ the plane’s angle. . . . Those situations, however, were not listed in the flight manual” and there was no one to make sure that they were. Who can you trust? A year and a half after Ethiopian Airlines crash, U.S. House Committee on Transport and Infrastructure published its final report in September 2020. What was instantly known to journalists after quick enquiries had now been confirmed after a thorough investigation. This report yet again tells the same old and all too familiar story in the standard vocabulary of disasters. For flying dangerous aircrafts passed as safe, their inevitable accidents, and the loss of lives, it finds “five recurring themes” of production pressures, faulty design and performance assumptions, culture of concealment, conflicts of interests, and compromised management of public regulator responsible. Most worrisome of all is the erosion of public oversight and regulatory regime intentionally brought about to serve the interests of big business. That Boeing was asked to self-certify the safety of its own product is unthinkable, for if the self-certification of safety in business would really work, why did we need government authorities in the first place?



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Committee concluded, “The MAX crashes were not the result of a singular failure, technical mistake, or mismanaged event. They were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing’s management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA—the pernicious result of regulatory capture on the part of the FAA with respect to its responsibilities to perform robust oversight of Boeing and to ensure the safety of the flying public. . . . Boeing’s design and development of the 737 MAX was marred by technical design failures, lack of transparency with both regulators and customers, and efforts to downplay or disregard concerns about the operation of the aircraft. During development of the 737 MAX, a Boeing engineer raised safety concerns about MCAS being tied to a single AOA sensor. Another Boeing engineer raised concerns about not having a synthetic airspeed system on the 737 MAX. Concerns were also raised about the impact of faulty AOA data on MCAS and repetitive MCAS activations on the ability of 737 MAX pilots to maintain control of the aircraft. Ultimately, all of those safety concerns were either inadequately addressed or simply dismissed by Boeing. . . . Multiple career FAA officials have documented examples where FAA management overruled a determination of the FAA’s own technical experts at the behest of Boeing. In these cases, FAA technical and safety experts determined that certain Boeing design approaches on its transport category aircraft were potentially unsafe and failed to comply with FAA regulations, only to have FAA management overrule them and side with Boeing instead.” In sum, “Boeing failed in its design and development of the MAX, and the FAA failed in its oversight of Boeing and its certification of the aircraft.” And, “the current regulatory system is fundamentally flawed.” That a disaster would happen was known in this case too. Committee’s report cites an email of a senior plant supervisor Ed Pierson written to 737 general manager Scott Campbell stating, “I know how dangerous even the smallest of defects can be to the safety of an airplane. Frankly right now all my internal warning bells are going off. And for the first time in my life, I’m sorry to say that I’m hesitant about putting my family on a Boeing airplane.” That nothing changes and no lesson is learned is evident here too. Committee warns, “Both Boeing and the FAA share responsibility for the development and ultimate certification of an aircraft that was unsafe. Both must learn critical lessons from these tragic accidents. . . . Indeed, producing a compliant aircraft that proved unsafe should have been an immediate wake-up call to both Boeing and the FAA that the current regulatory system that certified the MAX is broken. Unfortunately, serious questions remain as to whether Boeing and the FAA have fully and correctly learned the lessons from the MAX failures. . . . The agency’s waning safety culture stands as a significant barrier to its

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capacity to learn lessons from the MAX tragedies and make fundamental organizational improvements.” Boing is “a big business focused on financial success. Continuing on the same path it followed with the 737 MAX, where safety was sacrificed to production pressures, exposes the company to potentially repeating those mistakes.” Flying Blind by Peter Robison tells this story in detail. Unsurprisingly, we are all set to witness another tragic failure, thus. Proponents and practitioners of science and technology must understand and admit their limitations, for the world is far too uncontrollable than what they believe or want laypersons to believe. British psychologist Nick Pidgeon gives a thoughtful advice: “No amount of mathematical theory and technique can transform uncertainty into certainty!” Probabilistic risk assessment carried out to predict failures by assigning numbers arbitrarily is itself very dangerous, for it produces a ‘scientific’ rationale based on ‘hard’ data which, in turn, generates a misplaced but convincing belief in projected safety. Success of things and organised efforts, in reality, might be due to numerous other unknown variables working silently—independently and in combination with each other. But it is taken as a proof of correctness of a mathematical model and computer simulations based on it. Exercise that begins to give us an indication and insight into the future thus produces the evidence-based ‘truth’ that defines the world for us eventually. Perrow’s scathing criticism, then, is not without basis. He angrily warns, “The new risks have produced a new breed of shamans, called risk assessors. As with the shamans and the physicians of old, it might be more dangerous to go to them for advice than to suffer unattended.” Shifting goalposts and inverting arguments are the usual tactics of manipulation and bullying done for political purposes. Little wonder that those who argued that it might not be safe to fly Challenger were asked by NASA managers to establish scientifically how it was not safe to fly. “Positivistic science and quantitative data” that Vaughan argues “settled disagreements” and formed the basis of decision and judgement in NASA were, in fact, manipulated and flawed and the purpose of manipulation was to achieve priority goal, which NASA did by self-deception and making the world believe in things that were not so. The crux of the matter is that people behave as if they know and understand something well while problem is actually not understood by them. This gap between the knowledge of phenomenon and actual phenomenon renders their awe-inspiring scientific analyses, calculations, and judgements wrong and the future uncertain, unpredictable, and risky. The fact of incomplete knowledge is repeatedly reported by unexpected events and the deviant behaviours of things that they are trying to control but



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the motivations of power turn most of them blind and arrogant—so much so that counting on past success, they keep loading the dice in favour of imagined safety and take chances instead of going for a safe bet and erring on the side of caution. Misplaced optimism is a proven path of failure; once on this course, the question is not if but when luck runs out and the myth of control over the world busts. Problem is not that “judgements are always made under conditions of imperfect knowledge” as suggested by Vaughan. Real problem instead is the politics of science and technology, which is most clearly explained by Wynne. He writes, “One of the abiding experiences of accidents is the curious ‘flip’ that often occurs in the public posture of the experts in charge. Before an accident happens, the public impression is put about that everything is under control, that design and operating procedures have been rigorously checked, and maintained by careful inspection. In other words, everyone and everything is following carefully defined rules of mechanical, electronic and human performance, in which uncertainties are peripheral. It is implied that these have been prescribed by scientific analysis which realistically models and comprehends the full extent of the implemented technological system in operation. After the unthinkable has happened, however, a different story comes to the fore — (to paraphrase) ‘Why did you ever think there was such a thing as zero risk, and how naive can you be to imagine that technical knowledge does not harbour areas of uncertainty, even legitimate ignorance? We cannot be blamed for the inevitable uncertainties that exist in developing expert knowledge and technological systems.’ Of course, if one looks carefully into reassuring public rhetorics of control one may find hints at a less rulegoverned existence for technologies; but, for public consumption, these are highly attenuated and cryptic, if they are expressed at all. What is striking is the huge contradiction between the neat and tidy public image, and the messier reality which routinely confronts practitioners on the ‘inside’ of the technological system.” Problem is that “accidents and their subsequent inquiries are perhaps the only passing moment when outsiders may glimpse the routinely less orderly, less rule-controlled world of technology and science. However, because it is seen this way only around accidents, the belief is consolidated that normally practices are more orderly.” The truth is that “beneath a public image of rule-following behaviour, and the associated belief that accidents are due to deviation from those clear rules, experts are operating with far greater levels of ambiguity, needing to make uncertain judgements in less than clearly structured situations.” As a result, “practices do not follow rules; rather, rules follow evolving practices. . . . Periodically, the evolution of practices is recapitulated into an updated statement of

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formal rules.” But the powers that be ‘at the time’ fail to realise that the politics of science and technology is very risky and costly. “The predominant current trend seems to be a negative spiral. Concern for public reassurance produces artificially purified public accounts of scientific and technological methods and processes. When something goes wrong, this background is an ever more difficult framework against which to explain that even when people act competently and responsibly, unexpected things can happen and things go wrong.” Wynne’s analysis springs from technological systems. It, however, has far greater relevance to systems which are essentially constituted of human interactions, for they operate with much lesser control and controllability and run by predominantly ad hoc decisions based on the subjective judgements of practitioners. Nevertheless, those in charge often appear absolutely confident, seem to make tall claims, and assert their expertise in an attempt to paint a neat and orderly public image of their knowledge, skills, and operations. Their failure, then, becomes more unacceptable and inexcusable in the eyes of the world than it actually deserves due to the uncertain, ambiguous, unstructured, and uncontrollable nature of their work and the world. I agree with Wynne that “a better alternative is to cut into the current vicious circle of myth making and dis-education of both publics and experts.” But the question is: How it can be done in a world of people who are propelled by insatiable greed for fame, wealth, and power and who are mindlessly competing for personal success and organisational survival? The question of technology has another sociological side too, for it is often imposed on a person by market forces, organisations, and society and there is little a man can do to escape it, given his personal limitations and necessity for a social existence. We have become a technology dependent species of technophile societies and individuals. Technological project which began to provide us bodily comfort and convenience in life has now become an end in itself. An unintended outcome of our technology-driven existence is the increased risks of newer kinds that remain buried most of the time, so we remain mostly ignorant and unaware of their lurking existence and unconcerned about their harmful consequences. Problems can still be managed if they remain in a particular state but, since technology is not a static phenomenon, technology-induced problems remain in a state of constant flux and change swiftly with time, giving little opportunity to its users to adapt and learn to deal with its repercussions. Also, human nature and vested interests are such that we just celebrate the benefits of new technologies without giving pause to ponder over their risks. This attitude keeps aggravating the hidden



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potential of technology for generating additional and newer problems for men inundated and grappling with the many challenges of crisis when it happens. Woods and his fellow authors reveal the actual reality of hidden clumsiness of our current technology. “Devices that are internally complex but superficially simple encourage practitioners to adopt overly simplistic models of device operation and to develop high confidence that these models are accurate and reliable.” They write, “Ubiquitous computerization has tremendously advanced our ability to collect, transmit, and transform data. In all areas of human endeavor, we are bombarded with computer-processed data, especially when anomalies occur. But our ability to digest and interpret data has failed to keep pace with our abilities to generate and manipulate greater and greater amounts of data. Thus, we are plagued by data overload.” As if it was not enough, “user interface technology has allowed us to concentrate this expanding field of data into one physical platform, typically a single visual display unit (VDU). Users are provided with increased degrees of flexibility for data handling and presentation in the computer interface through window management and different ways to display data. The technology provides the capability to generate tremendous networks of computer displays as a kind of virtual perceptual field viewable through the narrow aperture of the VDU. . . . In other words, the data space is hidden behind the narrow keyhole of the VDU. . . . There is a large difference between what is directly visible and what is behind the placid surface of the VDU screen. To see another (small) portion of the data space the user must decide what they should examine, where it is in the data space, selecting it and moving it into the limited viewport (which replaces whatever portion of the data space that had been on display). . . . These changes affect the cognitive demands and processes associated with extracting meaning from large fields of data.” They explain the potential risk of this ‘keyhole property’ of computerised devices especially during highstress, high-tempo, and high-workload crisis situations. “The combination of a large field of raw data and a narrow keyhole creates a variety of new burdens for practitioners. Practitioners bear the burden to navigate across all of these displays in order to carry out domain tasks and to meet domain goals. One danger is that users can become ‘disoriented’ or ‘lost’ in the space of possible displays. There is little support for finding the right data at the right time as tasks change and activities unfold. Inter-related data becomes fragmented and spread out across different kinds of display frames forcing the practitioner into a slow serial search to collect and then integrate related data. Practitioner attention shifts to the interface (where is the desired data located in the display space?) and to interface control (how do I navigate to that location in the display space?) at the very times where their attention

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needs to be devoted most to their job (what is the relevant data? what does it mean about system state and needed practitioner actions?). . . . As a result, the costs of interacting with the device’s capabilities go up, which creates bottlenecks in high-tempo periods. Practitioners cope through escape – they abandon using that device in high-tempo periods” when they ironically experience a greatest craving for help. There is a specific problem of ‘mode awareness’ with respect to the handling of computerised devices. Woods and his associates elaborate, “Mode errors occur when an operator executes an intention in a way that would be appropriate if the device were in one configuration (one mode) when it is in fact in another configuration. Note that mode errors are not simply just human error or a machine failure. Mode errors are a kind of human-machine system breakdown in that it takes both a user who loses track of the current system configuration, and a system that interprets user-input differently depending on the current mode of operation. The potential for mode error increases as a consequence of a proliferation of modes and interactions across modes without changes to improve the feedback to users about system state and activities. . . . Automation is often introduced as a resource for the human supervisor, providing him with a large number of modes of operation for carrying out tasks under different circumstances. The human’s role is to select the mode best suited to a particular situation. . . . However, this flexibility tends to create and proliferate modes of operation which create new cognitive demands on practitioners. Practitioners must know more – both about how the system works in each different mode and about how to manage the new set of options in different operational contexts. New attentional demands are created as the practitioner must keep track of which mode the device is in, both to select the correct inputs when communicating with the automation, and to track what the automation is doing now, why it is doing it, and what it will do next. These new cognitive demands can easily congregate at high-tempo and high-criticality periods of device use thereby adding new workload at precisely those time periods where practitioners are most in need of effective support systems.” Woods and others further inform, “Technology change creates the potential for new kinds of error and system breakdown as well as changing the potential for previous kinds of trouble. Take the classic simple example of the transition from an analog alarm clock to a digital one. With the former, errors are of imprecision – a few minutes off one way or another. With the advent of the latter, precision increases, but it is now possible for order-of-magnitude errors where the alarm is set to sound exactly 12 hours off (i.e., by confusing



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PM and AM modes). . . . We usually focus on the perceived benefits of new automated or computerized devices and technological aids. Our fascination with the possibilities afforded by technology in general often obscures the fact that new computerized and automated devices also create new burdens and complexities for the individuals and teams of practitioners responsible for operating, troubleshooting, and managing high-consequence systems. . . . Technology is often designed to shift workload or tasks from the human to the machine. But the critical design feature for well integrated cooperative cognitive work between the automation and the human is not the overall or time-averaged task workload. Rather, it is how the technology impacts on low-workload and high-workload periods, and especially how it impacts on the practitioner’s ability to manage workload that makes the critical difference between clumsy and skillful use of the technological possibilities. . . . Clumsy automation is a form of poor coordination between the human and machine in the control of dynamic processes where the benefits of the new technology accrue during workload troughs, and the costs or burdens imposed by the technology occur during periods of peak workload, highcriticality, or high-tempo operations. Despite the fact that these systems are often justified on the grounds that they would help offload work from harried practitioners, we find that they in fact create new additional tasks, force the user to adopt new cognitive strategies, require more knowledge and more communication at the very times when the practitioners are most in need of true assistance. This creates opportunities for new kinds of human error and new paths to system breakdown that did not exist in simpler systems.” Problem is that at the time of crisis, the operation of technology is often clumsy than not. What an irony that in the most stressful moments when the cognitive ability of human beings reaches a lowest ebb and bears a greatest load, the demand of technological devices for their attentional resource peaks in exchange for offering them badly needed assistance. Let us make sense of technological load on human beings that we have discussed above theoretically by the misery of those who are caught in its web during a crisis. Perrow gives a quick peek at frantic drama that was going on in the control room of American nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania on March 28, 1979 when its Unit 2 suffered a breakdown. In the control room there were three audible alarms sounding, and many of the 1,600 lights (on-off lights and rectangular displays with some code numbers and letters on them) were on or blinking. The operators did not turn off the main audible alarm because it would cancel some of the

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Dignity of Life annunciator lights. The computer was beginning to run far behind schedule; in fact it took some hours before its message that something might be wrong with the PORV finally got its chance to be printed. Radiation alarms were coming on. The control room was filling with experts; later in the day there were about forty people there. The phones were ringing constantly, demanding information the operators did not have.

Those were still the good old days, for imagine if this scene is played out in a sophisticated control room conceived for a modern nuclear power plant that Woods and co-writers describe. One computerized control room for a nuclear power plant has evolved to include well over 16,000 possible displays that could be examined by operators. During development designers focused on individual displays and relied on a set of generic movement mechanisms and commands to support navigation across displays. Only after the control room was implemented for final testing in a high fidelity simulator did the developers realize that operators needed to focus a great deal of time and effort to find the appropriate displays for the current context. These difficulties were greatest when plant conditions were changing, the most critical times for operators to be focused on understanding and correctly responding to plant conditions.

The above control room would remain an unimaginably complicated place for a human being to handle in a crisis, irrespective of a ‘simplified’ solution that system developers would have finally offered to plant operators. Woods and his colleagues point out another complexity of technological solutions. “Computerization and automation integrate or couple more closely together different parts of the system. . . . With higher coupling, actions produce more side effects. Fault diagnosis becomes more difficult as a fault is more likely to produce a cascade of disturbances that spreads throughout the monitored process.” But the problems of technology do not end here, for there is a more fundamental problem that has existential ramifications for our species. It emerges from human-machine interface that mediates with and constructs our sense of the reality and simultaneously produces a potential for the problem of foreground and feedback. Imagine difference between going downrange to your target and seeing, touching, and measuring holes punched by bullets fired by you or staying on firing line and seeing a tiny display besides which mimics your target and shot placement and conveys your shooting performance. This electronic target display is while convenient, it has removed you from the real world. It stands between you and the world and lets you make sense of the world through information which it supplies to you. In addition to its own hardware and software, information supplied



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to you by your monitor is also dependent on communication between display and sensors mounted on target and their processing systems. In short, there are a number of variables and mediators between you, the world, and indirect information with which you interpret the world. These intermediate elements of technology increase the uncertainties of your reality model thus formed. Following excerpts from the report of Columbia Accident Investigation Board log the events of its destruction and reveal the problem of such imagined and dependent reality. Now crossing California, the Orbiter appeared to observers on the ground as a bright spot of light moving rapidly across the sky. Signs of debris being shed were sighted at 8:53:46 a.m. (EI+577), when the superheated air surrounding the Orbiter suddenly brightened, causing a noticeable streak in the Orbiter’s luminescent trail. Observers witnessed another four similar events during the following 23 seconds, and a bright flash just seconds after Columbia crossed from California into Nevada airspace at 8:54:25 a.m. (EI+614), when the Orbiter was traveling at Mach 22.5 and 227,400 feet. Witnesses observed another 18 similar events in the next four minutes as Columbia streaked over Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. In Mission Control, re-entry appeared normal until 8:54:24 a.m. (EI+613), when the Maintenance, Mechanical, and Crew Systems (MMACS) officer informed the Flight Director that four hydraulic sensors in the left wing were indicating “off-scale low,” a reading that falls below the minimum capability of the sensor. As the seconds passed, the Entry Team continued to discuss the four failed indicators. At 8:59:15 a.m. (EI+906), MMACS informed the Flight Director that pressure readings had been lost on both left main landing gear tires. The Flight Director then told the Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) to let the crew know that Mission Control saw the messages and was evaluating the indications, and added that the Flight Control Team did not understand the crew’s last transmission. At 8:59:32 a.m. (EI+923), a broken response from the mission commander was recorded: “Roger, [cut off in mid-word] …” It was the last communication from the crew and the last telemetry signal received in Mission Control. Videos made by observers on the ground at 9:00:18 a.m. (EI+969) revealed that the Orbiter was disintegrating. At 9:00:18 a.m. (EI+969), the postflight video and imagery analyses indicate that a catastrophic event occurred. Bright flashes suddenly enveloped the Orbiter, followed by a dramatic change in the trail of superheated air. This is considered the most likely time of the main breakup of Columbia. Because the loss of

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Dignity of Life signal had occurred 46 seconds earlier, Mission Control had no insight into this event. Mission Control continued to work the loss-of-signal problem to regain communication with Columbia. At 9:02:21 a.m. (EI+1092, or 18 minutes-plus), the Mission Control Center commentator reported, “Fourteen minutes to touchdown for Columbia at the Kennedy Space Center. Flight controllers are continuing to stand by to regain communications with the spacecraft.” The Ground Control officer then told the Flight Director that the Orbiter was within two minutes of acquiring the Kennedy Space Center ground station for communications, “Two minutes to MILA.” The Flight Director told the CAPCOM to try another communications check with Columbia, including one on the UHF system (via MILA, the Kennedy Space Center tracking station). At 9:03:45 a.m. (EI+1176, or 19 minutes-plus), the Mission Control Center commentator reported, “CAPCOM Charlie Hobaugh calling Columbia on a UHF frequency as it approaches the Merritt Island (MILA) tracking station in Florida. Twelve-and-a-half minutes to touchdown, according to clocks in Mission Control.” The Flight Control Team still had no indications of any serious problems onboard the Orbiter. In Mission Control, there was no way to know the exact cause of the failed sensor measurements, and while there was concern for the extended loss of signal, the recourse was to continue to try to regain communications and in the meantime determine if the other systems, based on the last valid data, continued to appear as expected. The Flight Director told the CAPCOM to continue to try to raise Columbia via UHF. At 09:08:25 a.m. (EI+1456, or 24 minutes-plus), the Instrumentation and Communications Officer reported, “Flight – INCO, I’ve commanded string one in the blind,” which indicated that the officer had executed a command sequence to Columbia to force the onboard S-band communications system to the backup string of avionics to try to regain communication, per the Flight Director’s direction in the previous call. At 9:12:39 a.m. (E+1710, or 28 minutes-plus), Columbia should have been banking on the heading alignment cone to line up on Runway 33. At about this time, a member of the Mission Control team received a call on his cell phone from someone who had just seen live television coverage of Columbia breaking up during re-entry. The Mission Control team member walked to the Flight Director’s console and told him the Orbiter had disintegrated.

It is beyond doubt that the technological sophistication of NASA Mission Control would have been incomparably advanced, extremely impressive, and



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most awe-inspiring for an outsider. Its reality was still fictitious, at least for the last twelve minutes or so. Isolated and confined NASA technocrats in those moments were living in an imagined world created by mesmerising technology working side by side with their scientific expectation that shuttle was landing while lay public living in the real world outside and sensing events directly without any preconceptions had learned the tragic fate of Columbia and its unfortunate crew. Unfolding events of Columbia accident mentioned above tell us about the consequences of compromise we must make to overcome our biological limitations by surrendering our direct contact with the world to technological vanguards and accepting a backstage role. Technology surely does what a man cannot but it comes at a cost—it takes away the direct interface of man with the material world. What we must understand and be aware of at all times is that, irrespective of its precision and reliability, a technological interface represents the reality, it is not the reality. If something goes wrong technically, the view of the world and the judgements and responses of men based on indirect information supplied by devices and displays would be necessarily erroneous. A failure, then, would become inevitable and beyond the control of men responsible to deal with it. This is the cost we must pay occasionally for hiding and masking the reality behind a technological foreground, for removing and isolating ourselves from the physical world, and for sensing it indirectly through sweeping needles, dancing digits, moving lines, flashing colours, and calling buzzers. In sum, the sociology of failure tells the story of many impersonal forces unleashed by humanity upon itself and how they overwhelm a man, relegate his unadulterated biological self to the margins, and reduce his truly personal potential for failures to insignificance. If these man-made forces seem uncontrollable as they are, what if there are such forces of nature too lurking around every corner that cannot be controlled at all? What place, then, a man has in the grand scheme of things and what, if anything, he can do? We will explore these questions now. VI This section is going to tell the most intriguing and bizarre tale of failures. I am borrowing a passage from Perrow’s classic work Normal Accidents to begin this story. It is seemingly the most trivial and unscholarly text of his work which has changed the way we understand accidents today. But it seems to me an easy and interesting way to tell how different things can come together in a strange way and go wrong uncontrollably in a complex interconnected world.

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Dignity of Life You stay home from work or school because you have an important job interview downtown this morning that you have finally negotiated. Your friend or spouse has already left when you make breakfast, but unfortunately he or she has left the glass coffeepot on the stove with the light on. The coffee has boiled dry and the glass pot has cracked. Coffee is an addiction for you, so you rummage about in the closet until you find an old drip coffeemaker. Then you wait for the water to boil, watching the clock, and after a quick cup dash out the door. When you get to your car you find that in your haste you have left your car keys (and the apartment keys) in the apartment. That’s okay, because there is a spare apartment key hidden in the hallway for just such emergencies. (This is a safety device, a redundancy, incidentally.) But then you remember that you gave a friend the key the other night because he had some books to pick up, and, planning ahead, you knew you would not be home when he came. (That finishes that redundant pathway, as engineers call it.) Well, it is getting late, but there is always the neighbor’s car. The neighbor is a nice old gent who drives his car about once a month and keeps it in good condition. You knock on the door, your tale ready. But he tells you that it just so happened that the generator went out last week and the man is coming this afternoon to pick it up and fix it. Another “backup” system has failed you, this time through no connection with your behavior at all (uncoupled or independent events, in this case, since the key and the generator are rarely connected). Well, there is always the bus. But not always. The nice old gent has been listening to the radio and tells you the threatened lock-out of the drivers by the bus company has indeed occurred. The drivers refuse to drive what they claim are unsafe buses, and incidentally want more money as well. (A safety system has foiled you, of all things.) You call a cab from your neighbor’s apartment, but none can be had because of the bus strike. (These two events, the bus strike and the lack of cabs, are tightly connected, dependent events, or tightly coupled events . . . since one triggers the other.) You call the interviewer’s secretary and say, “It’s just too crazy to try to explain, but all sorts of things happened this morning and I can’t make the interview with Mrs. Thompson. Can we reschedule it?”And you say to yourself, next week I am going to line up two cars and a cab and make the morning coffee myself. The secretary answers “Sure,” but says to himself, “This person is obviously unreliable; now this after pushing for weeks for an interview with Thompson.” He makes a note to that effect on the record and searches for the most inconvenient time imaginable for next week, one that Mrs. Thompson might have to cancel.

In a similar vein, several ‘unconnected’ and normal events keep coming together and crossing paths only to aggravate a difficult situation in 2004



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movie Cellular while 2006 movie Babel shows how everyday decisions which are ordinary and rational otherwise can, at times, become uncontrollable and have unforeseen and even diabolical consequences. Let us try to find an answer to a simple question that emerges from the above situations: Why do such dreadful things happen at all and all of a sudden when everything seems to be just all right? Universe is immensely complex and our planet, perhaps, contains even greater complexity due to the existence of life—a gigantic, deeply interconnected and interdependent, dynamically and kinetically stable system made of countless self-replicating entities. The world, surprisingly, not only successfully defies degradation towards entropy as the laws of thermodynamics dictate but it also continuously rebuilds and regenerates itself. Life in particular intriguingly exploits energy, recycles matter, and evolves diversity and complexity by the endless processes of replication, variation, competition, and selection. As if this natural complexity is not enough, humankind has imposed upon itself an even greater complexity by leveraging its intelligence and creating and connecting innumerable complex organisations and technologies on a global scale which, in turn, constantly interact with each other and with a living globe—conceptualised as Gaia by British scientist James Lovelock. For we live in a complex world, let us try to understand how the complex phenomena of the world behave and work. We have discussed the properties of complexity and chaos in second chapter. Here we will keep our focus on how these properties can cause failures. A complex system has so many components which influence each other and also affect the whole system, directly and indirectly, in so many different ways that all possibilities of these interactions cannot be known and, therefore, the future of system cannot be predicted—it remains uncertain and defies intended control. Such a system draws its complexity from its intricate interconnectedness and interdependencies in space and time. In other words, the complexity of a system resides not in its parts but in their relationships and interactions. It is these interactions which make a complex system flow with time without any deterministic future. A complex system evolves and, as Dekker puts it, “evolution has no direction, at least no visible direction when you’re in the middle of it.” It is so because innumerable interactions between different parts produce local events which feed back to system and continuously influence the course of its evolution. And, it is not only parts that influence the behaviour of system but system too influences the behaviours of its parts. To quote British astrophysicist and

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science writer John Gribbin, “The whole system has an important influence on every component part, and every component part has an important influence on the whole system.” For nothing is certain in complex systems, notes British science writer Roger Lewin, “small inputs can lead to dramatically large consequences” and “very slight differences in initial conditions produce very different outcomes.” Similarly, the converse of ‘small leading to large’ can also be true in these self-organising systems, in that large inputs may produce little and diminutive results in the end. Also, not only at initial stage but at any stage of evolution of events, any input can propagate through system by interacting with other parts and the whole system in unexpected and disproportional ways that may push the course of events and their outcome in any direction. Given these properties, the future of a complex system can best be extrapolated in terms of possibilities, for there cannot be any certainties and, if it is impossible to predict such a system, then, it is impossible to control it too, entirely and always, for something that we cannot know cannot control. That is why the problem and science of complex systems is rightly called complexity and it incorporates the study of chaos too—both of which paradoxically emerge from “simple laws, nonlinearity, sensitivity to initial conditions and feedback,” writes Gribbin. Complex systems are non-linear and we cannot understand them in the same way as we understand linear systems studied by sciences traditionally in terms of deterministic cause and effect dynamics. Gribbin explains it in the language of mathematics. He writes, “With a linear system, if I make a small mistake in measuring, or estimating, some initial property of the system, this will carry through my calculations and lead to a small error at the end. But with a non-linear system, a small error at the beginning of the calculation can lead to a very large error at the end of the calculation. A linear system is more or less equal to the sum of its parts; a non-linear system may be either much more, or much less, than the sum of its parts.” He refers to French mathematician Henri Poincaré who, in the first decade of twentieth century, wrote, “A very small cause which escapes our notice determines a considerable effect that we cannot fail to see, and then we say that that effect is due to chance. If we knew exactly the laws of nature and the situation of the universe at the initial moment, we could predict exactly the situation of that same universe at a succeeding moment. But, even if it were the case that the natural laws had no longer any secret for us, we could still only know the initial situation approximately. If that enabled us to predict the succeeding situation with the same approximation, that is all we require, and we should say that the phenomenon had been predicted, that is governed by laws. But it is not always so; it may happen that small differences



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in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena. A small error in the former will produce an enormous error in the latter. Prediction becomes impossible, and we have the fortuitous phenomenon.” Gribbin explains, “The rounding errors inherent in any numerical integration – the choice of just how many decimal places you calculate with, whether using pencil and paper or an electronic computer – affect the outcome of the calculation in very much the same way that Lorenz’s simple weather model was affected.” Edward Lorenz was an American mathematical meteorologist whose non-linear weather model marks the beginning of modern science of chaos for bringing the question of sensitive dependence on initial conditions to the fore. Gribbin clarifies further, “In a system that is sufficiently sensitive to initial conditions, it is always possible that, no matter how many digits we choose to work with, the entire future of the system may, as Lorenz discovered, depend significantly on the value of the next digit, the one we have in effect thrown away. . . . The important point is that this limits our ability to predict the behaviour of such systems.” This is why it is unthinkable to accurately determine and predict the path and place of landing of seemingly simple objects in everyday events such as a leaf falling from a tree or a balloon set off by its jet. Such is the nature of non-linearity and of all the worldly phenomena governed by it—they self-organise unpredictably and cannot be controlled wishfully. While the nature of complex systems appears quite ominous from the above theoretical discussion, it is actually not so bleak. A complex system takes time to evolve from a simple state. We know that neither universe nor life began as it is today; their component parts emerged gradually and their interactions increased in complexity over time. We can also say that complex systems are stable systems, for if they were not so, they would not have survived to evolve complexity which, arguably, takes a long period of time to self-organise from a simple state. Given the stability of ever-interacting complex systems, it seems that most pathways of interactions in a system are naturally attracted towards the stable states of system; only occasionally a pathway gets out of the pull of its stable-state attractors and pushes a system into a chaotic state. Existence of such ‘attractors’ in complex systems has also been determined mathematically and applied to a range of non-linear phenomena. Phenomenon of stable-state attractors thus reconciles the theory of complexity with the world that we have—we could not have a complex but stable world otherwise. It is clear from the above discussion that there are the countless possibilities of interactions between the numerous parts of a complex system, between

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parts and system, and between system and environment in which it exists. Every time and always, a system is, thus, propelled on a different pathway in relation to a reference pathway from the past which, in turn, might any time change its known state of stable equilibrium. And, that means a state of perpetual uncertainty, for a pathway can take system anywhere in the future. Nonetheless, most pathways of interactions stop short of pushing it beyond recovery threshold. In other words, the development of pathways happens randomly and the future of system remains uncertain but the randomness of system does not make its behaviour erratic and chaotic; system nonetheless remains in a region and state of dynamic-kinetic equilibrium and repeatedly defies the possibility of following a destabilising and disruptive course caused by ever-present perturbations and fluctuations. Turbulences, which endlessly emerge in and propagate through system, instead make the rhythms of organisation and the ominous uncertainty of self-organisation paradoxically seems to make a complex system vibrant, adaptive, resilient, variable, and viable—not fixed, rigid, fragile, and transient. By a complex system, Murphy’s Law is proven wrong most of the time, for it somehow recovers from edge instead of tipping over. That is why the world exists, and we exist. We also experience it in our lives every day. There are innumerable things that can go wrong catastrophically at each step but they somehow do not. We do skid and stumble, fall and collide every so often but most of the time we regain our balance and somehow able to maintain our postural endurance, structural integrity, and injury-free existence. Even engineered systems, which we believe strictly conform to a cause-effect logic, do not deliver an absolutely repeatable performance but show variable performance instead and also found to be functionally resilient way beyond their calculated limits and tested tolerances. You fire a gun in automatic mode and each time you are likely get a different rate of fire; you take as many guns of the same make and lot of production as you want and each gun is likely to give you a different cyclic rate of fire. It is not a problem of mechanical systems alone as electronic devices are similarly variable; what changes is the scale of variability. Columbia Accident Investigation Board gives a picture of Modular Auxiliary Data System recorder in its report which was found near Hemphill, Texas. An interesting fact about this device was that “while not designed to withstand impact damage, the recorder was in near-perfect condition when recovered on March 19, 2003.” This, of course, does not happen every time but it does happen many a time. Our lives are full of potential for failing and we keep having frequent brushes with accidents, even if most of us are not aware of risks averted just by chance. That we do not fail so often and survive nearly unscathed time after time is not



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always due to our intentions and actions. It might just be due to the way the world is. The world, as British zoologist Richard Dawkins puts it, “is populated by stable things” and this seems to be true in every way; it is indeed a stable place and stability is its intrinsic property. Due to the presence of ‘strange’ attractors, a complex system is not condemned to the paths of failure recurrently. Given the role of uncertainty, though, it does not perpetually stay on the paths of stability. Stable nature of the world is no guarantee against failure as any pathway can get out of control and cause a quick collapse of system. Both Challenger and Columbia Space Shuttles had flown successfully for several years with the same problems and defects but they did break up in the end. The irony is that what makes complex systems tick is what causes them to falter and fail. We might just be surviving by probability and succeeding by chance in a world inherently organised in favour of order and stability, for we know that unfortunates among us do die unexpectedly of a simple fall or sudden arrhythmia and do fail eventually, even after doing everything necessary to succeed. Things that are designed to last fail and those not made to last survive. Planes crash and passengers survive—unexpectedly. We live in a quirky uncertain world and it is as true as the truth can be. Theoretically, a sudden drastic change in the state and nature of a selforganising complex system—called phase transition or phase change—can happen in two ways. A system can emerge into a state of higher order with an entirely distinct global character and properties which cannot be fully explained by means of its past and constituent parts. This phenomenon is called emergence. Science of complexity mostly studies the phenomenon of emergence due to its natural attraction and utilitarian value. However, the same logic can be applied conversely. A complex system can also selforganise into a chaotic state that might subsequently cause its collapse. By collapse I mean a state on the path of disorganisation and disintegration of an interactive system where it loses its rhythms and stops responding and adapting to its dynamic environment because its interactions have died off. It can also be called network collapse since components continue to exist still, only their relationships die out. In the event of collapse, the order of a system disappears and its information is lost. In other words, what collapses is order and information and what comes into being is entropy. When it happens, the hubbub of flowing energy is replaced by an eerie silence of stillness. There is no system post collapse, not because there are no parts that made it but because there are no vibrant interactions between them that actually made a system. Its parts now lie scattered in space and

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time rather uneventfully for want of sensitive relationships and responsive interconnections which exchange information and energy vigorously and influence each other and system actively and dramatically. This complex phenomenon is shown schematically in figure 7.3. Higher Order and Organisation Emergence Tipping Point

Order and Organisation

Collapse No Order and Organisation Time

Phase Transition Figure 7.3

Let us ponder over a very significant question in the context of our discussion: Why is it that we cannot fully explain the state of a system after a phase change—emergence or collapse—by studying its past and parts? To begin with, we know that the point of phase transition contains a forking path of emergence of higher order and organisation or collapse of existing order and organisation. In any case, this is a point where a very different past meets a very different present. It breaks and ruptures the continuity of past and present in ways that are beyond human comprehension at this moment. It seems that events that happen at this juncture are the key to phase transition, a phenomenon which separates order from a higher order or an absence of order. If what happens at this point is not revealed to human mind, then, we can call it event horizon, for our consciousness at least, and say that in it lies a discontinuity in the history of system for us, which makes the connecting events linking the past and the present of system disappear to us. Point of phase change, then, can be likened to an impermeable and opaque barrier resembling a dark tunnel which blacks out information until the other end where it is again available to human consciousness. Something mysterious that happens in this dark tunnel and switches a system from one state to another seems to happen instantaneously. But arguably, the suddenness of phase transition might be due to the scale of time and space that we employ to make sense of the world. Events such as the mass extinction of



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species and the collapse of civilisations which ‘appear’ to have happened ‘suddenly’ to us on geological and historical timescales might have taken millions and hundreds of years respectively to unfold. So, the case of scale is indeed strong. D’Arcy Thompson, a British mathematical biologist, refers to Oliver Heaviside, a contemporary British mathematician and scientist, in his early twentieth century classic On Growth and Form. He writes, “Heaviside used to say . . . that there is no absolute scale of size in the Universe, for it is boundless towards the great and also boundless towards the small.” Much depends on scale, then. Of course, there are the scientific limits of scale—quantum gravity suggests that nothing smaller than Planck scale can actually exist and the cosmological constant of general relativity indicates a finite cosmos, of course, without borders. But what Heaviside said remains relevant just the same and makes every sense in the world of our experience, for the bizarre world of mathematics made of arbitrary symbols is not what humans have evolved to perceive, comprehend, and imagine naturally. So, I do believe in what Heaviside used to believe about the nature of the world—it is truly boundless on both ends. Events do happen without doubt at the point of phase change but they might be happening on a scale that we cannot understand as of yet. Both emergence and collapse are global phenomena ensuing from local interactions which can be neither understood nor predicted by a reductionist approach of studying the constituent parts of a system and their limited behaviours. In fact, the enigmatic and mysterious nature of sudden emergence and collapse of complex systems is quite unnerving and threatening to orthodox reductionist science and to its core belief in a complete controllability of the physical world. Scientists do aspire and claim to control the world but they actually do not and for now it seems they cannot. The day we are able to crack the mystery of phase transition completely and decode events that happen at this juncture fully, humankind, I speculate, might just acquire powers that believers among us still attribute to God and consider it beyond human. Be that as it may, the idea of phase change in complex systems provides a plausible explanation to many a serendipitous and catastrophic event and phenomenon in the world, although it does not offer us much to control by not revealing how it actually happens. Not only that we do not know how things happen at the point of phase transition but the nature of complex systems is such that we can also not retrospectively locate its tipping point or the point of no return in time and space which led to its phase change. Notion of tipping point is a theoretical construct whose social usefulness in the context of failure lies in a realisation

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that a point of no return exists somewhere on the path of growing disorder past which a system tips over and cannot return to its previous stable state, for all windows to recovery are now closed and events become irreversible. A thought of existence of such a point, then, imparts a sense of urgency for corrective actions and restorative interventions, whatever they might be and whatever little they might do, for a delay in action can be fatal if the progression of events crosses the unknown and unknowable point of no return. Murphy’s Law might be wrong most of the time but it cannot be wrong after we have crossed this fateful tipping point, which explains why complex systems can also fail. We began our discussion with a question: Why do such dreadful things happen at all and all of a sudden when everything seems to be quite all right? The answer is: Such events and experiences happen because both the world that made us and the world that we have made are complex systems made of innumerable interrelationships and interdependencies and full of uncertainties. Freudenburg quotes a supervising engineer of a large plant whose concerns reflect the reality of complex nature of operations of modern organisations: “The damned plant has got so many ways of going wrong that nobody really knows what they all are, not even me. Back when I first started, if I worked on a car, I not only knew how my part of the system worked — I knew how the whole thing worked. On this project, we’re lucky if the various teams even know how their own parts of the plant are supposed to work, and nobody but God Almighty really knows how the whole thing fits together.” It is the same story everywhere—that nobody really knows how a complex system works. To make it worse, the science of complexity informs us, as Gribbin writes, that “the same size triggers do not all cause the same size events” and “you do not need a large trigger in order to set off a large event” for “large events . . . can happen out of the blue, as a consequence of small triggers.” It also tells us “that any single event might be a special case, and doesn’t on its own tell you anything much about the underlying cause of similar events, or likelihood of their recurrence, any more than studying a single earthquake tells you much about earthquakes in general and how often they occur.” That is why we can fail quickly and unexpectedly. Let us also note what those who have studied failures have to say. “We can never guarantee that our plans and intentions will not be thwarted by disaster. Even when we think we are as safe as can be, we can never disregard completely the possibility that some unforeseen, destructive event may put us in danger, or upset our orderly, everyday affairs.” Turner opened



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his book with this remark but he challenged it immediately and his book convincingly explains why. I would say he was not right if he had rejected this argument entirely and it seems he did not from what he wrote in the end: “However comforting the promise of an infinite tidiness offered to mankind by the older rationalist notion of the possibility of arranging our affairs always on the basis of the anticipation which our conscious knowledge offers us, we must recognize that we are in a contingent universe, in which ultimately there are limits on our ability to reduce uncertainty, to master all of the open-ended and perverse qualities of our environment, and upon our ability to prevent disaster. If we start by recognizing that instability lies at the heart of the world, then we may come to realize that the optimism and the assertion of certainty which enables life to create and spread order cannot completely overcome this instability. We may come to realize that, even when our strategies are successful, they are still dependent upon the munificence of the environment and upon the mutability of fortune.” Perrow seems to have little doubt on the nature of complex systems and the title of his book Normal Accidents reveals it emphatically. He is forthright in admitting towards the end that “even with our improved knowledge, accidents and, thus, potential catastrophes are inevitable in complex, tightly coupled systems with lethal possibilities. We should try harder to reduce failures—and that will help a great deal—but for some systems it will not be enough.” Turner and Perrow were first to study man-made accidents holistically and, interestingly, while they did it independently, separated by half a decade and a vast expanse of Atlantic, both developed similar insights. Dekker has since placed the event of failure in the arena of complexity. As a result, he is able to reflect and realise that “in a complex system, an action controls almost nothing. But it influences almost everything.” We must understand that “the effects of local decisions seldom stay local” and accept that “failure is always an option.” That is why we can fail any time. Theory of complexity and chaos provides yet another perspective to understanding failures. It, however, transcends the actions of humanity and elevates the question of failure to the realm of mysterious ways of the world. Notwithstanding, its message is plain and simple: While we must endeavour to control events, the controllability of the world cannot be taken for granted. Nature of the world is such that our knowledge merely remains an approximation of the reality and it is always vulnerable to be proven wrong. It seems that a gap that exists between the reality and our knowledge just cannot be bridged, for “the more we know,” writes Dörner, “the more clearly we realize what we don’t know” or, as Rovelli puts it, “the more we discover, the more we understand that what we don’t yet know

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is greater than what we know.” After all, how a world that emerges from the uncertainties and probabilities of quantum mechanics and complexity can be known, predicted, and controlled completely? VII In this section, I will discuss the morality of failure, for the psychology, sociology, and complexity of failure do not explain it fully especially when we see catastrophes and disasters visit us again and again. Anna Walentynowicz was a Polish woman who worked in Gadańsk shipyard. For participating in an illegal trade union, she was fired in August 1980. It sparked the largest strike in the People’s Republic of Poland. An interfactory strike committee was formed which put up a list of twenty-one demands for acceptance by communist government to end its strike. It culminated in the formation of a recognised non-communist independent trade union called Solidarity in September 1980. Anna was a co-founder and leader of Solidarity which effectively resisted communist regime in the last ten years of its existence and played a key role in its fall in 1989. Her collaborator Lech Wałęsa went on to become the president of Republic of Poland in 1990 but she chose not to walk the path of power. Anna sounded disillusioned a decade later, for now in power, Solidarity leaders began to show the same arrogance and callousness against which they had once fought. In 2001 documentary film Wer ist Anna Walentynowicz? by Sylke Rene Meyer, her last words were: “The 21 demands that we put up in 1980 are still relevant. Nothing was fulfilled.” British novelist and literary critic George Orwell captures this ironic fact of humanity most beautifully in his highly perceptive satire Animal Farm, telling the tragic tale of a failed revolution. “Somehow it seemed,” he writes, “as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer—except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs. . . . As for the others, their life, so far as they knew, was as it had always been. They were generally hungry, they slept on straw, they drank from the pool, they laboured in the fields; in winter they were troubled by the cold, and in summer by the flies. Sometimes the older ones among them racked their dim memories and tried to determine whether in the early days of the Rebellion, when Jones’s expulsion was still recent, things had been better or worse than now. They could not remember. There was nothing with which they could compare their present lives: they had nothing to go upon except Squealer’s lists of figures, which invariably demonstrated that everything was getting better and better. . . . Only old Benjamin,” a cynical donkey who had always



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been sceptical about a promised and expected change after the expulsion of Jones, the master of Manor Farm, “professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be, much better or much worse—hunger, hardship and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life.” What had changed towards the end was that some animals, who had assumed leadership after revolting against men and liberating animals from their clutches and chains, had no longer remained animals they had once been. “Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.” William Morris, another British novelist, had expressed similar sentiments more than half a century before Orwell while telling the story of another revolt in A Dream of John Ball, “I pondered . . . how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.” So it goes and everybody knows; the world changes but it never does. Why? While most of us usually detest failures and disasters and we are understandably hit by the waves of shock and consternation after each human tragedy, we find a persistent and proven lack of human intent to learn and change. The human world is such that things change but they do not. That things do not change or whenever they do, everything changes so that nothing changes—is a normal ‘human condition.’ To know about it we do not have to read books—it can be easily seen all around us. It is true of all countries and cultures and true of all occupational settings. Wise men and women who have methodically studied risks and failures have also discovered it time and time again in places where we expect it to happen not in the least. On Challenger accident, Presidential Commission had noted in 1986: The Commission was surprised to realize after many hours of testimony that NASA’s safety staff was never mentioned. No witness related the approval or disapproval of the reliability engineers, and none expressed the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the quality assurance staff. No one thought to invite a safety representative or a reliability and quality assurance engineer to the January 27, 1986, teleconference between Marshall and Thiokol. Similarly, there was no representative of safety on the Mission Management Team that made key decisions during the countdown on January 28, 1986. The Commission is concerned about the symptoms that it sees.

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Vaughan’s acclaimed revisionist account of Challenger accident was published ten years later in 1996. She worryingly concluded, “After the Challenger disaster, both official investigations decried the competitive pressures and economic scarcity that had politicized the space agency, asserting that goals and resources must be brought into alignment. Steps were taken to assure that this happened. But at this writing, that supportive political environment has changed. NASA is again experiencing the economic strain that prevailed at the time of the disaster. Few of the people in top NASA administrative positions exposed to the lessons of the Challenger tragedy are still there. The new leaders stress safety, but they are fighting for dollars and making budget cuts. History repeats, as economy and production are again priorities.” Seven years later, Columbia Space Shuttle disintegrated and burnt in the sky. Towards the end of its report, Columbia Accident Investigation Board warned about the next Space Shuttle accident, “The Board strongly believes that if these persistent, systemic flaws are not resolved, the scene is set for another accident.” That prophecy, however, did not come true, for Space Shuttles were grounded and programme was wound up soon after. As a young boy, I witnessed, so to speak, the worst industrial disaster—the most horrendous Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984. Some of our neighbours and family friends, who were in the affected locality of Bhopal that fateful day, were exposed and poisoned and they suffered for many years to come in front of our eyes. They told us that they ran for their lives in the dead of night, among thousands and thousands of burning, coughing, crying, choking, and gasping, wild and panicked men, women, children, and animals, in the narrow streets of Bhopal, a city close to my native town in central India, to get out of that hell. They were lucky, though, to have come out of deathly clouds and stampeding crowds alive, to return home to tell their horrifying stories of that catastrophe. But thousands of unfortunate people and animals living in poor neighbourhoods around the pesticide plant of Union Carbide Corporation, now a part of Dow Inc., were not so lucky. They choked and perished that night and hundreds of thousands became sick and crippled when they were exposed to a highly toxic methyl isocyanate gas which leaked from a tank labelled E610. This disaster was waiting to happen and its imminence was known to many insiders and outsiders—managers and regulators—who could have acted and prevented it, but no one in company or government did anything. We know today that what happened in Bhopal was the worst industrial disaster, but it was just one of the tanks which failed and only a portion of its content



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that escaped. Imagine the scale of death and suffering if all three tanks had failed and entire toxic chemical stored in these tanks had escaped? It was a possibility and its consequences were known too. It was also known that plant was failing, the question was not if but when a disaster would strike—so much so that even people running for their lives that night had quickly realised: It was gas leaking from Union Carbide! That it was located in the middle of a densely populated area was no secret either. Enormity of risks notwithstanding, no one cared to act. Bhopal disaster was, thus, made inevitable by rich and powerful—those who were in positions to prevent it. American management scholar Marc Gerstein asks, “From Chernobyl to Katrina, Challenger to Columbia, BP to Vioxx, and the Iraq War. Were these—and practically every major catastrophe that has befallen us in the past twenty-five years—unforeseen, unavoidable misfortunes that no one could possibly have imagined? No. All of them, it turns out, were accidents waiting to happen, and many influential people on the inside saw them as such. The events were not really ‘accidental’ at all. . . . These disasters were not merely imagined, but they were often accurately predicted as well, sometimes forewarned in strident tones. However, the alarms were ignored by those who had the power to disregard them. Why?” Perrow would not be surprised and concerned, for it points to a normal organisational behaviour. He writes, “Time and time again warnings are ignored, unnecessary risks taken, sloppy work done, deception and downright lying practiced. As an organizational theorist I am reasonably unshaken by this; it occurs in all organizations, and it is a part of the human condition.” Even in a setting as apocalyptic as nuclear weapons, story does not change, as the work of American political scientist Scott Sagan points out. Perrow makes a mention of this too, “Sagan . . . runs through numerous accidents and near misses in our nuclear defense system, and repeatedly finds that safety was not the prime goal, and was unlikely to be the prime goal because of other group interests.” It might be a normal human condition but the question remains: Why things do not change and why no one ever heeds and acts? I will first attempt to answer it in a narrow organisational context and then in a wider context of humanity and civilisation. In an organisation, in general, to succeed, to deliver, to achieve, to perform, to produce, to carry on is perceived as normal, irrespective of involved risks; to halt, to demand, to spend, to delay, to disclose a secret, to blow the whistle is considered deviant, irrespective of intended ends. This is the way it is, for people work to readily achieve short-term goals and avoid long-term fixes which demand significant time, efforts, and resources; they consciously

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and willingly gamble on order that somehow prevails in the world in spite of many imperfections and lacunas that defy the very logic of that order. A retardation or suspension of its ‘normal’ activities, services, or production on account of internal and avoidable reasons, then, jeopardises not the survival of organisation but the survival of its leadership, which exists to make sure that organisation continues to function normally. Top-ranking leaders who, with howsoever noble intentions, choose to swim against the tide established by tradition by attempting a real change or revealing an inconvenient truth when everything seems to be ‘normal’ otherwise, often end up risking their careers; they are shown the door if they refuse to mend their ways. Leaders who come after them are sent to resume ‘normal’ organisational functions, which they do for their personal survival, irrespective of risks. At the lower levels of organisation, counterpositions, counterpoints, and counterviews pointing to problems and potentials for failure are managed and contained by influencing, silencing, dominating, defeating, or excluding ‘deviants.’ Eventually, nonconformists and dissenters either fall in line or fall victim to their disruptive ideas and, at times, quit or made to quit. Dominant view prevails one way or another, thus. And, it becomes the view of organisation; also, the view of all members. While organisations habitually downplay or deny it in public, a ‘consensus’ or ‘negotiated’ view, obtained after a serious objection or vigorous opposition, is all too often extracted under duress or imposed by force. It is an outcome of coercion and organisational politics. While it seems to restore harmony in a group, such a view is often achieved with utter disregard to certain ideas and individuals, irrespective of their genuineness. An apparently harmonious settlement, in reality, compels dissenters and nonconformists to watch helplessly, the gravity of issues raised by them notwithstanding. As a result, they walk out of a deliberative forum with a wounded heart and crushed self, amidst the claims of consensus and agreement, even if they are compelled or themselves choose to deny it in public. Moreover, a consensus view often conforms to conservative mainstream view which invariably advocates a pursuit of priority goal, a reduction of risk, the repetition of precedent, and the reproduction of the past; it achieves a short-term survival of all by preserving the status quo in organisation and not letting people raise their eyebrows. Nothing changes in essence, therefore. Organisations and their members keep having a brush with failure every now and then but somehow such incidents do not combine with other events and do not tip over to cause a catastrophic failure. All such ‘minor’ brushes and glitches are routinely managed at different levels of organisation. Short of a catastrophe, failures are routinely hushed up in the name of institutional reputation. After a catastrophe, organisation is essentially preserved in the name of its contribution. Governance and management is an



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art of carrying on as ‘normal’ without altering conditions with potential for compromises and failures, for such alterations are not only time-consuming and resource-intensive but also disruptive in nature. Things do not change not because people are not aware of risky behaviours and dangerous conditions but because powerful mainstream makes sure—openly or secretly, expressly or tacitly—that the information and knowledge of risks and dangers remain inconsequential and ineffectual, in the end. Our willingness and propensity to preserve and perpetuate the very same system and ideology that breed defects and problems do not ever permit fundamental changes to occur or last. This is why disasters and catastrophes keep hitting us repeatedly in one form or another, and after each cataclysmic experience we discover that nothing much had changed fundamentally after a previous disaster. Ordinary people who work in organisations know it well; only those who are paid for proofs need to discover and debate it. Freudenburg labels safety measures as “non-productive” from the organisational point of view. He explains, “Virtually all institutions, public or private, are likely to face periodic pressures to control costs. The sources of pressure may include competition, a desire to increase profits, responses to cost overruns, political or other pressures to ‘cut down on waste and inefficiency,’ or simply a laudable desire to do more with less. Whatever the original source of the pressure or the nature of the organization, at least one of the responses is likely to be consistent: Organizations will generally seek to protect what they consider to be their core functions and to cut back on those they consider peripheral. . . . There is a tremendous range of variation across organizations in what the ‘core’ functions are considered to be — from building cars to busting criminals — but there is virtually no organization for which increasing the safety of its own operations is the primary or central goal.” What we consistently fail to realise is that “the lack of organizational commitment to risk management may be a predominant source of real risk.” Perrow explains it further, “Why would system elites not put safety first?” One of the reasons is that “the harm, the consequences, are not evenly distributed. For example, the latency period may be longer than any decision-maker’s career; few managers are punished for not putting safety first even after an accident, but will quickly be punished for not putting profits, market share, or agency prestige first. Managers come to believe their own rhetoric about safety first because information indicating otherwise is suppressed for reasons of organizational politics. Perhaps more important than all of these, it is hard to have a catastrophe, so the risk to any one set of managers or elites is small, while it is substantial for society as a whole.” He, then, asks in the background of organisational awareness of existing risks and past failures,

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“Why doesn’t more learning take place?” One reason is group behaviour and barriers which prevent “admitting and learning from mistakes. . . . Another is that elites do learn, but the wrong things. They learn that disasters are rare and they are not likely to be vulnerable so, in view of the attractions of creating and running risky systems the benefits truly do outweigh the risks for individual calculators. This applies to lowly operators, too; most of the time cutting corner works; only rarely does it ‘bite back.’” In his foreword to Gerstein’s book Flirting with Disaster, American writer and activist Daniel Ellsberg asserts “that organizations do not routinely and systematically learn from past errors and disasters—in fact, they rarely ever do.” He, then, elaborates, “One reason for this folly is that many aspects of disasters in decision-making are known only within the organization, and not even by many insiders at that. The organizations involved tend not to make relevant and detailed studies of past errors, let alone reveal them outside the organization. In fact, the risk that such a study or investigation might leak to the outside is a factor sufficient to keep inquiries from being made in the first place. . . . This deliberate decision within organizations not to try to learn internally what has gone wrong constitutes . . . an antilearning mechanism. Avoiding improved performance is not the point of the mechanism. But because studying present and past faulty decision-making risks may invite blame and organizational, political, perhaps even legal penalties, those outcomes ‘outweigh’ the benefits of clearly understanding what needs to be changed within the organization. . . . Societally, then, we don’t have an easy way to learn from organizational mistakes of the past. That’s one reason that disasters are so likely, and why comparable disasters occur again and again, across organizations and even within the same organizations. . . . In sum, there is strong and successful resistance within many organizations to studying or recording past actions leading to catastrophe—because doing so would reveal errors, lies, or even crimes.” These answers do shed some light on ‘human condition’ as it is, but they do not explain why it perpetually has to be that way? I believe it is imperative to get to the core of this problem of human behaviour, for it does play a substantial role in causing failures. Neither the impressive and elaborate explanations of how failures occur nor ingenious and thoughtful solutions suggested by modern scholarship to deal with them seem sufficient and effective to me, for they consistently miss out the most fundamental determinant of human behaviour, that is, morality—the sense of a man to judge good and bad, right and wrong. For academia, failure is a ‘scientific’ question and consequently, moral reasoning has no role in understanding and solving this



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problem. At least I am not aware of any leading scholar who has discussed failure as a problem of human morality. It seems that modern scholars have completely junked the idea of ‘romantic’ morality in favour of pragmatic rationality and scientific thought, which control and run our world. Men and women of repute effortfully choose to stay clear from any kind of preaching. It is old-fashioned, unscholarly, and imprudent, even regressive and irrational, to impute blame to individuals for a failure, by telling their actions wrong and bad with a wisdom of hindsight. No one, thus, talks about morality in the academic world and it is disreputable to do so. Exclusion of morality from their discourse, method, reasoning, and analysis is what makes them scientific and serious and earns them the coveted tag of ‘expert.’ In sharp contrast with academia, I believe that human morality is the central problem of organised human failures and without recognising its role in precipitating failures, we can neither comprehensively understand the incidents of failure nor reliably solve the problem of their ‘unexpected’ and repeated occurrence. To frame the problem of failure from moral viewpoint and define it in the broadest terms, I will discuss the question of success first. If failure is bad and undesirable, then, success must be good and desirable. It is surely believed so but is it actually so? Based on his research on medical units, American sociologist Ron Westrum identifies three broad patterns of organisational culture—pathological, bureaucratic, and generative. Thoughts, emotions, and actions of leaders and workers in a pathological organisation are preoccupied with advancing or impeding personal needs, interests, power, and glory. On the other hand, the members of a bureaucratic organisation remain focussed on rules, positions, and departmental turf. In contrast, everyone in a generative organisation believes in and works for accomplishing a mission. By comparison, then, a generative culture naturally becomes attractive, desirable, and choiceworthy as it helps realise official organisational goal most effectively. This is an example of how scientific community approaches and lends its support to solve the problems of human organisation. If we look beyond scientific rationality and view it in moral terms, we find that a generative style may not be good and desirable in and of itself and in all situations, for its ability to achieve a mission does not make an organisation and its operations good, right, or safe. For example, if the goal of a generative organisation is to make profit, its leaders and workers would go on pursuing the end of making profit blindly and recklessly without caring for what is right or wrong, good or bad. This is exactly what is valued and happening in the capitalistic order of the day. And, what if its mission is to destroy? We have seen such

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organisational effectiveness in Nazi killing machine, which efficiently ran the most unspeakable and stupefying extermination camps. Superiority of military organisation, whose much lauded goal is to win, is conceded by most. Such organisations exist to win at all costs. All kinds of cruelties and brutalities are, then, resorted to in order to achieve its goal and the worst kinds of human behaviours are normalised, even glorified, in the name of following a convention or dealing with the unconventional. 1980 movie Breaker Morant shows just this kind of absolute commitment to mission and a passion for brazenly justifying abominable actions by recourse to twisted definitions, inverted rationales, and perverted politics. This is why the idea of success itself is a problem in moral discourse. So, let us see, through the eyes of morality, what is success. Success is the most valued aspect of human life. In our world—at least in the world that is hegemonic today—success is measured in terms of wealth, power, and fame. Name any person, organisation, or country if you can which is considered successful but does not have any of these three ingredients of success? Success is driven by greed and it is an outcome of greed. Greed is an insatiable desire to gain more and more. The greater the greed, the more successful its master is likely to be. Conversely, a person without or with a limited greed is not likely to become successful in the first place or remain successful for long. Entire human civilisation owes its existence and refinement to greed. Greed is a characteristic which is distinctly human, for it is not found in other species whose individuals have limited desires, not limitless and unending desires as in our case. It is, perhaps, a prime reason responsible for a complete dominance and control of Homo sapiens over the world and over all other species of living beings. Greed is a reflection of selfishness but it cannot be generated by selfishness alone, for all living creatures are selfish but only one species is greedy. It, then, seems to be a product of universal selfishness of living beings cooperating and blending indistinguishably with uniquely superior intelligence of human beings. Survival-induced selfishness is very limited and controlled while greed-induced selfishness is unbounded and uncontrollable. Difference between them is indeed inconceivable and unbridgeable; it is caused by the ability of intelligence to model and foresee a future with accumulated resources and benefits they can accrue to an owner and his near and dear ones. Nonetheless, greed is not unnatural, for both our selfishness and intelligence themselves are the products of natural evolution. In sum, success cannot be achieved and sustained without greed, for greed is the engine and driver of success. Such is human greed that knows no bounds and spares no occasion. It is blinding and irrational beyond belief, for what else can let us destroy the



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most wonderful and the only known life and environment on earth and at the same time talk about terraforming unknown desolate lifeless planets in space? While the whole human civilisation recently came to a grinding halt due to a global pandemic marking a first ever ‘anthropause’ on the surface of earth when cowering humanity hid quietly indoors everywhere to avoid coronavirus infection, for some extraordinarily rich and powerful people—the most successful among us—it turned out to be a real godsend for making even more money as if their wealth was not already enough. In April 2020, Jeff Tollefson, a reporter of Nature, wrote an article “Five Ways That Trump Is Undermining Environmental Protections Under the Cover of Coronavirus” in which he exposed how the leadership of Environmental Protection Agency “is pressing forward with controversial efforts to roll back environmental regulations and fundamentally alter the way in which science is used to craft policy.” In July 2020, Jane Mayer, a correspondent of The New Yorker, wrote a story “How Trump Is Helping Tycoons Exploit the Pandemic” concerning labour laws that protect workers. She wrote that while Donald Trump wanted to dismantle federal regulatory regime and give a freer hand to businessmen from the beginning, he could not do it effectively in the first three years of his presidency due to the complexity of rulemaking. “But the pandemic has offered Trump an opportunity: now that he can invoke an economic emergency, he can relax, rescind, or suspend federal regulations by fiat.” It is highly unlikely that the story of environmental and labour laws in other countries was any different and I am afraid it might be much worse in many countries in terms of corruption in the procurement of supplies for saving their populations from coronavirus, which became a flourishing business during this period. Lie is another exclusive feature of human life and a champion of success. Let us define it first in order to bypass certain epistemological complications. Can a man lie—so much so that he comes to believe them as truths or, to paraphrase it, can he deceive himself? Notion of self-deception is commonly employed in psychology but philosophers are known to raise objections: If a man knows something but does not tell others what he knows, he does not deceive himself but others, for he knows the truth; if he does not know something, he cannot deceive himself for he might actually believe in what he is telling, even if he is deceiving others by not telling the truth. In order to avoid this philosophical conundrum, let us use the definition of lie in the sense of a lie which is told intentionally to hide a known truth and not merely as the opposite of the truth. Lies are spoken for various proximate purposes but their ultimate purpose is to deceive others. Lies can also manifest in the more sophisticated forms of doublespeak, double

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standard, and propaganda, which are employed respectively for the purposes of cleverly confusing and deceiving others, adamantly justifying one’s visible self-contradictory thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, and large-scale deceiving by a well planned dissemination of an organised body of lies. All human affairs from international relations to personal relations, from geopolitics to family politics pivot around and thrive on lies—so much so that the entire order of the day, from family to economy to government, would be seriously fractured and might as well collapse, only if all human beings were to wake up one fine morning and start to speak their mind and tell the truth to one and all. Where the production and propagation of lies is a way of life, nothing can be more subversive than the truth. As members of society, we are required to lead a double life and we are trained and prepared for it throughout, from childhood to adulthood, for what is stated publicly—or not stated, for that matter—and known personally, on most occasions, are two different, mostly antagonistic, and often irreconcilable things. If you doubt it, start telling the truth instead of lying or staying silent and in no time you would learn that it is heresy. Human organisation, then, can be rightly said to be founded on and sustained by lies. Effectiveness of lies is duly acknowledged in the proverbial wisdom of all complex human societies. We find it so endearing that, it is said, a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on. In the context of present discussion, lies play a decisive role. When success becomes difficult and elusive but desire to succeed remains too powerful to overcome, lies come to salvage agents and agencies by masking the reality and painting a false picture of actual state of affairs, in order to send a message that all is well and in control and the valued path of expected and promised success is being pursued rightly, reasonably, and smoothly. Success and lie thus cooperate and encourage each other and merrily live together as a model couple. They are two wheels on which the chariot of human civilisation proudly and inexorably rides. We are all too familiar with lies but some lies are so inconceivable that they can trounce the biggest liars among us. Unsurprisingly, such lies are invariably those that are told by or at the behest of the most powerful and respected men and women who herd us all wherever they want us to go. On our part, we credulously, sometimes zealously and fanatically too, believe in their crafty lies—so much so that the truth becomes unbelievable. I am making here a few recommendations just to let you take a quick peek at the fathomless world of lies. You can find some stories of lies in books such as Fallout by Lesley Blume, Permanent Record by Edward Snowden, The Nazi Next Door by Eric Lichtblau, The Paperclip Conspiracy and Blind Eye to Murder by Tom Bower, Secret Agenda by Linda Hunt, Operation



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Paperclip by Annie Jacobsen, A Conspiracy So Immense by David Oshinsky, Demagogue by Larry Tye, Naming Names by Victor Navasky, The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens with the 2002 documentary film of the same name, and Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen; in 1974 documentary film Hearts and Minds, in 2008 documentary film The Most Secret Place On Earth, and in 2010 documentary film The Tillman Story; in 1982 movie Missing, in 1997 movie Amistad, in 2005 movie Good Night, And Good Luck, in 2014 movie Selma, and in 2015 movie Trumbo. Lies thus rule us and our world. Hannah Arendt asserts, “Secrecy—what diplomatically is called ‘discretion,’ as well as the arcana imperii, the mysteries of government—and deception, the deliberate falsehood and the outright lie used as legitimate means to achieve political ends, have been with us since the beginning of recorded history. Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.” She also tells why is it easy and convenient to lie: “Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear. He has prepared his story for public consumption with a careful eye to making it credible, whereas reality has the disconcerting habit of confronting us with the unexpected, for which we were not prepared.” Problem of lying does not eclipse the secular affairs of humanity alone; all religious orders and outfits of the world are equally afflicted with it. French writer Frédéric Martel in his revealing book In the Closet of the Vatican quotes American Vaticanologist Robert Carl Mickens who asserts, “The Catholic Church is certainly the organisation that talks most about the truth. The word is always on its lips. It is forever brandishing ‘truth’ around. And at the same time it is an organisation more given to lying than any other in the world.” Another unnamed prelate of Vatican is said to have told Martel about his confessional experience. He tells, “No corrupt cardinal has ever told us in confession that he is corrupt! No homophilic cardinal has confessed his inclinations! They talk to us about stupid things, about unimportant details. And yet we know they are so corrupt that they no longer have any idea what corruption is. They even lie in confession.” It is not surprising, though, for wherever the game of power is played, people are obsessively and compulsively given to lying. While lies rule the world, the truth has little place in human society. If not, and if this statement appears outlandish and far-fetched, then, think why is it that all the whistle-blowers are invariably branded as villains and violently persecuted as the dangerous men and women of society? Why does

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it happen everywhere, in each country and each society? Who do they hurt to incur such wrath? What do they do other than telling the truth by exposing the dirty secrets and white lies of corporations and governments? And why is it that, as Gerstein notes, “even in cases where there are clear ethical violations or outright fraud, the whistle-blower is often subjected to greater punishment than the wrongdoer” Truth-tellers and whistle-blowers are dangerous because they disrupt the order and tranquillity, equilibrium and status quo of the human world which is founded on lies and sustained by lies. Memory of Bush administration using the lie of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to wage war against Saddam’s Iraq is still fresh in our minds, but Iraq was not the first and would not be the last victim of war waged conveniently upon lies by vested interests. Lies are, have always been, and would always be essential, for real reasons for killing and destruction would not rally much needed public approval and support for these otherwise sinister plans and evil deeds. Before Iraq, Vietnam War was similarly started by Johnson administration—by lying about attacks on American warships by North Vietnam. This war was thereafter sustained for over a decade by systematically fabricating and disseminating a million lies. Interestingly, it was also preceded by countless official lies told for decades. The public was fooled and Congress was deceived too. Strangely, lying in broad daylight for decades on end was all right but telling the truth for once was not right, so whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg was declared ‘the most dangerous man in America’ for exposing these lies and he suffered ruthless persecution for listening to the voice of conscience. Now forgotten story of this exposé is well documented in 2009 documentary film The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg’s book Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers and Steve Sheinkin’s Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War tell this story in detail. 2017 movie The Post is also set in the backdrop of this revelation. Yet another instance of habitual systemic lying has recently surfaced in the form of “The Afghanistan Papers” published, incidentally, by The Washington Post once again. In his investigative report, journalist Craig Whitlock writes, “A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. . . . The documents also contradict a long chorus of public statements from U.S. presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that they were making progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.” These documents



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reveal that there were “explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public. . . . It was common at military headquarters in Kabul — and at the White House — to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case. . . . Since 2001, an estimated 157,000 people have been killed in the war in Afghanistan.” More details can be found in Craig Whitlock’s book The Afghanistan Papers. Arendt once wrote, “Throughout history, the truth-seekers and truthtellers have been aware of the risks of their business; as long as they did not interfere with the course of the world, they were covered with ridicule, but he who forced his fellow-citizens to take him seriously by trying to set them free from falsehood and illusion was in danger of his life.” Recent spectacular tales of the most ‘notorious’ whistle-blowers of our time, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, the latter is perhaps the most dangerous man alive for global Establishment and order, are well known to all. Snowden is on the run but fortunately safe somewhere in Russia for now, thanks to geopolitical rivalry, and Assange was caged and cut off in the tiny embassy of poor Ecuador in London to escape his arrest since 2012, courtesy of the then left-leaning Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, for no other country in the world would have sheltered him then, and no one would do that now. Assange, ‘a man without a country,’ was finally arrested in April 2019, seven years after his diplomatic asylum was rescinded by another Ecuadorian president Lenín Moreno owing to American pressure and his conservative beliefs. In the same year, Snowden published his autobiography in which he confessed, “I did a dangerous thing for a man in my position: I decided to tell the truth.” Tragic story of former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu— Amnesty International’s prisoner of conscience who revealed the details of Israel’s nuclear weapons programme to the world—is old but continuing and likely to continue until he is dead or becomes a vegetable. Roger Boisjoly, an engineer involved in the production of Space Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Motors, not only quit his company but his trade too after facing the anger and estrangement of his company and colleagues for revealing how NASA and its contractor Morton Thiokol had flirted with a well known O-ring problem which failed Challenger. Still another example of agony of gritty seekers of truth and justice is the story of young German girl Anja Rosmus, fictionalised in 1990 movie The Nasty Girl, who eventually had to leave her town and country in the face of unremitting humiliation, harassment, threats, and attacks visited upon her and her family. Her townspeople, who earlier used to praise her intelligence, inquisitiveness, and initiative, turned against her

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when she innocently began to uncover a carefully and consensually hidden criminal past of her Bavarian hometown Passau and its residents during Nazi rule and, in the process, unwittingly violated the social norm of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ prevalent in post-war Germany concerning its Nazi past. Most recently, Li Wenliang, a Wuhan doctor who presciently warned about a novel SARS-like infection spreading rapidly in community and later himself succumbed to covid-19, was harassed, threatened, and silenced by Chinese police. 2014 documentary film Silenced tells a few more such stories. Stories of thousands of whistle-blowers around the world acting in much smaller theatres might not be as spectacular and might not have attracted as much global attention and publicity but treatment meted out to them all is essentially similar. It has a pattern—character and credibility become first casualty, livelihood and freedom the next, and in many cases, the unfortunate men and women of dissent and conscience end up losing their limbs and lives for speaking the truth. Their stories only establish that the truth is truly disruptive and we become fiercely intolerant to it when it catches us with our pants down or strips us naked in public. When it comes to whistle-blowing, difference between democratic and autocratic governments, liberal and conservative societies, and open and obscurantist cultures vanishes in no time. They all go after whistle-blowers with equal vengeance and vehemence, all have the same burning desire and they all work with the same frenetic zeal to discredit, delegitimise, defame, and destroy those who dare to destabilise prevailing order and locked-in hegemony by the truth. And, who cares what the truth is. Why otherwise all would display the same disgust and disregard to the truth? It is not a harsh assessment, but the harsh reality. The human world is a function, expression, and derivative of money and power. Centre stage in our world is permanently occupied by power and wealth. Powerful and rich run the main show here and all others exist on the margins and perform merely sideshows—if not recruited by rich and powerful to become their cheerleaders. Those who feel for these victims who dare to tell the truth, their accolades and awards given to truth-tellers for their much applauded works, if any, change pretty much nothing in the way the world works. Message of humanity, then, is loud and clear: Don’t tell the truth. Hannah Arendt was so right. Let us clarify a few more questions. Is there a doubt that human beings are responsible for each failure? Are human beings not responsible for certain decisions and actions taken just or much before a failure which created conditions for its occurrence? If not us, then, who else is responsible? If social forces are responsible, then, who has created and perpetuated them?



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The fact is that a large number of people play role in organising a failure— insiders and outsiders, people at the top, middle, and bottom, those who are there now and those who have been there before. And, each catastrophic failure can be traced back and reduced to a collective moral failure of many men and women in space and time. It is essentially a problem of human fallibility—our inability to choose good over bad, to stand up for right over wrong, to do what is desirable and shun what is not, and above all, to contain our greed. Motivation for cutting corners at lower levels too ultimately comes from our strong aversion to personal discomfort and suffering and powerful attraction for bodily comfort and pleasure. Each disaster, in this way, is a consequence of our greed and it is constructed collectively by us all. Each failure story, then, is a story of human morality, a tale of people, their character, and their beliefs, of lies and greed. Moral perspective makes me differ and disagree with the well known scholars of failure. I agree with Perrow that organisational misconduct is a pervasive human condition but I cannot ignore it as a matter of little concern as he seems to do. I must, then, explain why is it that organisations do not fail, their perpetual misconduct notwithstanding? It is a valid question, for if misconduct were to cause failure, there would be, perhaps, nothing but failures all around. But it does not happen and we know it well. Should we, then, overlook human misconduct as a condition irrelevant to failure? I do not believe we should. All of us now agree that multiple events and conditions come together and interact with each other in numerous ways to precipitate a serious breakdown. It can be said, then, that the misconduct of policymakers, administrators, managers, and workers cannot be the sole factor of failure but it cannot be denied that human misconduct is one of the causal factors and contributory conditions of failure. To consider all-pervasive consciously wicked choices made by human beings in organisational settings as routine and regular is all right but to treat them as trivial, innocuous, and immaterial is not right, for if they were to have no harmful consequences in some ways, they would not be considered wrong, bad, and undesirable in the first place. It can be argued that our shared beliefs beget trust and together they bring order and organisation to our world by enlisting general cooperation; when we fail, it is because of a growing disorder and disorganisation crossing the tipping point. Expressed or tacit expectations and promises of all agents which forge order and organisation are based on shared beliefs and trust. Actions and omissions, which break expectations and promises and constitute misconduct, dent and decimate trust. If misconduct would not shatter trust, lies would play no role in human society, for lies exist to retain trust, even when actually there has been a breach of trust. For

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they weaken the fundamentals of human organisation, mainly trust, the acts of misconduct can be called the ingredients of disorder and the elements of disorganisation and it can be said that they put a system on the paths of fragmentation and push it closer to the tipping point. While it is possible that a system does not cross the tipping point and consequently does not break down, the presence of these dysfunctional and disruptive elements notwithstanding, we cannot deny their catalytic role in causing a collapse if that ever happens. To that extent, it can be argued that their absence would, in theory, make the failure of a system more improbable and this proposition would not be in opposition to the current understanding of complex systems. On the other hand, the science of complex systems gives a plausible explanation as to why organisations do not fail despite their misconduct—not because human misconduct does not have any capacity for or role in failure but because the world is governed by, in the words of Dawkins, the “law of survival of the stable” and its operational tolerances are indeed quite wide. Morality thus assumes a role in preventing failures in concrete terms, for it inhibits and restrains human misconduct and by doing so, it reinforces order and organisation in the human world. I consider the construct of normalisation of deviance crystallised by Vaughan as a very significant contribution to understanding failures but I do not view the normalisation of deviance merely as a technical and administrative question as she seems to hold, for it is as much a moral question in my eyes—a question of moral character of men, their responsibility, courage, and integrity. Safety and failure of organisational operations cannot be completely explained as a technical and managerial problem. We must see it as a moral problem too, for if you think about it, the question of safety, risk management, and that of failure and resultant loss and shock is also a question of making a choice between endangering or protecting lives or, at the very least, doing your job right with honesty and responsibility, which means that you ought to disclose and admit all challenges, complications, and limitations unhesitatingly and transparently, soon after you get to know them, truly unknown risks and hazards excluded. Assertion of Dekker that “from the inside, drift is invisible” is questionable. There are people—although in ineffectual minority—in every organisation and also outside organisations who are aware and concerned about compromises that are made and normalised in the way things are done. They also point them out in various ways and capacities. Drift becomes rather ‘invisible’ because most people choose not to see and confront it due to certain considerations, interests, priorities, short-term goals, and a belief that things would not go



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wrong as nothing has gone wrong in recent memory. Drift correction, then, is not a problem of knowledge but that of intent and choice of people. It is a problem of will. It is a moral problem. I also do not find ‘at the time’ argument bought and sold readily after each failure entirely plausible. Intention of people who make decisions does not mean anything if outcome is harmful and a possibility of harm was known to them prior to its occurrence but available information indicating risk and uncertainty was explained away, argued against, and brushed aside in the process of making decisions in favour of competing information that was simultaneously available and suggesting control. Decision-makers, in that case, remain responsible for their decisions, irrespective of their intention. Argument that disconfirming information was not well developed ‘at the time’ is weak. A piece of information which is seen by some as grave and worthy of an earnest and urgent action is brusquely discounted by others as a red herring. Much, then, depends on the view of the world of a man and not on the content of information as such. Moreover, any information develops only when it is valued and its line is effortfully pursued. Problem of insufficient information, among other things, is also an outcome of the beliefs and judgements of decision-makers of the past and the present. Also, when people make decisions in real time, they hardly admit their limitations, do not communicate limitations transparently in simple language, send no signal of doubt, and sound quite confident and upbeat instead. Forcefulness and persistence seen in their behaviours—often accompanied by arrogance—fails to indicate an underlying uncertainty of the future. They act as if they are in control, even when they are not. Humility dawns upon them and the admissions of limitations are made only after such people are humbled by the uncontrollable world, which they once arrogantly thought and claimed was in their control. How can decision-makers escape their responsibility by clever subterfuges after a disastrous outcome especially when there were people pointing to it but they were ignored for crying wolf at the time? An ambiguous and complex situation always contains contradictory information which can be interpreted in opposite ways for making decisions. Inclination for selecting and discarding the pieces of available information originates in beliefs which determine priorities and influence choices made by each person dealing with the unknown. Beliefs also shape the assessment of risk and the extent and nature of its disclosure to the world. They are behind the motivation of a man to do or not to do something, to accept or reject a choice, to swim with the tide or sail against the wind. Whether you go along or refuse to toe the line depends on who you are, and you are what your beliefs are. We do inherit beliefs and reproduce context by learning

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consciously or unconsciously but we can also consciously change a context by our role in it, by changing ourselves, by effortfully modifying our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. Ideas have no consequence outside human mind; they are nothing without human will and agency. Only intention is not enough, thus, and it must be backed by action. Beliefs of decision-makers of the present and the past are directly responsible for catastrophic consequences, even if they have followed rules and procedures in place and cannot be held personally responsible within the legal framework of system, for laws, rules, and procedures themselves are the products of these beliefs. System, culture, and ideology cannot justify and condone a risky way of doing things and at the same time hiding known risks from the world, in moral terms at least. Such argument offers little consolation after a failure. We know that organisational misconduct is a general phenomenon, a rule rather than exception. Lies are told, facts are twisted, data are manipulated, consent is manufactured, secrets are kept, risks are downplayed, dissent is muffled, whistle-blowers are discredited, and the science, technology, and market of information and communication are leveraged effectively to make sure that the truth remains buried and vested interests continue to flourish. Influential outsiders and the public alike are fooled, deceived, and kept in the dark by organisations. It seems that organisations also behave like organisms and try to survive by all means possible. As the selfish behaviour of an individual organism is dictated by its genes which, in the words of Dawkins, are “active agents, working purposefully for their own survival,” it can be said that the selfish behaviour of an organisation is dictated by its members—directors, administrators, managers, employees, workers—who work purposefully for their personal survival in a given environment. Selfish behaviour of people is not unnatural either, for “if you look at the way natural selection works,” writes Dawkins, “it seems to follow that anything that has evolved by natural selection should be selfish.” It is hard to dispute that human greed is a natural outcome of a powerful intelligence blending and reacting with intrinsic selfishness found in all life forms. In fact, selfishness has always been there as a propeller of life on earth but it could never become so destructive until it got a chance to combine and cooperate with the powerful intelligence of human beings. Problem, therefore, is not our selfishness but intelligence. Interesting thing, however, is that the same intelligence can be leveraged to clip the wings of our selfishness and dilute the potency of our greed, for it has power to manipulate our beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. If we abandon the idea of morality entirely and accept the prevailing sense of rationality—which is just a much glorified euphemism for mindless selfishness



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practiced by us individually, collectively, and intelligently to further our interests—as the sole basis of our decisions and actions, we are left with nothing but the selfish gene theory of Dawkins to explain our behaviours. Most of us typically decry and denounce his dispassionate theory when applied to our own species, for it holds up a mirror and lets us see the naked truth of humanity that self-claims the moral high ground over animals. But true to our ways, we have absolutely no compunction about readily accepting and advocating the necessity of pragmatic rationality over ‘romantic’ morality in all human affairs from statecraft to everyday life. While Dawkins appears to be heartless and cold-blooded in his narrative, he seems more aware of a need for morality in human affairs than most of his detractors might be. Emphasising on the role and potential of our mental prowess, he asserts that “even if we look on the dark side and assume that individual man is fundamentally selfish, our conscious foresight—our capacity to simulate the future in imagination—could save us from the worst selfish excesses of the blind replicators. . . . We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism—something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators. . . . Our genes may instruct us to be selfish, but we are not necessarily compelled to obey them all our lives. It may just be more difficult to learn altruism than it would be if we were genetically programmed to be altruistic.” Notion of morality is certainly counterintuitive and counternatural and for that reason, it is not easy to gain and sustain such a counterfactual idea in a world organised for the contingency of survival. Nonetheless, it is not impossible. Nature might not have morality but men have and we can certainly live and die for our beliefs. It is not necessary, I believe, for an organisation to continue forever or for its members to be there always. If an organisation is likely to lose its clout, become irrelevant, or even go extinct in new times and altered circumstances if it does not compromise and change, so be it, but let it live and, if necessary, die gracefully for certain core values and ideals it has always stood and known for. Current trend in the study of failure is to hold everything responsible for a failure but persons who are portrayed as insignificant and powerless in the face of larger impersonal forces of system, culture, and ideology. While there is nothing wrong in telling the stories of failure that way, these stories seem to ignore or underplay the role of individual—the power of one man—

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evident from the exceptional acts of those who stand up against the world and are able to occasionally bring about a positive change in situations and outcomes. People in failure stories are taken for granted, subservient to the larger scheme of things, as if human will and agency has no purpose and effect in the world. Problem of this ‘scientific’ approach is its inability to show a way out of existing ‘human condition,’ for until we bring our focus back on person, all such impersonal forces which are said to precipitate all the problems and failures would never change and continue to exist, so long as we do. A fundamental problem of beliefs cannot be understood and solved reliably by scientific theories, analytical techniques, and problem-solving tools such as fault tree and decision tree. Tools, techniques, and theories are not deficient but their outcomes are. Their wisdom cannot last long where people are problem—for being not only victims but also perpetrators. Until we address and fix the problem of morality in human beings, we will continue to face the question: Why things do not change and why no one listens and acts? Moral approach to failure democratises both problem and its solution. It excuses no one and makes everyone responsible, prospectively as well as retrospectively, for personal actions. It makes no difference between hindsight and foresight, for a man is always responsible for his conduct. It does not matter if he is in Zimbardo’s crucible or in Dekker’s tunnel, all that he has to do is to rely on and use his moral reasoning for making a simple choice between right and wrong, good and bad at each step. It empowers human beings personally and reminds them of their will and agency instead of subjugating them to and leaving them at the mercy of impersonal forces which, we are told, are larger than life and exist independently. Morality thus places human will and agency at the centre of debate, simplifies both problem and solution at all levels and in all settings, and turns the prevailing view of the world on its head. In contrast, by exonerating individuals, ‘scientific’ explanation reduces a human being to a status of a poor insignificant cog that finds itself clutched unwillingly and caught helplessly in a giant wheel. Strangely, we do not realise that just one thing—the act of choosing right over wrong—can solve the problems of all—of workers and managers, of elites and subalterns, of the public and politicians, of organisations and systems, of family and society, of ideology and worldview, of the Right and the Left. It can fix the problems of freedom and equality, of gender and race, of religion and caste, of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ of identity and assimilation, of hate and war, of torture and killings, of global warming and mass extinction, of humanity and Gaia. It is, in fact, difficult to find a human problem that cannot be readily and reliably solved by morality. Such is the power



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of morality which, most unfortunately, has been discarded and abandoned entirely by the opinion makers of society under the spell of rationality and left it completely to religions. The human world is a creation of humankind, essentially of its collective mind and shared myths; it cannot be changed without changing human beings—by altering their fundamental beliefs through the manipulation of mind and creating a new set of shared fictions. We should be aware that we would achieve pretty much nothing by either blaming some persons or imputing blame to something impersonal. Central problem of humanity is the core body of beliefs held by the majority of its individuals. Our dominant beliefs, as they are, make us little different from the individuals of all other species in the end—surviving in a ruthless competitive world by tirelessly pursuing immediate selfish goals. Without centring debate on the now outdated subject of morality and the character of man, which can put a restraint on the deadly blend of selfishness and intelligence and its product called greed, collectively we will continue to destroy until our own destruction and nothing will change in so-called ‘human condition’ until then. While I admit that it is more difficult than any other project undertaken by humanity thus far, it is by no means impossible either. Moral choices made by individuals, I believe, can have significant effect not only on the nature, frequency, and consequences of failures but also on our knowledge and understanding of failures. Our scientific, technological, engineering, managerial, and policy decisions would be quite different if moral reasoning is employed to make them. The whole world becomes different when seen through the lens of morality and interpreted by moral reasoning. I wonder why no one realises the immense potential of morality, for it can alter the entire character of human civilisation in certain fundamental ways. Many things are taken as a given both by laypersons and experts alike as if nothing can be done about them, without being aware that nothing needs to be taken for granted in the realm of ideas and their potentials. We cannot discount ideas, however farfetched they may seem at first sight, for the whole human world is built on ideas and there is nothing beyond ideas in our world. The truth is that we do not ever discount ideas, even when we believe we are doing so, for what we actually do is just to side with certain entrenched ideas that are known and comforting and reject new and unknown ideas which make us anxious and nervous. We will discuss ‘rational’ and ‘scientific’ solutions in the next section but first, let us discuss the solution. Greed and lies are the ultimate causes of

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failures—causes which are controllable, for they are introduced by us and can be removed by us. Greed does drive the march of our civilisation and progress but it is nonetheless bad, wrong, and undesirable in moral terms because the inevitable consequence of greed is indulgence in the sadistic pleasure of control over the world and the end result of excessive control is the suffering and destruction of life—suffering and destruction which is effortfully organised, recklessly pursued, and endlessly replicated and reproduced. Also, it might be natural but greed is not invincible and lies can be overcome too in the realm of morality. Moral antidote to greed is moderation and for lies, the truth. Moderation also controls restlessness and promotes calmness and placidity in a person’s life. ‘Let go,’ then, assumes primacy over ‘never settle.’ Morality is the only way to solve the large numbers of human problems without creating more problems. It is a better and more effective way to deal with the problem of failures, their recurrence, and resultant shock delivered every time. Perhaps, because no matter how moral are its members and ethical an organisation, the world is such that our organised efforts would still fail to achieve intended goal at times. Our illusion of control and also the reality of control emanates from an intrinsic property of the world—stability and order. But the truth is that complexity cannot be tamed completely and perpetually. While we should do everything to avoid failure and should not be hesitant to take risks for achieving our goal, we should also be willing to fail gracefully, by frankly disclosing and timely admitting our limitations and inabilities vis-à-vis goal. Even laypersons would understand the enormity of challenges faced by professionals in achieving their goals. They would genuinely appreciate risks and gracefully absorb losses too, only if they are honestly and transparently informed about problems beforehand. Beneath the weirdness of complexity which is beyond control, morality is undoubtedly the most definitive solution to all human problems including catastrophic failures and disasters and secular traditions must reclaim morality. It cannot be left to religions, I assert. All through their existence, they have utterly failed humanity on this count, for religions are incapable of morality. Organised religion, its control and administration, is about power and wealth and those who pursue the ends of wealth and power cannot live by morality. Small wonder, then, that all organised religions are morally degenerate from inside and scandalous to the core, no matter how loudly they preach morality in public and how credulously their blind followers believe that nothing is wrong in their religions. For example, Roman Catholic Church is the most organised and influential of all religions and commensurate to its reach,



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riches, and power, the dark secrets and immoral pursuits of Church are the murkiest of all, a fleeting glimpse of which can be caught in such works as In the Closet of the Vatican by Frédéric Martel, The Vatican’s Holocaust by Avro Manhattan, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust by Michael Phayer, and Unholy Trinity by Mark Aarons and John Loftus, among many others. VIII Now that we have broadly understood the problem of failure and its many different dimensions, let us see if we can do anything to deal with it, of course, other than living plainly with honesty and moderation. For I have cobbled together many solutions, this prose might seem more disjointed than coherent with several overlapping details. Readers are, thus, advised to use their own discretion to cull and organise relevant information from given text. Lapses and slips are the most common problems which can fail us personally. In order to deal with lapses and slips, follow a three-point strategy. Execute actions without or with minimal delay, which also means fight your inertia and laziness. Find and use a readily accessible, easy to record, and quickly retrievable but reliable reminder system or memory aid. And, last but least effective, remain attentive. In a world of multiple goals competing for a limited attentional resource available to a man, anything which is routine and mundane or finds a lower place in the order of priority would always be prone to lapse and slip. By studying the pattern of lapses and slips, we can get a reasonable account of things valued and not valued by a man. Thus, the answer to slips and lapses also seems to lie in our beliefs and values—we can reorder our priorities by reworking our thoughts if we do not want to face a lapse or slip in certain matters, for once we treat something as important, we are less likely to forget it. Problem of slip can also be solved creatively by another slip avoidance technique called pathway engineering, that is, by altering the physical path of execution in such a way that intended goal is signalled along the way. A slip-resistant engineered pathway works automatically without any additional memory aid. I surely believe in multi-skilling but I am not sure if much hyped multitasking is a good idea when seen from human error perspective. While a man should be able to do many things proficiently, he should avoid doing many things simultaneously due to the constraints of human cognition. Our attentional resource is limited and any attempt to do many things at the same time might increase the chances of human error. Multitasking might yield improved

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average performance but it does not seem to me the way for achieving immaculate human performance. In a complex ongoing situation, neither sustained attentional fixation on one thing nor continuous attentional shifting between many things is useful. Both fixation and ‘vagabonding’ should be avoided and a middle path, as dictated by situation, should be followed instead. A disturbed and stressed mind and body of a man can increase his chances of committing the errors of seeing, hearing, understanding, judging, deciding, and doing at his workplace. There could be many reasons for this. Dekker recognises the role of fatigue in causing impaired and erroneous performance. It is not an easy problem to address because the effects of fatigue “are difficult to measure and quantify” and “fatigue itself can actually be difficult to pin down.” Self-reports are not reliable either because “fatigue actually impairs people’s judgement about how fatigued they are and how it affects their performance.” Some of the factors that build fatigue are “workload intensity (or, conversely, inactivity) and sustained effort (performance deteriorates as a function of ‘time on task’), physical and psychological exertion, sleep deprivation or other sleep disturbances, time of day effects,” and “circadian desynchronization.” Dekker lists some of the effects on performance too that have been linked to fatigue. It impairs vigilance. “Tasks requiring sustained attention or quick reaction times are particularly vulnerable.” It causes “cognitive slowing” which results in “slower responses on all kinds of cognitive tasks, such as reasoning, tracking, arithmetic, generating options and making decisions.” It impairs working memory due to “attention deficits (and possibly lapsing).” It causes “lapsing. Also called ‘micro-sleeps’ (from ten seconds in duration), where people do not respond to external stimuli.” In view of Dekker, “rest is the only really effective way of dealing with it” and, hence, solution to fatigue lies in “scheduling and rostering, and in other conditions surrounding people’s work.” Reason extends the scope of problem beyond workplace and rightly so, for reasons related to personal life can also impair performance and cause errors in professional life. After all, only his roles are different; it is the same man at work and home. He writes, “Even the best-run organisations cannot eliminate the harmful psychological effects of negative life events (e.g., marriage breakdowns, sickness in the family, bereavements, etc.) occurring outside the workplace. But they can anticipate the possibility if not the particular form of occurrence of negative life events and provide adequate defences against their unsafe consequences.” Personal problems of organisational members are not entirely personal, for personal adversities do have adverse effects on professional performance. Therefore, the personal problems of its members



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are better seen as an extension and aspect of organisational problems. ‘That is your problem’ will not do; someone ought to do something about it, for a member’s problem is everyone’s problem in a sensitive organisation. It seems to me that a respectful, caring, and egalitarian culture that values every person equally is the only reliable solution for alleviating adverse effects of personal problems such as stress, fatigue, negative events, a slow onset of sickness, and so forth on occupational delivery. Do not ask how to do it, for that is not a problem in such culture; once imbued with its moral values, people easily find a thousand ways to solve a problem. Caring is good but it does not mean sparing people unconditionally. While a considerate and helpful approach of peers and superiors is essential to deal with personal problems at workplace and beyond and only such approach can ensure personal well-being of all members, a casual attitude and errant behaviour of any member related to safety, method, and work must be confronted and checked by one and all. If not, then, procedures would carry little weight and they would be increasingly ignored in practice by an ever greater number of people. A stark example of such violation in one of the most fastidious settings is documented by Columbia Accident Investigation Board. “Videos of the crew during re-entry that have been made public demonstrate that prescribed procedures for use of equipment such as full-pressure suits, gloves, and helmets were not strictly followed. This is confirmed by the Working Group’s conclusions that three crew members were not wearing gloves, and one was not wearing a helmet.” Here, of course, none of this could have saved the members of crew or prevented this disaster but, at times, such violations and especially attitudes behind them can be correlated to failures. Importance of safety briefing is known to all but few people in any organisation actually pay attention to it each time. Familiarity and repetition are known to breed complacency in all aspects of work and life and safety is no exception to such human response. Not many can avoid getting into a rut when safety briefings become a routine formality and done just for the sake of it. Hence, general and special safety briefings and debriefings should not only be done routinely but they must be done with great care and given full attention by all concerned on both sides. Safety sessions can be designed creatively to make experience interesting and event interactive, by forcing people to get involved and leave thinking. Moral values too are useful here, as they are everywhere, for they silently operate in the inaccessible depths of human mind and keep required focus in place when a man is called to pay attention.

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We have discussed the problem of information in some detail and I have also suggested further readings for greater clarity in hope that once you understand a problem better, you can solve it better. Let us discuss here some of the important lessons that we can learn with regard to this problem. If we do not want to fail, it is imperative that people talk, they are not afraid of saying what they think and believe, and they are actively encouraged to speak their mind, irrespective of status and authority, role and responsibility, experience and expertise. Its corollary is equally important; all must listen intently and patiently, irrespective of their positions and places in organisation when someone is saying something. If there is a general silence or people are generally seen nodding and seconding or if only some people are seen speaking repeatedly, something is not quite all right there. No news, then, may not be good news; it may actually be bad news. Weick and Sutcliffe give a wise advice: “No news is bad news. All news is good news, because it means that the system is responding. The good system talks incessantly. When it goes silent, that’s unexpected, that’s trouble, and that’s bad news.” Purpose of a frank and egalitarian culture is to ensure a free flow of information unhindered by social barriers. However, only the availability of information is not enough; it is necessary but not sufficient to prevent failure. Organisation and its members must deal with each piece of information—old or new, confirming or disconfirming, comforting or confronting and threatening—with full attention and seriousness. A general adversarial approach to information handling and critical and independent view taken by different people on each piece of information are quite helpful. Information is always produced and interpreted subjectively in ambiguous situations, so there is nothing sacred or scientific about any interpretation that deserves awed reverence; everything must be subjected to rigorous scrutiny and enquiry. Incident reports can generate a lot of useful information if this exercise is done with sincerity. Incident reporting, therefore, is a sine qua non for keeping an organisation vibrant over time and preventing its degradation and degeneration with time. It is highly desirable. Everything that is or seems awry, anomalous, difficult, frictional, precarious, or wrong in or related to occupational work, role, and responsibility should be reported. All frictions in system, gaps in methods, problems in procedures, and glitches in machines, equipment, and infrastructure should be reported too. Limitations of environment and the inadequacies of support should also be reported. In other words, all things including critical incidents, unusual incidents, trust incidents, and even solved incidents, which are not normal and might impede tasks and operations in future, should be reported. All attitudinal and behavioural matters which



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contravene or question shared moral values and norms and might create interpersonal problems should also be reported. Purpose of reporting is to learn lessons, become wiser, and avert problems—individually and collectively. If things can surprise once, they can surprise again if causal and enabling conditions are not altered or people are not prepared to deal with surprises and anomalies. There should be no attempt to normalise anything which is not normal and ignore what could be disruptive and inimical by any member experiencing and knowing it. Such incidents and experiences can be reported by a man who experiences it directly in the form of a self-report, by a fellow member who witnesses it or gets to know about it indirectly in the form of a peer report, or by a task group as a whole in the form of a group report. Communication can be done orally or in writing, immediately or afterwards, depending on the nature of problem and situation. All anomalous experiences must be shared with teammates verbally—immediately or at first opportunity—irrespective of personal judgement on the nature of problem and its priority grading determined personally. This is likely to initiate brainstorming and bring forth new perspectives leading either to a revision of priority or a resolution of problem. In addition, all anomalies should also be reported verbally and in writing, when time permits, to the next higher level in the chain of command and shared with other concerned people and departments, depending on organisational structure and procedure. All such reports should be presented along with their outcomes and actions taken in a general house and left open for discussion. No incident should be closed or shelved at any level without taking it to this open forum. If something is not discussed or disclosed here, anyone who has known about it must rise and raise that matter in this house. It is done so that all available minds deliberate and debate a problem or deviance and decide democratically if a deviance is discarded collectively and permanently or normalised and declared as a standard procedure to be followed by all in future. It will also bring unknown gaps in existing system to the fore and seal unseen cracks that can be harmful in future. Such reporting and disclosure is supported and sanctioned by the moral values and valued notions of individuals as well as organisation. Its multifarious benefits will be very significant and reaped by all. Only information is not enough, though, for it must fulfil its purpose too, that is, communicating meaning and message and helping people make sense of the world. Organisation and structure of communication is a crucial organisational matter and it ought to be handled with total sincerity. A plain, simple, and direct language should be preferred which could convey the same meaning to everyone. Words and phrases should be selected and constructed carefully for communication within organisation and with the

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outside world. Little should be left to personal assumption and subjective interpretation. Jargon should not convey one sense to outsiders and another to insiders. Problem of confusing technical language and how it can distort the reality by generating misconceptions has been amply highlighted by Vaughan in her Challenger study. I am also wary of using acronyms profusely, for they have potential for confusing people and disguising the reality. Too much specialisation also gives rise to the problems of communication and comprehension within organisation. A generalist approach is a good rule of thumb for making an organisation more functional and comprehensible from within. Certain specialist tasks are unavoidable but a thoughtful crosstraining programme coupled with a strategy of periodically embedding one set of specialists in another specialist setting can forge a common view of the world over time. It is necessary that everyone in organisation sees the big picture and not its different parts in isolation. Such view of organisation can be better realised in a small and compact group; it becomes impossible in the case of an enormous and unwieldy mass of people. A small organisation with a compressed hierarchy of lesser rungs also attenuates the problem of loss of information as it travels up. Decentralisation of power for distributed decision-making produces rapid response at leading edge where, in general, relevant information is available first-hand and decisions are executed, no matter who has made them. A decentralised structure is good but power must be exercised responsibly by all. Certain checks and balances are necessary. For example, a sudden, serious, and reasonable disagreement of a man well versed with a task and problem, after his stable agreement in the past, is a very serious disagreement that should never be discounted, rubbished, suppressed, or disguised. It should be communicated up instead, even if it is meant only for information. If it is a matter of safety, the contrarian view of any member in any position at any stage of decision-making taken against the final position of majority or authority ought to be communicated above in detail and in a separate category of ‘safety matter.’ It should also be communicated by a man in charge to his superior, even if decision is made ‘unanimously’ after dissident chose to retract his previous position. Superior authorities, on their part, should actively enquire if there was any matter especially related to safety which at some stage created differences that were resolved in the course of discussion. It is important for them to know all sides of story for making responsible decisions. They should also bear in mind that consensus is often manufactured by coercion and dissident and minority views are routinely suppressed and not communicated above.



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Flow of energy and information causes interactions and events. Their channelling and control organises a system and produces order. Each system, thus, has its rationale of organisation and order. Entropy is an intrinsic property of the world; organisation and order everywhere drift naturally towards disorganisation and disorder with time. So, a great deal of energy and efforts are required to maintain and sustain order and organisation. Actions which undermine the organisation and order of system are disruptive in nature and invariably push system towards failure. By deliberately introducing or strengthening the elements of disorder and randomness which compromise, dilute, and weaken the very fundamentals of its organisation and order, we drive system into a region of greater uncertainties where a larger number of probable pathways leading to disorder and disruption exist. Our risky choices and behaviours propel system towards the edge of failure, deepen its reliance on the factor of chance, and increase the odds of failure, even if it somehow does not fail. Then, if we fail, we cannot hide behind the weirdness of complexity, for we had made certain choices which were known to be potentially disruptive, even if we did not know with certainty how system would indeed interact and behave and, even if system actually behaved well for quite some time after the introduction of disruptive elements. Sometimes dilemma and indecision can cause us to falter and fail. Crucial questions of ideal versus real, book versus world, goal versus goal, goals versus resources, and change versus no change keep coming up every now and then, here and there in life. We must, therefore, know in principle how to deal with such issues before we find ourselves at a crossroads and fall prey to a predicament. These questions, in a sense, are also at the heart of failures in all settings. We fail when we fail to change by not adapting to new circumstances and changed times. We fail when we do change by diluting the prescribed way of doing a job for expedience or under pressure. We can fail if we steadfastly adhere to rules and procedures and become too rigid and inflexible. We can fail if we readily compromise rules and procedures and become too pliant and pliable. Both conformity and nonconformity, therefore, are good and bad, desirable and undesirable, depending on context, goal, actions, and outcomes. To go by the book or to go with the world remains a dichotomous question that must be solved responsibly and decisively each time we face it; we might have to rewrite book in one situation and reorganise the world in another. This is how we can bridge a seemingly unbridgeable gap between book that is ideal and the world that is real, by being inflexible in one situation and flexible in another. Then, the question which arises is that how do we make a

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decision to do this or that especially when available binary options are set in opposition to each other? Here again, moral reasoning becomes a reliable touchstone to solve an apparently irreconcilable and irresolvable problem of this versus that. A choice can be conscientiously made—provided we have a shared belief in the primacy of a single goal—by determining an order of priority of competing goals, whenever required, in the light of primary goal and within limits set by moral values and valued notions and then taking decisions and actions accordingly. While this formula works in all situations, clearly, it also implies that even a primary goal need not be achieved by all means and at all costs. It is neither necessary nor desirable to deliver by hook or by crook, for there are things which are bigger than organisational goals and our personal actions are restrained by morality in each theatre and every context. Success is not a moral value which must be upheld always. We ought to be aware beforehand that we cannot do everything and we cannot be successful every time, that we cannot know everything and we might make mistakes, commit errors, and fail in certain situations. We must also be aware that we can always choose to err on the side of caution and safety and we can acknowledge and announce, before it is late, that all things are not entirely in our control, that we are bound by certain limits and restraints, and while we do our best and strive for a favourable outcome, that is something we cannot guarantee. We must not ever hide our constraints and limitations and we must always share known risks and dangers with all those who are involved in operations and decisionmaking and also with the public if it is not a covert enterprise and we are talking to and building hope of the public at large. If we do that, we will fail gracefully, when we do. If you do not intend to take someone’s life and if death is not an acceptable risk, then, do not look for irrefutable data; a reasonable suspicion of a qualified person is good enough to postpone an imminent action for a careful review and reconsideration—if such postponement does not endanger the life of someone. A risky phenomenon should become acceptable only when we have understood its behaviour and we can reliably predict its future or when we have developed a broad consensus that the associated events and consequences of loss of control are acceptable. Our ability to forecast correctly comes from our knowledge of pattern of behaviour a phenomenon has been found to display with regularity. Without discovering a pattern and acquiring ability for a reliable prediction, it is devious to define the risk of a phenomenon as ‘acceptable.’ If anomalies are not producing a pattern and if they are irregular, erratic, random, and unpredictable in occurrence and behaviour,



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then, a phenomenon must be viewed with suspicion; and if lives are at stake, it should be considered dangerous too. Such a phenomenon may produce unexpected and uncontrollable events at any time; whether acceptable or not is a choice that we must make transparently in the context of competing risks. It is not necessary to play safe always; in unusual circumstances, the risks of loss, pain, and suffering can be socially acceptable as in a war. What ought not be done is to lie and deceive. Either all decisions should be made in conformance to the social definition of acceptable risk or a new definition of acceptable risk should be socially constructed to incorporate such consequences as left out from existing consensus. I reiterate that we should not cover up our constraints and limitations and we must always share risks and dangers known to us, particularly where we are involved and have a responsibility. If we do that, we will fail gracefully. Departure from what is standard and deviation from what is approved is frequent and natural in a world which is complex, where interests clash and compete, where not all things are in control but people are still under pressure to deliver and achieve. In such a world, individuals, work groups, and task groups working in organisational settings are often tempted to make locally rational choices which ignore or compromise formal norms and procedures but do achieve organisational goals in the end. So, how do we deal with this problem? It is an important question because, as we have seen above, if not checked, the normalisation of deviance becomes an unstated norm in organisation and might as well cause a catastrophic failure in the future. Its solution, however, is not easy, for it is not a straightforward choice between deviance and compliance. Ostensibly innocuous deviance is certainly an insidious malaise which continues to creep deeper and spread wider with time. It occurs locally and appears quite rational to those who do it. It usually does not bite back until it combines with other events and develops in a complex way to produce a rare failure. Gain of convenience without any pain and trouble, then, reinforces belief in a deviant way and encourages more of it—until one day, when all forces strangely come together and conspire to produce a catastrophic failure. Ironically, in a frictional and uncontrollable world like ours, we must make adjustments to steer our way through. All our efforts would soon grind to a halt if we follow a rigid and uncompromising bureaucratic approach of mindlessly sticking to rules and procedures. The world is, of course, a problem and so are our rules and procedures. Given the complexity of the world, no individual or organisation can imagine and foresee all situations and prescribe all decisions and actions in advance; human foresight is always limited. Consequently, standard

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operating procedures and the rules of business written with a limited and incomplete foresight are always tentative and imperfect. People, then, should be willing to adapt and organisations should be willing to change with time and evolve with experience. When viewed from this perspective, deviance as a contingent action is not a problem as such; it can be anything—additive or disruptive, useful or harmful. Real problem, instead, is the informal nature and underground existence of deviance. The only way, then, to deal with the problem of normalisation of deviance seems culture—by creating a culture of transparently, collectively, and habitually doubting and questioning the definition of ‘normal.’ Another cultural antidote to the normalisation of deviance is a habit of seeing and interpreting the effects of local rationality on the global behaviour of system, for the big picture often presents local rationality in a different light and reveals its latent troublesome aspects. Each and every deviance must also be brought to the notice of entire chain of command and brought before a general house for an open discussion for the purpose of its rejection or regularisation. Only after a threadbare deliberation on its context, necessity, role, and effect—understood from the perspective of those who were inside a situation and also of those who are outside of it, from the viewpoint of those who saw it as a local intervention and also of those who can see its global implications, from its short-term usefulness and long-term risks—should a deviation be rejected or regularised. A collective application of mind is essential and it should be done in order to understand questions such as: What problem a man or a group was facing that necessitated this deviance? What were those circumstances and constraints which could not be resolved by doing what is approved and expected? What was the rationale of choosing a deviation? What was that goal which forced a deviant choice? What information was considered relevant for making this decision and what was discarded as irrelevant? Why did this deviance make sense to those who took decision in its favour? What would have been the consequences of sticking to rules and procedures? And, so on. A serious analysis is necessary to know the many implications of a change introduced or improvised locally in response to a situation. A fullscale review of what was considered standard and sufficient up until now and why is also required. The big picture of organisational operations has to be comprehended by all before making a judgement in favour of regularising a deviance, for it would eventually alter this picture in some way. And, if a locally improvised deviance which undermines the fundamentals of order and organisation cannot be accommodated and approved, it has to be discarded voluntarily and permanently by all members and groups thereafter. If accepted and standardised, it is no longer a deviance.



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Scepticism is essential. Our models which describe the reality are the basis of our decisions and confidence in the future. But a model is just a model, not the reality—even mathematical ones with a whole lot of awful numerals and symbols are essentially fictitious. American biologist Deborah Gordon makes this point plainly, “Models are descriptions, sometimes very beautiful ones, of ways that we imagine the world to be. However, when something in nature . . . acts like the entities in a model, this does not necessarily mean that the natural system is organized as the model is. There are many ways to describe any system; many different models could describe the same behavior.” Or, as Gould puts it succinctly, “Similar results need not imply similar causes.” In other words, however good our models seem to us, our predictions about the reality are always provisional and control over the world transient and we must be always ready to deal with the unexpected, even when everything seems to be normal. Success is not enough to standardise a method; it has to pass the test of rigorous analysis. Many studies indicate the beneficial effects and outcomes of sceptical culture. American sociologist Gene Rochlin argues that the culture of safety in high reliability organisations is not merely “a systemic, structural and static construct,” for it does “more than avoidance of risk or management of error.” Their culture of safety “is a dynamic, intersubjectively constructed belief in the possibility of continued operational safety, instantiated by experience with anticipation of events that could have led to serious errors, and complemented by the continuing expectation of future surprise. Rather than taking success as a basis for confidence, these operators, and their managers, maintain a self-conscious dialectic between collective learning from success and the deep belief that no learning can be taken to be exhaustive because the knowledge base for the complex and dangerous operations in question is inherently and permanently imperfect.” Similarly, Pidgeon, in the second edition of Man-made Disasters, cites the work of American psychologist and defence analyst Frank Stech on military intention estimation which “concludes that two characteristics in particular mark out success from failure: the entertainment of multiple hypotheses . . . and the use of available evidence critically in the attempt to falsify (rather than the more common tendency to attempt to confirm) existing assumptions and preconceptions.” In the context of complexity and failure, it can be said that the conventional approach of scientific determinism has not always yielded and proven above board. On the contrary, it has turned out to be flawed and questionable. It might be useful, then, to treat all aspects of information available for decision-making—scientific data, intuition, and weak signals—with respect as

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well as caution. Scientific facts and figures, however precise they may appear, remain approximations in the end. If, as Rovelli puts it, “no measurement is exact in physics,” how on earth can any other information be exact and, if our initial information itself is inexact, how can our predictions of complex phenomena ever be exact? In fact, our entire knowledge of systems can be organised into three segments of well understood, less understood, and not understood things, for there seems to be nothing that is fully understood. Most of our attitudinal problems are related to well understood phenomena and this is where we cannot afford to let our guard down. So, let us be clear about it. Something is called well understood only if there exists a pattern and regularity of behaviour which is observed in general and it is known to generally behave and deviate within the limits of predictions. Even if such a thing cannot be fully understood, our knowledge about it can be considered functionally reliable. But the idea of functional reliability merely suggests a higher probability of a controllable future in the context of our knowledge; it in no way means that all events will be totally and always under our control. We should, therefore, refrain from making extravagant claims on account of our knowledge and past experience. Let us not douse the flame of doubt and extinguish the light of caution from our minds, our stupendous achievements notwithstanding, for control can become elusive any time. On the other hand, intuitions kindled in brain and weak signals emanating from environment are often considered unreliable and irrelevant and quickly dismissed under the influence of scientific rationalism. However, the role of intuition, I believe, cannot be summarily rejected when dealing with uncertainty, for ideas in a man’s mind are less likely to appear out of nowhere; they are more likely to evolve and emerge from information already stored in brain. Both evolution and emergence need something to exist prior to the occurrence of something new. It is more plausible to understand intuition as a product of information stored in brain and of intricate relationships derived from its self-organisation in the region of brain that is beyond the reach of consciousness. If we believe this, we can as well argue that while intuition manifests in awareness, it cannot be explained as to how a man has arrived at this conclusion. Asking such questions in this case, then, is not relevant and meaningful; what is more important is if a conclusion itself is relevant and useful in a situation. Our intuitions are not always and necessarily the figments of our imagination. Sometimes, they let us see what we otherwise cannot see. Similarly, we should also not quickly dismiss weak signs and signals in an uncertain and evolving situation under the powerful influence of what is ostensibly dominant and evident at the time, for what



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might appear weak at some point of time may become strong in due course as a result of unknown interactions happening deep within and out of sight. It is quite possible that intuitions are wrong and weak signals are really weak but this can be said only in hindsight; they are important inputs for developing a foresight at the time of dealing with a problem and cannot be ignored or discarded in a hurry in the moments of ambiguity. When ability to predict the future is low, the risk of failure is high. Also, knowledge and failure are inversely related to each other. Complex systems, thus, are risky systems as for control and we must learn to mobilise all resources and use everything at our disposal in our struggle for control. An important question in this discussion is that of expertise: Why do experts mostly succeed and why do they fail when they eventually do? Let us see if we can derive some useful methodological and attitudinal lessons from the answer. In a complex evolving situation, information available in real time is never complete and correct and, hence, all decisions cannot be made based on the ‘facts’ in hand. Decisions in such situations have to be made by inference as well as imagination, that is, by modelling the real world. All human beings use mental models to develop foresight. A mental model of situation supplies the missing dots of a picture and the unknown pieces of the puzzle in the form of assumptions and predicts the course of events and the future states of situation. Problem always is that our mental models do not represent the real world; they instead represent what we believe the world to be in our minds. A mental model, thus, can be right or wrong but its accuracy and efficacy cannot be ascertained ahead of events it is used to forecast. Experts, it is said, mostly get it right because of their experience base. Then, what is it that constitutes experts’ knowledge base or, to put simply, what is the strength of expert knowledge? Experts are believed to understand the world better. Let us understand how. Our world is made of many and varied systems. A system is made of units that we can call variables—things that change or can be changed—and their relationships. Structure of a system forges a network of relationships between variables, reveals their interconnections, and determines the nature of their interactions. Information and energy in a system flows through and guided by pathways forged by its structure. Underlying or deep structure of a system is that part of its overall structure which forges a network of relationships of such select variables that determine the nature of system more than others inasmuch as that by understanding this network, the behaviour of system can be understood to a fairly large extent. Deep structure of system can, thus, be called the network of causal relationships of its primary

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variables. In complex systems, this structure is often buried deep in the noise of numerous variables, their relationships, and much information that is emitted by everything together. In fact, a complex system does not derive its complexity from its components but from their relationships. It is made of numerous but simple units which respond simply to local conditions based on simple rules. These local and simple individual responses then feed back and aggregate into a complex behaviour displayed at global level. A complex system is, thus, made of innumerable interconnections which can kick off a complex cycle of feedback and generate an enormous amount of information. Without getting a hold on its deep structure and thereby eliminating a good deal of noise emanating from a system, a meaningful analysis to develop foresight to control events and influence its behaviour in future is seemingly impossible. Knowledge of deep structure is the forte of experts and they are thus able to control the world better than laypeople. Experts are remarkably prescient because their memories contain many reality models based on deep structures. In a complex ongoing situation, while a mental model assembled on past experience is good to initiating credible action, it is not reliable to achieving intended goal, for it is not an accurate reality model and, thus, not a relevant model past a point. An expert with a rich inventory of models in his mind has a decided advantage in the beginning of a situation, for he is more likely to find a model resembling the current state of situation and take quick useful actions. But he might soon be at his wits’ end if he refuses and fails to change with evolving situation and instead continues to hold on to his mental model rather steadfastly and stubbornly. A mental model employed to make sense of a complex, ambiguous, and dynamic situation has to be flexible so that it readily allows itself to adapt to new and disconfirming information that becomes available with the progression of events and the passage of time. These adaptations continually revise the previous projections and modify earlier extrapolations. A revised view of the present and the future alters the plan of action for achieving a desired end state. In addition to a different set of actions to be taken now, a revised plan might also require certain set of actions for course correction, for prior actions guided by the previous plans based on the earlier projections and extrapolations of antecedent mental model might now appear to have steered the course of events on a divergent path vis-à-vis goal. Experts fail when they fail to change with time. A mental model is neither rigid nor flexible; it is a man who is rigid or flexible in his attitude. So, here again, moral values become more decisive than knowledge and experience. A



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combined work of humility, honesty, integrity, courage, responsibility, and respect makes a man open and ready to see and hear what he otherwise does not, would not want to, and would not be open to. Not expertise but morality makes a real difference in effectively dealing with a situation of reactive complexity. If knowledge is power and if power corrupts, then, expertise must coexist with morality. Arrogance of expertise is a definitive recipe for failure. Lessons that we can draw from the above discussion can answer the question as to what best we can do to deal with an uncertain and opaque situation that is forcing us to imagine, assume, and anticipate. While we must differentiate signals from noise, stay focussed on our priorities, and avoid distraction and divergence in a fast moving fluid scenario, we should not at the same time ignore anything and trash weak and nascent signals as noise, for they could be the early signs of warning about something big that lies ahead in time. Ability to capture the early signs and weak signals of a breakdown and read them for their potential to escalate and cause major disruption or undesirable consequences in the future is imperative. Continuous segregation of critical from less critical and a revision of this classification with the progression of situation is essential. There seems to be no fail-safe solution but a better way to deal with such situations, I believe, is to remain doubtful and sceptical of our inferences, assumptions, anticipations, expectations, explanations, hypotheses, conclusions, and actions, to imagine worse than what seems to be the case, and to act as we do in the worst case. Never be complacent, never be certain, and never let your guard slip until long after a situation has become normal, situational environment has been thoroughly checked and brought under full control, and all questions and ambiguities have been studied and answered with a sense of certainty. Do not fall prey to uncritically judging events based on your prior experience and treating your conclusions with comforting finality, even if mostly you are right, for occasionally you can be wrong and that can happen this very time. This seems to me the only way to face the problem of information ‘at the time’ in a complex situation. It is better to remember that if we do not follow this cautious and sceptical approach, the limitations of our knowledge and mind would only become multiplied and pronounced and divergence between the reality and our view of it would become ever wider with time. We might as well, then, lose all opportunities of control that were available before crossing that point after which situation becomes irreversible and cannot be turned around. Situation awareness is necessary and so is personal awareness; a continuous monitoring of situation and a close watch on our beliefs is useful. I recommend a careful reading

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and rereading of Dietrich Dörner’s highly percipient The Logic of Failure for understanding the problem of complex systems and the challenges of problem-solving in complex situations. I also recommend video games such as SimCity and SimFarm and other artificial intelligence tools for hands-on experience with complex systems and particularly for a first-hand realisation of knock-on effects of our actions in complex systems. It is useful to carry out a prospective reverse failure analysis—by reaching an imaginary point of failure and working backwards from this point—to discover lost signs and signals, options and opportunities which could have thwarted the progression of events towards failure if acted upon early enough. A failure can take different pathways so it will not be a simple linear but a complicated multipath analysis. For there can be many failures, such analysis will not be unidimensional but multifarious. Similarly, a hypothetical scenario building exercise can be done to chart many courses the future can take beginning from a common imaginary point and to deal with each course of events by quickly choosing a different set of responses. Anticipating the future is not enough; we must anticipate many different futures and prepare to respond to all of them at a short notice. Training human imagination by mental simulation and thought experiment is a good way of preparing for an uncertain future in a complex world. Many lessons can be learned by doing but, I must say, conventional field drilling and practicing—the darling of military organisations and a mainstay of their training—is not enough. A threadbare post-action classroom review exercise is most imperative, irrespective of a successful or failed outcome. It should be done in a matter-of-fact way both after a real operation and also after a training exercise. Nature of questions and queries should be prying, penetrating, stinging, disquieting, discrediting, and falsifying. Operators should be interviewed alone, in groups, and all together and all answers and assumptions should be recorded, challenged, cross-checked, and corroborated. Adversarial approach of a courtroom is required; nothing should be taken at face value. Purpose is to construct a coherent picture of events by filtering out noise produced by the weaknesses of human perception and cognition. Those at the receiving end should willingly cooperate and let the truth be known, to the extent it could be known. Everyone involved directly or indirectly must know that perceptual limitations and imaginary events which are exposed by this grilling are not personal limitations but the limitations of human body and brain, of human physiology and psychology, of an imperfect way we are hardwired. Such a review, which is intellectual and not physical, is more useful in teaching important lessons than mindless drilling



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and repetitions that military organisations are so very fond of. Moral values and valued notions will help prevent this exercise from causing personal hurt and degenerating into a political battlefield. To deal with the problem of single-point failure, redundancies can be built in a system. It seems useful to have several layers of defence especially when seen in reductionist isolation. Principle advocating layered countermeasures against failures is enshrined in a rather awe-inspiring phrase called ‘defence in depth.’ Systems thinking, which takes everything together into account and studies the whole and not parts, however, cautions us against this approach. Its wariness is due to the fact that the introduction of a single extra unit to a system may create a large number of new relationships with the other variables of system in a non-linear fashion increasing possible interactions by feedback exponentially. Too many redundancies, thus, increase the complexity of system and may create conditions for a greater uncertainty and uncontrollability of system especially when things start to go wrong and system begins to break down. Though choices must be made in relation to context, it is better, in general, to choose simplicity over complexity in design and operation by following the principle of parsimony, that is, by slicing and removing what is unnecessary and keeping it simple. In the scientific world, it is called Ockham’s razor. American philosopher Elliott Sober writes that Ockham’s razor is employed “to do the trimming. This principle says that a theory that postulates fewer entities, processes, or causes is better than a theory that postulates more, so long as the simpler theory is compatible with what we observe.” In his work, Sober cites William of Ockham, a medieval English philosopher and theologian whose name is associated with this principle. It is known that Ockham used to prefer simplicity and he once wrote that “it is futile to do with more what can be done with fewer” and “plurality should not be posited without necessity.” We have discussed above what we should and should not do in order to avert failures. However, it is also necessary to know what we should not do after a failure and the most important thing to steer clear of is what is called hindsight bias. Dominant narrative and politics of failure sprout from and rooted in the wisdom and bias of hindsight. It is unconscionable, though. All the numerous possible courses of events disappear and all the real-time confusion melts away in hindsight. When viewed retrospectively, it is always a well defined clear-cut single pathway of events leading to failure which is usually explained by a linear cause and effect rationale. That is the benefit of working backwards in time. Real problem always is working forwards in time. Woods and his co-writers emphatically argue

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against hindsight bias. They write, “The dilemmas, the uncertainties, the tradeoffs, the attentional demands, and double binds faced by practitioners may be missed or underemphasized when an incident is viewed in hindsight. . . . Knowledge of outcome biases people’s judgement about the processes that led up to that outcome. We react, after the fact, as if knowledge of outcome was available to operators as well, and wonder why they didn’t see it coming. This oversimplifies and trivializes the situation confronting the practitioners, and masks the processes affecting practitioner behavior before the fact.” Turner puts it even more beautifully that “before the disaster, everyone is equally misinformed or ignorant, and afterwards, everyone is equally well informed.” We need to know dichotomy between the past and the future in order to avoid hindsight bias. The past can only be studied. The future can be influenced and created as well. What has happened is set in stone and remains there for all to see afterwards, for the wheel of time cannot be turned back. The past is fixed and frozen; it is irreversible, at least in the world of our experience if not in theory. In retrospect, events and their course are known and pathway is always singular. The past is characterised by certainty. These are the pillars of strength and the sources of arrogance of hindsight. It is always easy to go back in time and see things with clarity. The past can be visited repeatedly as many times as we want to see it and from as many angles as we like to view it. An observer in retrospect becomes omniscient, thus. In contrast, the future always evolves, it is unknown and uncertain. There are many possibilities in the future; events can unfold in many ways, can follow many possible courses, and a new course can branch off from any point to anywhere. There are not one but many pathways which lie ahead in time. These features constitute the intrinsic weaknesses and faults of foresight and the problems of foresight are irresolvable in nature. Clearly, it is not possible to see and forecast things exactly before they actually happen. A prospective observer, thus, is essentially ignorant, even when he is not aware of his ignorance and able to control outcomes in the end. Best we can do as operators and insiders is to learn an important lesson from this dichotomy. If our problem is that we cannot see a problem evolving incrementally in real time as a clear-cut problem as it is seen retrospectively, we should train to see the parts and increments of a problem as building blocks that are combining and heading to the tipping point in the future. And, as investigators and judges, we should avoid hasty conclusions and finding few scapegoats for errors and failures which essentially evolve in certain social and environmental conditions favourable to failure. Turner is right in



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saying that “we need to be as wary of blaming isolated villains in complex, industrial and organizational systems as we are of praising shining heroes, for we now know that responsibility for failure can be just as dispersed and fragmented as responsibility for success.” But first of all, as Gould points out, “a bias must be recognized before it can be challenged.” A host of human limitations—physiological, cognitive, computational, epistemological, attitudinal, and sociological—can be correlated and attributed to human errors and failures. Knowledge imparted methodically and experience acquired temporally can largely attenuate psychological factors behind failure. On the other hand, shared moral values and organisational culture constructed by these moral beliefs can largely take care of social conditions and underlying human beliefs responsible for failure. Investing more in man than technology, I believe, is the most economic, reliable, and lasting solution to most of our problems in a resource-scarce complex world. Reason stresses on this point in a specific context, “The operators of high-risk technologies are informed about likely system breakdowns and how to deal with them. Why should they not be told something about their own potential for error? They and their colleagues do, after all, constitute the major hazard to such systems.” Man, his mind, and beliefs are the solution if there is indeed one. Constant awareness of a possibility of failure, uninterrupted watch over evolving conditions around us, effortful vigilance against our personal biases and preconceptions, and psychological readiness for facing a crisis coupled with an intense desire to come out of it could help us survive a sudden turn of events towards a catastrophe. Even if nothing is in control in theory, we can strive to regain control just before the point of no return, for control is not a rarity but a routine in the world that exists in order at the edge of chaos. This understanding imparts some meaning to human intervention and our desire to guard against failure in the scary world of uncontrollable complexity. We can take our chance and try our luck by our well intentioned efforts to keep from tipping over, until we fail. Small setbacks on the way are not necessarily the signs of failure; they might just be the characteristic fluctuations of complex systems. IX I do not dispute commonly used label ‘human error’ as many scholars seem to do nowadays and I will argue why. Their main objection is that not humans but impersonal forces which are larger than life are responsible for most failures in the complex world. While it is true, it is equally true that the world that we live in today is the consequence of choices made by

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humanity collectively—by current generations and all the previous generations which are no more today. We have effortfully built our world and we are solely operating it. Humanity cannot escape its responsibility by shifting blame to certain impersonal factors such as beliefs, ideology, culture, system, organisation, technology, machines, policies, resources, and more besides. All these impersonal factors are invented, introduced, and controlled by humans and none of them indeed is above and beyond human in a holistic sense. While we seem to flourish in our world most times, at times we also pay a high price for taking risks, however calculated and well managed we claim they are. Greed controls us completely and there seems no hope. In the words of Turner, “We keep raising the stakes by developing new projects and by proposing new kinds of interventions in a world which we increasingly recognize as a finite one, which has a limited capacity to absorb the consequences of our errors.” Humanity has effortfully and proudly trapped itself in a catch-22 situation—a result of endless advancement and unbridled development riding on an ever-spinning wheel of civilisation. Our culture and organisation have evolved far more rapidly than we have evolved biologically. We are in a situation where we can neither quit nor control, so we are continuously spinning a web of more problems around us, in desperation, to solve the old problems of our own making. I, therefore, maintain that all failures, accidents, and disasters in our world, including what we call natural disasters, to a very large extent, are of our own making and they carry the indelible and unmistakable stamp of humanity. While our propensity to blame one or a few persons for failure might be wrong, there is little doubt that the whole of humanity is and will remain responsible for the destructive, disruptive, and inconvenient consequences of our decisions and actions, irrespective of our intentions. All such unintended or wilful outcomes undoubtedly are and will always be the consequences of limitations, errors, and faults of human beings in one sense or another. In this holistic and aggregate sense, I find human error the most appropriate label to define the causal force of our failures. And, in this sense, I am not really optimistic about our collective future. All that I have written above to prevent errors and failures is easier said than done, for the fact remains that rich and powerful and the masses they command and control do not really want to mend their ways. All the available mechanisms for redressal too are actually there not to change but to preserve the way things are; they are akin to safety valves whose purpose is to release pent-up popular anger built against system. It is, then, most convenient to blame a man found at the edge of failure, someone who is closest to and most visible in relation to events. It most definitely absolves humanity of all responsibility for its collective sins. If pressure is too much,



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some backend individuals at the middle and top levels of an organisation responsible for managing certain affairs in question are blamed and shifted or sacked. But that is where the buck stops every time. No one blames system that makes people to behave as they do and none questions ideology that creates system or ends that are valued by society and construct the dominant view of the world. Questions involving ideology and values are rarely asked in the first place, if asked, they are asked half-heartedly and nervously, and fall on deaf ears when asked. So, nothing changes and we keep facing the same problems and solving them in the same way decade after decade and generation after generation. Nothing changes, for no one wants to disrupt the world as we have built for ourselves. Those who harbour ‘subversive’ ideas in their rebellious minds eventually find themselves marginalised and discredited, if not destroyed. This is the way of human civilisation where greed is desirable, selfishness is good, and might is right. Things here change but nothing does and the more things change, the more they stay the same. X Let us come back to the core subject matter of book after a long diversion and ask a relevant question in the context of our discussion so far. Is hostage rescue a complex problem and what can be done about it if it is? If we cannot measure the physical world accurately, it is unthinkable to measure the thoughts, emotions, and behaviours of human beings with exactitude. So, we cannot predict them. If both human brain and body are complex systems, then, human behaviours are bound to fall in the realm of complexity. Humans and their world are surely complex, thus. But so long as human beings interact with cooperative intent in normal circumstances, their behaviours are largely predictable, for the free will of human beings self-regulate and guide all cooperating individuals towards shared goals. This is why our world works and this is how we can explain a remarkable predictability of human affairs in spite of innumerable complex human beings interacting constantly with each other in innumerable complex ways. When two groups of human beings interact to achieve not shared but opposing goals, their dynamical competitive actions cannot be predicted with certainty except for in a general sense of being inimical to each other. When such interaction takes place in the form of a direct military confrontation in which many non-military persons are also caught in the middle and mayhem begins—many people wanting to kill each other and many more wanting to survive within the confines of a small built-up area—the complexity of human interactions increases by several orders of magnitude whose future

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and outcome cannot be predicted by any means other than saying that eventually numerical superiority would prevail if superior action and extra energy introduced in some form does not alter circumstances in favour of a numerically inferior group which would, then, acquire relative superiority and achieve its goal. Events after contact in a complex terrorist stronghold evolve in a truly random and runaway fashion—all the elements of order such as strategy, tactics, plan, intention, command, and control on both sides begin to melt down and break down; its individual constituents begin to disintegrate and behave haphazardly, reacting instinctively or locally to feedback received from environment under severe perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and intellectual constraints. At the heart of rescue operations lies the problem of uncertainty, thus. And, uncertainty, not terrorists, is the most formidable challenge for a hostage rescue unit called out to resolve a complex terrorist crisis. Only one thing is certain: That crisis is a passing phase; it does not last long and passes ‘soon.’ But the fact that it will pass is no consolation for rescuers. In subsequent chapters, I will discuss what best we can do in such a bleak scenario.

Chapter 8 Philosophical Doctrine of Hostage Rescue

I Life is known to fight death until the end and no living being wants to get killed as such. Killing, then, is not a simple act. Instead, killing is the greatest harm violence can inflict on a living being and terminating someone’s life is violence in the extreme. A philosophical understanding of extreme violence resorted to for killing has deeper implications for the rescue of hostages from terrorist stronghold because a military resolution of complex terrorist crisis necessarily involves conspecific killing. In the context of humanity, an act of conspecific killing is human aggression in the extreme. In normal conditions, such aggression is strongly disapproved and harshly punished by society and a man is raised to develop powerful inhibitions against killing people. Why, then, must a man kill another man? Why must he resort to taking such an extreme aggressive action against another man? In the context of complex terrorist crisis, we can quickly propose three answers to such questions: Because he is ordered by a man in authority to kill; because he is paid and it is his duty to kill; because he believes in certain ideas and abstractions that motivate him to kill. At a deeper level, however, it is a more complicated problem than it seems at first glance. Complications arise because in a complex terrorist crisis, it is highly likely that a man set out to kill himself gets killed. On the other hand, ambivalence and indecisiveness generated by existential fear are absolutely unacceptable in a complex terrorist crisis, for time is the most decisive factor in winning. Obedience, reward, and punishment, then, are not enough to motivate a man sufficiently to overcome his fear of death and arguments based on order and authority or employment and duty are weak. To put it differently, remuneration and penalty which are the external drivers of man in organisational setting are inadequate for the rapidity and resoluteness of action required in a complex terrorist crisis. We have to rely on man’s beliefs for a decisive action, in 415

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that a man must have an exceptionally powerful intrinsic drive to risk his life and move swiftly without wincing through terrorist stronghold to kill terrorists. What are those ideas and notions which can so powerfully motivate a man to kill in such a precarious and perilous situation? Let us do a systematic enquiry. II For killing by a man is an act of human aggression, we must understand what human aggression is. Human aggression can be defined as a violent action taken by a man with intention to hurt or kill a living being. It is possible that an aggressor may not be able to harm his target but his harmful intention combined with intentional action is sufficient for his behaviour to qualify as aggression, irrespective of effect on a being. For example, it is aggression if a man aims and fires at someone but bullet misses its target. Intention to aggress alone, however, cannot be called aggression; it must be accompanied by intentional action to become aggression. For example, planning to beat a bully without ever challenging or assaulting him is not aggression. Conversely, an absence of intention to harm would make the action of hurting or killing accidental, not aggressive. For example, trampling an insect to death while running on a trail is not aggression. Human aggression is a learned behaviour. In other words, our aggressive behaviour is socially constructed. Albert Bandura asserts, “People are not born with preformed repertoires of aggressive behavior. They must learn them.” Similarly, American psychologists Robert Baron and Deborah Richardson point out that human aggression “does not occur in a social vacuum; rather, it occurs in response to the real or imagined actions or intentions of other people.” By understanding the thought and affect patterns of aggressors, we can say that there are two types of human aggression. When human aggression is accompanied by ‘notional malevolence’ and violent action is taken against a target merely for being an ‘enemy’ or an ‘irritant,’ it can be called inimical aggression. Primary focus of inimical aggressor is on the target of violence. Inimical aggression at times may be driven by personal animosity or genuine fear too but personal grudge against an intended victim or actual threat from target is not necessary always. An inimical aggressor is fully capable of harming a total stranger, even unsuspecting and entirely innocent individual at times. Inimical aggression is propelled by notional malevolence which is a mental state of intense or vicious ill will accompanied by hate, anger, or



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annoyance towards a living being just for being ‘someone.’ Notion of one’s identity summarily deprives that being of worth, dignity, and respect in the mind of a malevolent man. Unsurprisingly, such stereotyping is a fiction, not real, and it is socially constructed. While a stereotyped representation might be an imagined reality, it is brought to bear upon the world by human will and efforts and becomes real in its consequences. When human aggression is not accompanied by and totally free from any notional or personal malevolence and violent action is taken against a target merely for being an ‘active’ threat to a goal or as a means to an end that the agent of aggression wants to achieve, it can be called instrumental aggression. While harm is fully intended here, instrumental aggression is quite mechanical and businesslike and the primary focus of aggressor is not on the target of violence. We must know, however, that an ostensible act of instrumental aggression becomes and must be recognised as an act of inimical aggression if it is mediated by malevolence, for only a full and complete absence of malevolence in the act of aggression makes it instrumental. There could, of course, be other ways of typifying human aggression but a full taxonomic description of aggression is not necessary for the purpose of discussion here and the above two types are sufficient to proceed further. III I reiterate what we have concluded above: To be effective in a complex terrorist crisis, a man must have an exceptionally powerful intrinsic drive to risk his life and move swiftly without wincing through terrorist stronghold to kill terrorists. So, let us begin our search for such ideas and notions that can powerfully motivate a man to kill in a complex terrorist crisis. One most obvious candidate is the idea of nation and nationalism and its case is indeed very strong. Armed forces are owned by States and States in our times claim that they are nation-States. Thus, in contemporary militaries, the idea of nation and nationalism is extensively used to enthusing men and motivating them to carry out the most extreme acts of violence with the approval of society. Though nation and nationalism are widely favoured and employed for provoking human aggression, these abstractions are not without problem and can be questioned intellectually. John Breuilly, a British historian, defines nationalism with clarity and argues that it wants us to believe that “there exists a nation with an explicit and peculiar character” and “the interests and values of this nation take priority over all other interests

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and values.” Nations as we know them today are not old and nationalism is still younger. “In its modern and basically political sense,” writes British historian Eric Hobsbawm, “the concept nation is historically very young. . . . The modern sense of the word is no older than the eighteenth century.” Hobsbawm struggles to define nations in his brilliant work Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, for “criteria used for this purpose – language, ethnicity or whatever – are themselves fuzzy, shifting and ambiguous, and as useless for purposes of the traveller’s orientation as cloud-shapes are compared to landmarks. . . . Neither objective nor subjective definitions are thus satisfactory, and both are misleading.” Such amorphousness is quite handy and useful to some as he incisively points out, “This, of course, makes them unusually convenient for propagandist and programmatic” purposes. Even more interestingly, he informs, “The term ‘nationalism’ was actually invented in the last decade(s) of the nineteenth century” to describe the rise of right-wing movements and their politics of nation and flag. Historically speaking, nations did not exist; they were invented; they were the innovations of mass politics and its political mythology—so much so that Irish political scientist and historian Benedict Anderson called them imagined communities in his famous book of the same name. American historian Howard Zinn similarly insists, “Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex.” Ernest Gellner also contends that “nations as a natural, God-given way of classifying men, as an inherent though long-delayed political destiny, are a myth” invented by nationalism and Hobsbawm agrees that “nations do not make states and nationalisms but the other way round.” Then, he remarkably sums up the reality of this ideology in just one sentence, “Nationalism requires too much belief in what is patently not so.” Problem is that nationalism not only wants us to believe in what is not so, it is an extremely hegemonic and intolerant political doctrine which also claims absolute legitimacy, demands total loyalty from individuals it says belong to a nation, “overrides all other public obligations, and in extreme cases (such as wars) all other obligations of whatever kind,” to quote Hobsbawm. There are other problems too of intellectual and ethical nature. Idea of nation and its expression in the form of nationalism is not inclusionary but exclusionary, it is divisive not unifying. It denies the fundamental sameness of human species and also rejects the underlying unity of life. It is superficial, counterfactual, ahistorical, and unscientific. It masks and bends the natural



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reality and constructs a tinderbox reality of structured tension often erupting in multifarious conflicts. Idea of nation and its political expression in the form of nationalism is relational, for it asserts and claims its distinctness from others in a sea of humanity. It cannot stand alone as nothing much actually remains to ‘us’ if there are no ‘them.’ Due to its narrow worldview and inward focus, its comparative nature transforms itself into competitive character before long. From there it inevitably gravitates towards and is further transformed into confrontational and rivalrous form due to the questions of history, territory, population, resources, and who gets to rule whom, and also of power and hegemony in geopolitical settings. Nationalism atrophies without an enemy and lies dormant in a society, for it loses its meaning and purpose without an adversary. Its potency is actually drawn from anger and hatred towards a foe, real or imagined. It exists but in name during peaceful and friendly coexistence with ‘others’ and manifests lightly and gently, in its most subdued and benign form, in stereotyped jokes deriding each other. Feelings of anger, hatred, and revenge are the actuators and activators of nationalism. It is nothing without raging passions and surging emotions. Its presence is felt only when it becomes rebellious or fanatical. It is, thus, destructive behind its constructive facade and human aggression generated by it is invariably inimical. Nationalism vies for power and it is a tool for politics. It is invented and invoked to unite certain people and rally them against certain others. Invariably, its ostensible call is to defend a nation but its actual intent and effect is to intimidate, subdue, defeat, or destroy others. By dividing humanity into competing groups and reinforcing such divisions and their rivalries, it creates and preserves conditions for perpetual political struggle and potential for military confrontation and global conflict. Also, by creating conditions for perpetual competition and mutual distrust, nations mindlessly exploit environment and harm life on earth. When it actually does, this ideology and arrangement benefits only some at the expense of all others in humanity; even within a nation, it disproportionately benefits a few rich and powerful vis-à-vis the masses. It, thus, champions pain, suffering, short-sightedness, extractivism, inequality, exploitation, and injustice. Nationalism is a scaled-up tribalism. It demands absolute loyalty from individuals. It promotes conceit, malice, arrogance, aggression, denial, distortion, illusion, and insanity. Lie, deceit, betrayal, torture, murder,

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massacre, exploitation, repression, destruction—everything is permissible, rather desirable, in the service of nation. Problem with loyalty and other associated vices is that they work in opposition to morality and brazenly ignore the questions of right and wrong, good and bad. Nationalism and loyalty to nation is all too often leveraged by the Establishment and political leadership to justify their decisions and actions of all kinds— so much so that sometimes all opposition to and every last dissent against rulers and leaders, their policies and utterances are dubbed, discredited, and denounced as anti-national and unpatriotic. It, thus, reduces democratic space, curbs intellectual freedom, and constricts moral discourse. Of course, nations and nationalism alone are not responsible for all this muck and malice but there is no denying that by acting as a catalyst, they aggravate and worsen this ugly situation constructed together by many a dominant belief of humanity. Some critics of nationalism assert that patriotism is different from nationalism—the former being affirmative and the latter being negative. However, I do not find patriotism and nationalism any different from each other in the context of nation-State. It really does not matter how cogently and convincingly some people write and argue against equating patriotism to nationalism, a lexicographical sense of humanity ascertained through a simple label test reveals the truth there is to it. If you do not lie, bluff, cheat, swindle, or deceive, you are called honest and genuine, not a patriot. If you help and care for others, you are called kind, caring, and compassionate, not a patriot. You work hard and remain sincere in your work and you will be called a reliable hard worker, not a patriot. You save environment and you will be known as an environmentalist; you work for people and animals and you will be labelled as a social worker and an animal lover. Not until you swear at enemy, real or imagined, and vow to punish them you will be recognised as a patriot, no matter how much otherwise you serve your nation and homeland, compatriots and country. And, the more venom and insult you spew at your enemy, the more patriotic you become. A teacher in a colonial country quietly building the character of children or a doctor making them healthier, thus serving their people and nation would hardly be recognised as patriots unless they join a nationalist political movement or a revolutionary terrorist outfit resisting their occupiers. On the other hand, a corrupt politician or an abrasive rebel belonging to nationalist resistance who might also have racist, sectarian, sexist, and elitist views would in most likelihood be praised by all as a patriot, among his people and in the history



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of his nation. All your sins and shortcomings are overlooked and forgiven by saying, “So what, he is a patriot.” Contrary to this, your kindness and compassion shown to enemy, real or imagined, no longer remains a moral virtue; it will invariably attract the wrath of society and earn you a label of traitor. Unless you mobilise support or take up arms to kill and defeat your enemy, you cannot possibly be a patriotic hero in the eyes of your nation. How else can you become a patriot other than by expressly denouncing and intimidating your enemy, loudly vowing to subdue and destroy them? What, then, is so constructive about being a patriot and how is it different from being a nationalist? I must also clarify here that this book is about terrorism but not about the politics of terrorism which is too murky and where no one is clean, State or resistance; all have resorted to mindless violence in their pursuit of power and wealth, done in the name of nationalism and patriotism from both sides. While in our times, the narrative of State against terrorism has established a total hegemony of sorts and alternative views and voices have nearly disappeared or fallen silent, it is impossible to discount the forgotten stories of the other side even today if you have any sense of fairness and justice. Song of Joe McDonnell featured in 1990 movie Hidden Agenda is just one among the countless marginalised tales of resistance. In the Maidstone and the Maze  I thought about my land throughout these days  Why my country was divided  Why I was now in jail  Imprisoned without crime or without trial  And though I love my country  I am not a bitter man  I’ve seen cruelty and injustice at first hand  And then one fateful morning  I shook bold freedom’s hand  For right or wrong I tried to free my land  And you dare call me a terrorist  While you look down your gun  When I think of all the deeds that you have done  You have plundered many nations  Divided many lands  You have terrorised their people  You ruled with an iron hand  And you brought this reign of terror to my land 

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Loyalty to nation is loyalty to State which, in turn, becomes loyalty to individuals and institutions that rule a country. But States are not always right and their actions are not always just. Imperialistic aggression is not uncommon and the repression of minority groups is well known too. Also, for serving their vested interests, rulers are known to make wars and rouse citizens to fight their wars in the name of nationalism and patriotism. Professedly ‘defensive’ and ‘retaliatory’ actions of State, therefore, may not be actually so and ‘offensive’ non-State actions against it may instead be provoked by State’s own discriminatory policies and repressive actions that might have forced some people to resist, rebel, and defend. Those who rule today and resort to name-calling and delegitimising those who resist them had themselves resisted their exploiters and rulers yesterday. In spite of that, nation-States and national ‘communities’ glorify their own resistance of the past and vilify the resistance of others in the present. Terms ‘terrorists’ and ‘liberators’ often employed liberally in nationalist discourse are actually interchangeable; all depends on which side you find yourself and who you talk to. In political struggles, all villains are heroes and all heroes are villains. I agree with Bandura who asserts, “In conflicts of power, one person’s violence is another person’s benevolence. Whether a particular form of aggression is regarded as adaptive or destructive depends on who bears the consequences.” From self-centric and group-centric perspective, everyone fights for a just cause. In the name of nationalism and patriotism, even the most heinous aggression can be orchestrated and executed, justified, normalised, and ignored as shown towards the end of 1970 movie Soldier Blue; human history if full of such abominable and unspeakable episodes. Problem is that if everyone’s war is a just war, then, there is no just war. Nationalism surely makes a good story but not everyone may be inclined to believe in it for different reasons. There may be other personal beliefs stronger than one’s belief in nationalism, for different individuals are raised differently and have different experiences in life that shape their views of the world. Idea of nation and nationalism may be called into doubt by human intellect in the light of obvious contradictions and compelling questions discussed above that cannot be ignored or resolved easily. For some minority groups in a diverse society, the idea of nation might as well be exclusionary and used for discrimination, which may not be acceptable to everyone. A doubting and questioning mind of a sceptic moral person that I have proposed for a rescuer, thus, cannot be told to believe in nationalism, much less to lay down his life and kill others for its cause; it just cannot convince him.



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While nationalism is very effective in eliciting fervent emotions and evoking flaring passions, I cannot invoke and uphold it lest I would undermine and undo everything that I have said and argued before. My rescuer is a virtuous man of independent mind who doubts and questions, values fairness, practices respect, and chooses the truth over lies, humility over arrogance, life over death and, therefore, he cannot be a staunch believer in nationalism. For such a man, aggression is essential to rescue hostages but in the form of instrumental, not inimical, and we know that nationalist aggression is always inimical. Malevolence is a vice and a virtuous man cannot harbour it and be guided by its affect. We, thus, need a different idea, a different ideology which not only serves us well but also remains useful to generations after we are gone; something more enduring, lasting, and permanent than nationalism; something more inclusive and universal, transcendent and immutable than a transient historical reality of our times called nation-State. We need a better fiction, something sublime, which is more convincing to human intellect, which is not inconsistent with the universal principles of morality. IV I will now tell you the most wonderful story of all. This is the story of life on earth. All living beings here, from the minutest to the largest, are most remarkable, in that they are able to self-sustain for their entire lifetimes the regularities of their forms, rhythms, and motions which make them alive. Also, they are most remarkable, in that they are able not only to maintain their bodies in an internal stable state called homeostasis or dynamic-kinetic stability in a variable and volatile world while they are alive but also able to transmit their properties to new bodies which they self-produce in their limited lifetimes, thus sustaining their types in the far future on a scale of time rivalling geological processes shaping earth itself. Could there be anything more profound and miraculous than this feat of living creatures on earth? Could there be any story more wonderful and sublime than this? I think not! That it is happening everywhere on earth makes it even more astonishing. Morality is a way of life based on and built around this story. It is the practice of certain beliefs which are derived from the fact of life. For I have been continuously discussing morality in the last three chapters and I hope that readers would have got a fairly good grip on the concept of morality by now, I would not elaborate it much here and be rather brief.

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Morality nurtures life. It creates conditions for life to flourish. To live and let everyone live is a moral imperative. Morality is not rationality, in that it does not rely on cost-benefit calculations to securing personal or group interests at the expense of others. Unlike pragmatic reasoning, moral reasoning sides with moral principles based on the primacy, equality, and mutuality of life which are applied universally and recurrently for making decisions. A limited and selective application of any moral principle renders it amoral and its consequences immoral. This is the most concise description of morality I can think of. A man who rescues hostages from the deadly grip of terrorists must be prepared to kill. He cannot rescue if he does not kill. If he does, then, no amount of justification can obscure the fact that a rescuer is a killer. For anyone who kills is a killer and euphemisms cannot mask the ugliness of brutal act of killing done by man. Here we run into a conundrum. Our rescuer is a virtuous man, a practitioner of morality which does not approve killing. How can he kill, then? How can he rescue if he does not kill? And, can he remain virtuous if he kills to rescue? To reconcile killing with the primacy and priority of life is a problem whose resolution will pave the way for founding a doctrine of hostage rescue. We must find a rule consistent with the primacy, equality, and mutuality of life which can be applied universally and recurrently for making decisions. Here is my proposal: Life shall be preserved until it must be terminated to save life. This rule upholds the primacy, equality, and mutuality of life and can be applied universally and recurrently for making decisions if it fulfils two conditions. A threat to life must be real, not imagined; objective, not subjective. In life-threatening situations, danger must exist in the present, not in the future; it must be immediate and imminent. Let us call it the rule of life which can be said to be the law of nature, for all life forms except Homo sapiens seem to obey this rule and governed by it; no one but man kills for pleasure or greed or imagined beliefs. Unsurprisingly, the so-called ‘law of the jungle’ is a myth assigned by humans to nature which in reality reflects the way of humanity. What is followed in jungle is the law of nature that upholds the rule of life. If ‘life shall be preserved until it must be destroyed to save life’ is made the central tenet of hostage rescue, it can be believed and practiced by a virtuous rescuer without causing any clash or conflict in his mind. It cannot be called into doubt when applied in a complex terrorist crisis to kill hostage-takers and free their victims. This, then, is the doctrine of hostage rescue that I choose and offer and which has all the properties we are looking for.



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V As simple and logical as it might seem, this doctrine of rescue is very difficult to accept and practice and I must go over its central problem now. “Ecologically,” writes American historian Kyle Harper, “humans are a global primate that spreads like a weed, lives like a rat, and consumes like a plague of locusts.” What makes us overlook this fact? It is anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism which is a construct that asserts the absolute superiority of humans over the other forms of life. It is the biggest obstacle to the rule of life proposed above which we must cross over first. It is the greatest enemy of morality too which I must deconstruct. Alongside I must dismantle its most abominable expression in the form of anthropoarrogance. Notion of intrinsic superiority gives birth to the rights of superiors to many entitlements and privileges and causes the discrimination and exploitation, pain and suffering of inferior and underprivileged. Morally, the conception and claim of superiority is bad, wrong, undesirable, and impermissible, therefore. Also, all such notions that humanity has ever held to assert the superiority of some over others are myths; they are the figments of human imagination and the works of pure fiction. Anthropocentrism is just one such abstraction and it is no different in construction, constitution, and consequences from the other forms of tribalism and sectarianism attempting to establish the superiority of a group over others. Every species is special and superior in some sense. Every species existing has survived the vagaries of the world for eons without help. To assert the superiority of one species over all others is factually as incorrect and morally as unconscionable as it is to assert the superiority of a man, family, community, sect, gender, race, and nation over others within the bounds of humanity. No one is superior inherently and differences cannot be the basis for discrimination and devaluation. And, arguably, if anthropocentrism is right, which it is not, then, no form of tribalism and sectarianism is wrong, which they all are. Endlessly we have heard and told the countless stories of human consciousness and awareness, of our unquenchable curiosity, our spirit of exploration, of pushing limits without an end. We tirelessly glorify ourselves and ceaselessly remind each other of our ability to think and feel. Unsurprisingly, then, when it comes to our species, we show little politeness and no humility and our arrogance knows no bounds. As if this is not enough, we brazenly believe that all other living beings are devoid of such qualities, merely existing to serve the interest of humanity on earth. Such beliefs and their unremitting indoctrination through an incessant propaganda make us absolutely and entirely blind to our bias and prejudice. The truth is that we cannot know

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about others other than by comparing them with ourselves, which means what we can know is very little and what we know is still minuscule. Even such a shallow knowledge that excludes virtually the entire living world seems to suggest that other species too have intellectual and emotional lives. It is well documented in books such as Beyond Words by Carl Safina, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? and Mama’s Last Hug by Frans de Waal, The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman, Animal Wise by Virginia Morell, Animal Intelligence by Zhanna Reznikova, Animalkind by Ingrid Newkirk and Gene Stone, Pleasurable Kingdom, Second Nature, and What a Fish Knows by Jonathan Balcombe, Intelligence in Nature by Jeremy Narby, The Emotional Lives of Animals and Minding Animals by Marc Bekoff, Wild Justice by Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce, The Inner Life of Animals and The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard, Lessons from Plants by Beronda Montgomery, Planta Sapiens by Paco Calvo with Natalie Lawrence, When Elephants Weep by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy, How Animals Grieve and Personalities on the Plate by Barbara King, and an all-time classic In the Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall. Those among us who love nature know the essence of what is told beautifully in these stories anyways. Our faculties of thinking and feeling, of expressing and communicating are, of course, much more pronounced and powerful but they are by no means unique, in that other organisms too can think and feel. To believe that animals and plants have none is patently false, insanely outlandish, and too outrageous. Humans have not come on earth out of nowhere, just like that, all of a sudden. We have evolved over the course of eons and our biological constitution is a result of a slow and incremental aggregation and accretion of complexity from species to species, starting from a single-celled ancestor ‘born’ in a deep past. All our faculties are inherited from other living beings, thus. That they too can think and feel cannot be brusquely rejected as we so arrogantly do. Given our insuperable limitation to know others as they are, I am inclined to postulate and believe without having a vocabulary to express it that as a living being, it is more probable than not that an organism makes sense of the world, realises its being in the world, feels pain and pleasure in life. In fact, they all have been doing pretty well without our kind of thoughts and emotions, intelligence and affect, science and technology. Our case for superiority is factually incorrect and morally unsound. Human ability is lauded by humans interminably and unashamedly. It is used by humanity to give itself a status of superiority and a licence to lord over the world and do what pleases us. But what is so great and good about our thinking and feeling if all it has done is to bring an unimaginable disaster



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to the world and an untimely destruction of life with immeasurable pain and suffering? Life, of course, is too hardy to disappear; it is not going anywhere soon, for life is standing on an extremely robust foundation laid by microorganisms, a glimpse of which could be had in Life on a Young Planet by Andrew Knoll. What is most deplorable and heinous is its wanton and wholesale destruction by humanity. In 1970, an international team of researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology embarked on an ambitious study to find out for how long human civilisation could sustain itself moving on the path of ‘progress’ it had elected. These scientists created a global computer model, then an emerging field, fed data on five variables—population increase, agricultural production, non-renewable resource depletion, industrial production, and pollution generation, and “tested the behavior of the model under several sets of assumptions to determine alternative patterns for mankind’s future.” A non-technical report of this study was published in 1972 for general readership which had a prescient title The Limits to Growth. It is “likely to be one of the most important documents of our age,” pronounced American journalist Anthony Lewis in The New York Times, which remains imprinted on its back cover since. His wise words today seem like an epitaph on a forgotten gravestone; this work was forgotten, its warnings went unheeded. It concluded, “The earth’s interlocking resources—the global system of nature in which we all live—probably cannot support present rates of economic and population growth much beyond the year 2100, if that long, even with advanced technology. . . . If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.” Fifty years have passed since. Its predictions might not be correct but our deeds are well documented. In 2019, Nature journalist Heidi Ledford reported the alarming finding of a survey of plant extinctions based on a massive database compiled by Belgian botanist Rafaël Govaerts, which studied 330,000 species, an order of magnitude more than any other survey yet: “The world’s seed-bearing plants have been disappearing at a rate of nearly 3 species a year since 1900, which is up to 500 times higher than would be expected as a result of natural forces alone.” In September 2020, World Wide Fund for Nature and Zoological Society of London published Living Planet Report 2020. Its findings are terrifying: “Since the industrial revolution, human activities have increasingly destroyed and degraded forests, grasslands,

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wetlands and other important ecosystems. . . . Seventy-five per cent of the Earth’s ice-free land surface has already been significantly altered, most of the oceans are polluted, and more than 85% of the area of wetlands has been lost. . . . The most important direct driver of biodiversity loss in terrestrial systems in the last several decades has been land-use change, primarily the conversion of pristine native habitats into agricultural systems; while much of the oceans have been overfished. . . . The Living Planet Index (LPI) now tracks the abundance of almost 21,000 populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians around the world. . . . The 2020 global Living Planet Index shows an average 68% (range: –73% to –62%) fall in monitored populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish between 1970 and 2016. . . . Freshwater biodiversity is declining far faster than that in our oceans or forests. Based on available data, we know that almost 90% of global wetlands have been lost since 1700; and global mapping has recently revealed the extent to which humans have altered millions of kilometres of rivers. These changes have had a profound impact on freshwater biodiversity with population trends for monitored freshwater species falling steeply. . . . The 3,741 monitored populations – representing 944 species of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fishes – in the Freshwater Living Planet Index have declined by an average of 84% (range: –89% to –77%), equivalent to 4% per year since 1970. . . . Since 1970, our Ecological Footprint has exceeded the Earth’s rate of regeneration. This overshoot erodes the planet’s health and, with it, humanity’s prospects.” It is we who are wantonly ravaging everything and multiplying like bacteria and still calling other species pests which are struggling hard for survival and losing out on existence! But this has been the way of humanity since ancient times. American science writer Peter Brannen laments about our past, “After millions of years of relative stability, even through countless punishing climate swings, a strange wave of extinctions suddenly swept across the planet, eerily shadowing the heroic migrations of the recently evolved African primate species Homo sapiens. Starting only a few tens of thousands of years ago, the extinctions jumped from continent to continent, then to remote islands, and they continue unchecked to the modern day. . . . Sometime between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago, Australia lost its marsupial lions and its giant kangaroos, which were far larger (and slower) than those now living. It lost its diprotodons, giant lumbering herbivores the size of rhinoceroses—the largest marsupials to ever live. It lost its giant flightless birds, more than 6 feet tall. It lost a giant python, two species of terrestrial crocodiles, and an enormous monitor lizard called megalania, which, stretching



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some 15 feet, looked as though it got lost en route to the Triassic. It lost absolutely every animal on land weighing more than 100 kilograms (220 pounds). The wave of extinction struck, not during any unusual climate perturbation or asteroid impact, but at about the same time that the first humans arrived in Australia. . . . When modern humans first spread into Europe and Asia, the local fauna suffered a more prolonged period of extinctions—extinctions that claimed Eurasia’s straight-tusked elephants, its woolly mammoths, its woolly rhinoceroses, and its not so woolly rhinoceroses, as well as its hippopotamuses, its giant deer (sporting the world’s most flamboyant antlers), its cave bears, its cave lions, and its spotted hyenas. Eurasia also lost its Neanderthals—that other hominid that used tools and fire and buried their dead. . . . Around 12,000 years ago, humans arrived in North America. At the same time, after millions of years of relative stability—again, even through wild shifts in climate—North America lost a staggering array of megafauna. The continent was home to a suite of animals far surpassing in grandeur that found on any modern African savanna. It lost its four species of mammoths, its elephant-like gomphotheres, and its giant ground sloths—some towering 15 feet tall on their hind legs. It lost its giant armadillos weighing more than a ton; beavers the size of bears; bears, like arctodus, that were far larger than any now living; and giant peccaries, tapirs, stag moose, capybaras, wild dogs, dwarf antelopes, brush oxen, woodland musk oxen, and mastodons. . . . North America also lost its many camels, which originated and evolved on the continent, only later spreading out into Asia and Africa. . . . North America lost its American zebras as well as its horses.” Brannen quotes British geologist Anthony Hallam who “cites this record of precolonial ecological ruin to ‘dispel once and for all the romantic idea of the superior ecological wisdom of non-western and pre-colonial societies. The notion of the noble savage living in harmony with Nature should be dispatched to the realm of mythology where it belongs. Human beings have never lived in harmony with nature.’” To us Brannen reminds, “Until very recently, all vertebrate life on the planet was wildlife. But astoundingly, today wildlife accounts for only 3 percent of earth’s land mammals; human beings, our livestock, and our pets take up the remaining 97 percent of the biomass. . . . This cull is from both direct hunting and global-scale habitat destruction: almost half of the earth’s land has been converted to farmland. . . . As just one slice of that devastation, 270,000 sharks are killed every single day. . . . In the past 400 years, there have been documented extinctions of some 800 species.” And, what if this record is merely the tip of the iceberg; we do not know the entire story of destruction caused by humans and would never know it in its entirety.

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British geologist, palaeontologist, and stratigrapher Jan Zalasiewicz paints a disturbing picture of the future: We “do not know to within an order of magnitude how many species now inhabit the Earth.” Their number “currently is likely somewhere between ten million and a hundred million. . . . In the geological here and now, a wave of biological extinctions is taking place. Currently, it is accelerating, quite regardless of any concerns expressed about this. The rainforests, a rallying call for a generation of environmental activists, are inexorably being cut to ribbons. In less than a century most will be gone. Millions of species—lemurs, parrots, beetles, frogs, spiders, orchids, jaguars—are set to vanish. Many thousands have already gone, most disappearing before human scientists can find them, describe them, give them a name. . . . So, a century on from now, say, let us take stock of the likely situation. Somewhere between a quarter and a half of the world’s species extirpated. . . . This would include most bird species; most of the larger land mammals and quite a lot of the smaller ones; pretty well all the primates, other than Homo sapiens; a substantial proportion of the ocean’s top predators; and, probably, a significant proportion of organisms lower down the food chain.” He, then, poignantly reminds us our destructive past, “Ten thousand years ago, half of the large mammals of the Earth abruptly disappeared, and it seems increasingly likely that this disappearance was mainly the result of hunting by humans.” What is so inspiring and prideful in this all-round mayhem? If human feelings are more evolved and sensitive, then, instead of feeling proud and arrogant, such record should actually make humans feel unbearable shame and guilt. And, if that is hardly seen there, what do we make out of human intellect and affect? So much for human achievement. Let us take a quick look at our knowledge we are so proud of. Our knowledge is the proof of our superiority; an absence or littleness of knowledge of the world possessed by other species is the proof of their inferiority. This belief is the basis of anthropocentrism and anthropoarrogance. We surely know too much but not really as much as we think and actually too little of what there is to know. We have largely piggybacked on the regularities of the world and deceived ourselves into believing that we have known the world. The fact is that we know pretty much nothing and control hardly anything. Ostensible stability created by us here is more a reflection of the stable world we happen to live in. Our knowledge is imperfect and negligible, it is shallow and superficial. It has always been provisional and it will always be incomplete. Still worse, there is no one to hold a mirror up to us. When it comes to our knowledge, we find ourselves in an incestuous



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self-serving relationship; all of us remain busy cheering for each other and spinning the webs of illusion all the time. When we discover a ‘secret’ and begin to understand something, we actually wonder much less about the world and far more about our ability to understand it and even more about man who has revealed it. Such is our conceit. Confined in its finite cognition and caught in its immutable conceit, our species has been living under two great illusions—the illusion of knowledge and the illusion of control. I will leave aside for now our severe perceptual limitations and mind bending quantum confusion in the world which do not let us know the reality and distort what we think we know. I will instead focus only on certain plain and simple facts about the world to prove a point. Simplest of all is the problem of time. Information is brought to us by light coming from the sky. Its speed is fast but finite. We see the past, not the present, thus, which makes immense difference between what we know and what actually is at any moment in an infinite world and there is no way to know what it is at any moment in the sky. We live in a grand illusion and the profoundness of this fact is best explained by American astronomer Carl Sagan: “If we’re far enough away, an entire sun can go out and we’ll continue to see it shining brightly; we won’t learn of its death, it may be, for ages to come. . . . The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything in space in the past—some as they were before the Earth came to be.” Nothing informs more about the illusion of knowledge than this simple fact. We do not know what we cannot know but what about pretty mundane things that we think we fully know with our tens of thousands of years of experience and a whole lot of human knowledge combined? How a razor blade or a kitchen knife becomes blunt? We did not know it until an international team of engineers Gianluca Roscioli, Seyedeh Mohadeseh Taheri-Mousavi, and Cemal Cem Tasan working in Massachusetts Institute of Technology published its findings in Science in August 2020. They reported, “Steels for sharp edges or tools typically have martensitic microstructures, high carbide contents, and various coatings to exhibit high hardness and wear resistance. Yet they become practically unusable upon cutting much softer materials such as human hair, cheese, or potatoes. Despite this being an everyday observation, the underlying physical micromechanisms are poorly understood because of the structural complexity of the interacting materials and the complex boundary conditions of their co-deformation.” It was not the “edge rounding and brittle cracking of a blade’s hard coating” which we thought until now but a different mechanism that actually blunts the sharp edge of a

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blade. “A combination of out-of-plane bending, microstructural heterogeneity, and asperities—microscopic chips along the smooth edge—sometimes caused fracture to occur if the conditions lined up. This fracture originated at the hair-edge asperity interface and created chipping that dulled a blade faster than other processes.” So much for grinding blades all these years. We have filled myriads of libraries with books, surveyed universe, crossed solar system, visited moon, mapped earth, catalogued life, counted individuals. We take immense pride in giving difficult names to species in a language most of us do not understand. But of what we have named we know next to nothing. Giving names is pretty much nothing, for what do we know about these ‘known’ species, their histories and memories, their individuals and societies, their lives and behaviours, and how they sense, think, and feel the world and relate to each other, their fears and worries, their biology and chemistry? There is so very much to know. And, what if we have not even named all there is? In 2020, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew published State of the World’s Plants and Fungi. It notes, “Ten years ago, scientists thought that the vast majority of flowering plants had been described and named. But the subsequent stream of species revealed to science suggests there are many more to find, as do the experiences of botanists undertaking fieldwork in the tropics today. . . . When it comes to fungi, we have even more left to catalogue.” It surely is an authoritative and honest statement. “Drawing upon the expertise of 210 researchers in 97 institutions across 42 countries,” it reported that just in 2019 “botanists registered 1,942 newly named species of vascular plants . . . and mycologists recorded 1,886 novel fungi.” It is hard to imagine what we do not and cannot know, for “by the time a new species has been described and named, it is facing extinction.” Kew Gardens is not saying anything about the unseen monumental world of microbes, so what do we know about life, its countless species, innumerable individuals, and their complex relationships? Conceit is so human that the elite of every generation has believed it lived in a golden age of knowledge while the truth has been that our leading edge of knowledge has been trailing ever so much behind. For example, American astrophysicist Katie Mack writes, “Scientifically we are living in a golden age.” In the next breath she tells, “When Newton was rolling balls down hills or watching the planets inch across the sky, he couldn’t possibly have guessed that we’d need a theory of gravity that could also cope with the warping of spacetime near the Sun, or the unimaginable gravitational forces inside black holes. He would never have dreamed that we’d someday hope to measure the effect of gravity on a single neutron.”



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Similarly, British mathematician Marcus du Sautoy says, “The last few decades give us reason to believe that we are in a golden age of science.” He, then, admits, “The knowledge of what we are ignorant of seems to expand faster than our catalogue of breakthroughs. The known unknowns outstrip the known knowns.” Knowing the lessons of history well, they still seem entirely oblivious that some hundred years from now, the same things would be said and written about us, about our so-called golden age, its precision science, and the frontiers of knowledge we have reached. I would not be surprised if Galileo and Newton, Einstein and Feynman also thought they were living in a golden age of science and discovery. Each age and generation of humans has deluded itself. Anthropoarrogance, it seems, has been entrenched in humanity from the very beginning. All generations have arrogantly believed in their times that what they had known was too much and a lot. Only in hindsight do their beliefs and presumptions, their knowledge and advancement appear amateurish and ridiculous. We would not be seen any differently by our descendants in the future and it would not be unusual if people would mock our much prideful scientific achievements and technological feats of today, only if earth system would allow us to pace forth as we have done for a while now. One assessment of our knowledge is pretty revealing. American cartoonist Jorge Cham and physicist Daniel Whiteson put it interestingly, “The kind of matter that we consider normal—because it’s the only kind we know— is actually fairly unusual. Of all of the stuff (matter and energy) in the universe, this kind of matter accounts for only about 5 percent of the total. . . . What is the other 95 percent of the universe made of? We don’t know. . . . Only 5 percent of it is stuff we know, including stars, planets, and everything on them. . . . And it gets worse. Even within the 5 percent of stuff we know about, there are still a lot of things we don’t know. . . . In some cases, we don’t even know how to ask the right questions that will reveal these mysteries. . . . So this is where we stand as a species. . . . It’s like we’ve been studying an elephant for thousands of years and suddenly we discovered we’ve been looking only at its tail!” Still, to me authors here characteristically seem far more generous and charitable to humanity, a subtle reflection of familiar human conceit, for what we know about what they think we know is pretty much nothing when compared to what we do not know and what there is to know. We live in a transient knowledge bubble. And, we cannot see anything beyond it. Still, some people have made some attempts to reflect on this problem, attempting to break free from the shackles of anthropoarrogance to some

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extent. American mathematician and computer scientist Noson Yanofsky is one of them. He writes, “What was once considered reasonable, could, in the future, be shown to cause contradictions. In fact, throughout history, there have been many times that something was considered part of science and only later turned out to be false. . . . In contrast, there are many times that some idea has been considered silly and as time progresses it becomes part of reason and science. . . . There are no exact rules to determine when some idea or process is part of reason or beyond its boundaries.” As such, little human knowledge transcends time; every generation remains inevitably imprisoned in its ephemeral knowledge bubble with people believing in their short moments they know it all with exactness and live in a golden age of certainty, oblivious of transience and impermanence, imperfections and inaccuracies of their knowledge and a complete and utter hollowness of their arrogance based on it. We often have a very short view of time—a week, a month, a year, five years, a decade, a quarter of a century at most—and never more than a century, which comfortably envelops an entire human lifetime. If we manage to alter our common sense of time and take a peek at the long view of time on geological, astronomical, and cosmic timescales both in the past and the future, our insignificance becomes all too apparent and arrogance all too infantile. Let us find out who we are in these different frames of time. Our sense of history is quite limited indeed. Through his profound words Brannen brings a great sense to our understanding of the past and helps us recover our sanity marred by a corrupt anthropocentric worldview. He tells, “Our conception of history tends to stretch back only a few thousand years at most, and typically only a few hundred. This is a scandalously shortsighted appreciation of what came before—like reading only the last sentence of a book and claiming to understand what’s in the rest of the library. . . . Clearly the story of planet Earth is not the story of Homo sapiens. . . . It’s a planet where the climate tantrums of humans, the whiz-bang ingenuity of our machines, and the projects of our civilization are irrelevant. The continents have been rearranged, entire oceans have been consumed and created, and the constellations have been jumbled and scattered across the sky.” Zalasiewicz takes a bold look at the future and places our ‘greatness’ in geological perspective. “We are briefly in the golden age of our power, our dominance,” he suggests. “But we are destined to extinction also, just as the dinosaurs became extinct. The world will then go on as before. Once a geological age or two has passed, there will be nothing but the odd bone



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or gold ring to show that we were ever here.” Human civilisation is less than ten thousand years old. In geological deposits “with the stratigraphic thickness of a piece of cigarette paper, it will be caught between the ancient past and the substantial future. . . . Here there is no chance of finding our 1-millimetre-thick hundred-million-year-old layer. . . . The surface of the future Earth, one hundred million years from now, will not have preserved evidence of contemporary human activity. One can be quite categorical about this. Whatever arrangement of oceans and continents, or whatever state of cool or warmth will exist then, the Earth’s surface will have been wiped clean of human traces.” Irish philosopher Nick Hughes places us in cosmic canvas. He informs, “Humanity occupies a very small place in an unfathomably vast Universe. Travelling at the speed of light – 671 million miles per hour – it would take us 100,000 years to cross the Milky Way. But we still wouldn’t have gone very far. By recent estimates, the Milky Way is just one of 2 trillion galaxies in the observable Universe, and the region of space that they occupy spans at least 90 billion light-years. If you imagine Earth shrunk down to the size of a single grain of sand, and you imagine the size of that grain of sand relative to the entirety of the Sahara Desert, you are still nowhere near to comprehending how infinitesimally small a position we occupy in space. . . . The observable Universe has existed for around 13.8 billion years. If we shrink that span of time down to a single year, with the Big Bang occurring at midnight on 1 January, the first Homo sapiens made an appearance at 22:24 on 31 December. It’s now 23:59:59, as it has been for the past 438 years, and at the rate we’re going it’s entirely possible that we’ll be gone before midnight strikes again. The Universe, on the other hand, might well continue existing forever, for all we know. . . . The cosmic point of view encompasses literally everything in the Universe: the entirety of space and time, from edge to edge, and beginning to end. From that point of view, we are nothing more than a microscopic blip, physically and temporally speaking at least.” For cultivating a long view of time, I suggest these books: The Planet in a Pebble and The Earth After Us by Jan Zalasiewicz, The Ends of the World by Peter Brannen, The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, and Cosmos by Carl Sagan, which is a classic. To get a sense of deep time until the end of universe, I recommend American filmmaker John Boswell’s Timelapse of the Future: A Journey to the End of Time (https://www.youtube.com/channel/ UCR9sFzaG9Ia_kXJhfxtFMBA). I do this in hope that a different sense of time imparted by them might erode some of your arrogance and bring much needed sanity.

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Sagan’s profound expression of the fact can numb our senses and we can do nothing about it. He writes, “On the scale of worlds—to say nothing of stars and galaxies—humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.” Earth, which is all that we have for a home, where we have evolved and where we wreak havoc, is just a “pale blue dot . . . a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Who do we think we are if earth itself is a dust speck? Who? In 2008 came an animation movie Horton Hears a Who! It was made primarily for children but nothing conveys our cosmic insignificance more beautifully and plainly than it. It is not a comedy but a sensible and serious cinema, thus. We are no different from those ridiculously looking and irrationally behaving microscopic creatures called Whos inhabiting that invisible dust speck, however smart and capable we might think we are in our anthropocentric view. Earth is a finite place, it is all that we have, and we know it well. That means hardly anything to us, though. We are mindlessly destroying our planet, which is just perfect for life and so good that nothing can get better. And, then, we are talking about terraforming—transforming totally uninhabitable and lifeless planets to resemble earth for human habitation. What can be more absurd and stupid? On our cosmic insignificance American physicist Brian Greene writes, “In the fullness of time all that lives will die. . . . The unfolding of any given life is beyond prediction. The final fate of any given life is a foregone conclusion. . . . From planets to stars, solar systems to galaxies, black holes to swirling nebulae, nothing is everlasting. . . . The interval on the cosmic timeline in which conditions allow for the existence of self-reflective beings may well be extremely narrow. Take a cursory glance at the whole shebang, and you might miss life entirely. Nabokov’s description of a human life as a ‘brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness’ may apply to the phenomenon of life itself. . . . We mourn our transience and take comfort in a symbolic transcendence, the legacy of having participated in the journey at all. You and I won’t be here, but others will, and what you and I do, what you and I create, what you and I leave behind contributes to what will be and how future life will live. But in a universe that will ultimately be devoid of life and consciousness, even a symbolic legacy—a whisper intended for our distant descendants—will disappear into the void.” We believe we know that earth would be charred by an inflating sun in about five billion years from now. That would not hurt anyone! Life would have ended here much before that after the disappearance of earth’s magnetic field as a result of its solidified core, only if a large celestial body or some



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other heavenly forces do not end it even earlier. Greene reminds us, “Nothing is permanent. Nothing is absolute.” Who we are in such grand scheme of things and what is there to us in it other than a moral meaning in our day-to-day existence of a short lifetime? This question must be asked and answered by each rescuer. VI Terrorists do not have the resources of State. Neither do they have numbers, equipments, technology, and freedom to pursue their goal. They are very effective all the same. I am not wrong if I say, I believe, that the best trained terrorist is less trained than the least trained soldier. How, then, they have held the world to ransom? The answer is simple: They believe in their cause. All ideas are important to their believers. Many human worlds exist within a busy natural world on our planet and they all are made by certain underlying shared beliefs. An attack on someone’s core beliefs, then, becomes an existential question for him, for it is a veritable attack on his world. Fighting for one’s cherished beliefs is akin to fighting for one’s survival, thus. All can fight, only if they believe in something worth a sacrifice. On morality whatever I say and however hard I might try, it will make no difference I know; humanity will remain in its cocoon of delusion and people the centre of universe, the purpose of cosmos in their self-serving thoughts and behaviours. But to change the world is not my objective. All I need is a couple of hundred young men to believe in my story and become hard-core rescuers.

Chapter 9 Operational Strategy for Hostage Rescue

I What is strategy and what is its purpose? “The true purpose of strategy is to diminish the possibility of resistance,” writes British military theorist Basil Liddell Hart. “Strategy is not a game played against nature. Instead, it is activity geared to secure advantage over, or deny advantage to, an adversary who is motivated, and not infrequently able, to thwart you,” notes the British-American scholar of geopolitics Colin Gray. In this sense, strategy is a plan prepared to achieve an objective despite enemy; the existence of adversarial intent and efforts in the world is what makes strategy different from plan. Strategy, writes American historian Antulio Echevarria, “is the practice of reducing an adversary’s physical capacity and willingness to fight, and continuing to do so until one’s aim is achieved.” Also, it is relevant not only to waging wars but, to quote Echevarria, “military strategy is relevant to any type of conflict, or use of force.” Hostage rescue is no exception, then. However, unlike in other competitive and confrontational situations including war, securing advantage over hostile forces, diminishing their resistance, reducing their capacity and willingness to fight, and defeating them in the end is not enough in a complex terrorist crisis and mass hostage rescue. Enemy here must be annihilated swiftly. By strategy, then, I mean military strategy formulated for a clean and rapid rescue operation to save and extricate all hostages from a complex terrorist stronghold by killing all terrorists holed up therein. Of it there are many definitions but strategy is better understood when contrasted with tactics, for they operate in tandem and lose much of their meaning and force without each other. In other words, strategy and tactics are two sides of operational coin and should be seen as such for a better grasp of operational art, that is, the conduct of fighting. Strategy is what 439

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you devise and tactics is what you do and with both you operate throughout and achieve your goal despite resistance, randomness, and uncertainty. In sum, strategy is akin to plan and tactics to action. While this is a short and simple definition, it leaves much to be desired. Here is a still better and simpler definition, the best I could think of for conceptual clarity. Strategy is what you intend and set out to do by yourself to defeat your adversary and achieve your goal. Tactics is what you actually do in the face of opposing actions of adversary taken to prevent you from achieving your goal. Strategy is, therefore, useful in all adversarial situations to achieving goals and so is tactics to reacting and adapting to a fast changing world where you are operating. Strategy outlines the general principles and broad framework of operation and also quantifies resources required for putting them into practice. It formulates a plan of action for achieving certain goal, the effectuation and direction of which until mission is accomplished is called operation. In advance, this plan of action also helps put together a plan for the creation, acquisition, and mobilisation of men and materiel required for realising that goal. Strategy, then, is entirely dependent on politics and economics for resources, which are always scarce and whose allocation is always competitive and a domain of politics and power. Without timely political patronage and consistent economic support which enable and empower people behind certain ideas and bring their ideas to bear on the world, strategy remains just a bunch of papers as this book is. II Before discussing hostage rescue strategy, let us find some interesting relationships between State and terrorists which will shape our strategy. To instil maximum shock and terror by maximum damage and to get maximum attention for maximum time is what terrorists would always want and strive for. A large-scale hostage crisis, therefore, is far more valuable to terrorists than a large-scale bombing unless, of course, it is as spectacular and incredible as World Trade Centre attack. A bombing incident surely delivers a great shock but it wanes quickly too as there is nothing more to it. In contradistinction to an explosion, the shock and disbelief of hostagetaking is sustained as long as suspense remains as to the fate of hostages and hostage-takers and popular interest continues long after the termination of crisis in the stories of hostages and hostage-takers.



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However impossible and catastrophic a mass hostage crisis might seem to resolve, it is a foregone conclusion that State would always defeat terrorists in the end should it decide to take military action, given its all-round superiority, that is, numerical superiority, relative superiority, and local numerical superiority. As Liddell Hart put it, “Force can always crush force, given sufficient superiority in strength or skill.” For on both counts State is sufficiently superior to terrorists, the outcome of a complex terrorist crisis is predetermined and known to all, only if State does not succumb to the pressures of crisis and give in to the demands of terrorists, if indeed there are any. Perpetrators of such crisis too know this fact and they come fully prepared to fight and die, to kill and get killed. Time assumes great import and becomes the most decisive factor in a largescale hostage crisis. For both belligerents in a complex terrorist crisis, terrorists and State, time in opposite senses is paramount. The more time terrorists get, the more injury they inflict on State. The less time terrorists get, the less damage is done to State. Terrorists would want to prolong and drag a hostage crisis for as long as they can and State would want to terminate it as soon as it can. Even after the commencement of military action, time is paramount to both parties opposing each other—terrorists would want to kill as many hostages as they can for which they would need time and State would want to kill all terrorists as rapidly as it can to prevent them from killing hostages by denying time. Schematic relationship of both contending parties to time is shown in figure 9.1. Terrorists

Loss

Rescuers Time

Relationship of Terrorists and Rescuers to Time Figure 9.1

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III We will now develop our hostage rescue strategy. To save hostages is the sole purpose for which a hostage rescue strategy exists; to take revenge, teach lesson, or send message is not its purpose. It, then, must consider, curb, and curtail all possibilities which might kill hostages. Of this there are two cardinal and distinct possibilities, others being merely their derivatives. 1. A terrorist can kill if not killed. 2. A hostage can be killed if not freed. The sole purpose of strategy thus lays out before us dual operational objectives that must be pursued and attained in fullness and side by side. Both these objectives—killing terrorists inside stronghold and extricating hostages from stronghold—are equally paramount and carry the same weight. In other words, while killing is merely incidental to saving, a hostage rescue strategy cannot be conceived without the dual operational objectives of killing and saving. And, such strategy is possible only when it is built on certain principles of operation. IV Principles of operation discussed in this chapter are rooted in the history of nineteenth and twentieth century warfare in Europe and its exposition by several noted practitioners and scholars of warfare. Carl von Clausewitz was a Prussian general and a contemporary of Napoleon Bonaparte who he called “the God of War.” He meticulously studied Napoleonic campaigns and wrote On War, his magnum opus on military theory that was published posthumously in 1832. Napoleonic art of war and its exposition by Clausewitz and others might have become irrelevant in the context of complex warfare of our age but it still makes a great sense in hostage rescue operations where all efforts must be compressed in one action and concentrated at one moment. It is useful also because, as Clausewitz wrote, “war in its literal meaning is fighting,” and, “in whatever way it is conducted its conception remains unaltered, and fighting is that which constitutes war.” Ideas presented here, I must say, are not new but quite old, in that they were well known to the masters of warfare such as Napoleon, Jomini, and Clausewitz among others. As for Napoleon Bonaparte, the tallest of all in the theory and practice of warfare, he certainly had a



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narcissistic sense of self and was too impolite, so he bragged about himself and ran down others all the time. He brought about large-scale death and destruction too in a short span of time through his endless wars. Nonetheless, he was a genius of military organisation and operation who quickly rose to become the emperor of France and was one of the greatest military leaders ever lived. About Napoleon, the Belgian scholar of strategy Bruno Colson writes, “He fought as many battles as Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Frederick II of Prussia combined, on terrains, in climates, and against enemies that were very different from one another. His mastery of mass warfare and his ability to raise, organize, and equip numerous armies dramatically changed the art of war and marked the beginning of the modern era.” Colson further writes, “Napoleon invented a new practice of war. He was the first to be capable of leading large masses of men towards a single, precise objective: putting enemy armies out of action in record time.” There have not been many men in human history with such a vast experience in warfare and, therefore, Napoleon’s insights into military affairs are still relevant to and quite useful in fighting. V No operational strategy which is not based on and in concord with the principles of operation can be trusted to achieve its goal. In other words, a strategy framed with disregard for the principles of operation and which ends up creating discord between principles and formulations is more likely to fail than not. Given the paramount importance of these principles and since operational strategy cannot be allowed to digress and diverge from them, I will discuss the principles of rescue operation before proposing hostage rescue strategy. VI A strategy must conform to the principle of simplicity. Everything in operation should be simple and everything complicated should be avoided. Simplicity is about employing common sense and spontaneity, about being direct and uncomplicated, natural and smooth, fluid and rapid, intuitive and reflexive in problem-solving. It is akin to drawing a straight line connecting two dots than following a crooked and convoluted path to join dots. Napoleon understood its role clearly and he consistently advised and advocated simplicity. He said, “In war, you have to be utterly simple. . . . What is simplest in war is always best and the only good things are simple.” Napoleon was clear that strategy without execution is nothing and difficult plans cannot be executed in a messy environment.

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He told, “War being a profession of execution, all complicated ploys must be excluded from it. Simplicity is the precondition of all good manoeuvres. . . . The art of war is like anything beautiful: it is simple. The simplest manoeuvres are the best. . . . The art of war does not require complicated manoeuvres; the most simple are preferable. Good sense is needed.” It is crucial that we keep things simple, for the simplest things are difficult to execute in the heat of action. On this Clausewitz warns us, “In strategy everything is very simple, but not on that account very easy” and reiterates that “everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.” If the simplest things are difficult in fighting, then, complex things must be impossible to do—hence simplicity. But why is it so and why must we follow this principle? Mysterious intrusion of Murphy’s Law in everyday life is known to us all. Though we do not entirely know what drives it and how it comes about, it frustrates us all the time. That the smoothness of action is retarded by friction is a fact of science and friction in this sense is always present in operations too. Friction here is that invisible force which is not controlled or deployed by enemy but still somehow emerges in a situation to oppose and arrest your movement and advance. It may manifest in many different forms but its action remains the same always, of resisting, delaying, and preventing you from proceeding forward as intended. Friction, therefore, is your enemy’s natural ally and your eternal nemesis. Clausewitz had crystallised the idea of friction as a crucial factor in war and its outcome. He writes, “It is . . . friction . . . which makes that which appears easy in war difficult in reality.” He explains its nature and function lucidly, “Activity in war is movement in a resistant medium. Just as a man in water is unable to perform with ease and regularity the most natural and simplest movement, that of walking, so in war, with ordinary powers, one cannot keep even the line of mediocrity.” Its role is so decisive that “friction is the only conception which, in a general way, corresponds to that which distinguishes real war from war on paper.” Simplicity is the best defence against friction, even though the execution of a simple solution might be difficult, even impossible sometimes as they often are in our nightmares, for that would depend not entirely on our plan and intention but on a situation we are in, on our actions and enemy’s counteractions, and on events that occur in the midst of effectuation of our plan which are often clumsy, confounding, volatile, and uncertain when our actions are opposed vigorously and resisted determinedly.



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While simplicity is the best defence against friction, when you are assailed by it, only your ingrained skills, accumulated experience, and indomitable will to act can defeat friction. For friction acts on your mind, body, and means simultaneously, it can only be defeated by an overwhelming combined psychophysical force unleashed and channelled by you into action. What is required, then, is continuous practice and readiness in all respects to fight and a tremendous force of will displayed by unbounded decisiveness and determination to move on, come what may. VII A hostage rescue strategy must follow the principle of annihilation. While tactics will stop a rescuer from killing a terrorist if he can be captured and controlled alive, strategy on its part must prescribe killing as its objective in a complex terrorist crisis and rescuers must step out with clear resolution to kill and fight a battle of annihilation. To hit and run is a usual terror tactic but what if they know before hitting that they cannot run? They come prepared to die, then. Terrorists who effectuate a complex terrorist crisis know it beforehand that they are on a suicide mission, that their fate is sealed because they neither have numerical superiority nor relative superiority against State, and however long it may take after a military operation commences to terminate crisis, State would prevail in the end by killing or capturing them. For it is known that they would be killed in action or executed secretly if captured alive or executed judicially if death penalty could be awarded in dispensing justice, only the most fanatic and hard-hearted of all are chosen to execute such missions unflinchingly. Those who are prepared to die will fight till the bitter end and do as much harm as they can before they die. It is absolutely essential, then, to follow the principle of annihilation. Those who come to kill and get killed must be killed. Annihilation, to deal with them, is the only strategy that must be resorted to. VIII Principle of isolation demands that strategy should be such that isolates terrorists and keeps them isolated wherever they are inside a stronghold at the time of commencement of offensive. Thus isolated and cut off, terrorists are not able to move and manoeuvre, regroup and reorganise and they are forced to fight a battle of position and denied all opportunities for a battle of movement and manoeuvre. To pin down terrorists inside the small areas

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of stronghold and to deny them reinforcement or relief from any pocket inside stronghold or from the outside world, it is paramount to follow the principle of isolation. It also forestalls the escape of terrorists from their stronghold. They are given just one choice—to fight entrenched battles and die. After terrorists in their stronghold have been isolated by a powerful thrust and swift manoeuvre penetrating its entire depth, it no longer qualifies as a terrorist stronghold. At this point, it has been all but conquered and harbours only a few isolated pockets of resistance which are forced to fight positional battle and remain to be dealt with. Role of isolation principle is such that alters the whole conception and character of crisis in a matter of few minutes, thus making it indispensable to a rescue strategy. IX Soviet commander and a proponent of deep operation theory Georgii Isserson wrote, “The offensive should resemble a series of waves striking a coastline with growing intensity, trying to ruin it and wash it away with continuous blows from the depths.” In a conventional war fought in Europe, nothing could have held Red Army that was created and prepared for deep operation not known to NATO forces at the time. Its exact opposite is required in a complex terrorist crisis; here rescue offensive should resemble a gigantic tsunami sweeping everything along in a single blow. Strategy, then, must be based on the principle of irruption which creates an enormous tidal wave, not a series of waves, submerging entire stronghold in one overwhelming charge, obliterating every pocket of resistance present inside. A lightning offensive in line with the principle of irruption can only be mounted by rescuers in large numbers who break in and swarm all over the place, falling headlong upon terrorists and wresting control of hostages. Such offensive creates a sweeping avalanche of action throughout stronghold with simultaneity and synchronicity. Assault on stronghold, then, is an irruption, which is overwhelming and unstoppable. X Nothing decides the fate of hostages and terrorists in a complex terrorist crisis as the principle of momentum does. It must be pursued in strategy, operation, and tactics at all costs, thus. Seek battle. Give battle. Terrorists prefer to hit and run; they avoid battle and evade engagement as they know they cannot fight for long.



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Initiation of offensive action before enemy acts is called taking the initiative. Exploiting an opportunity to act before enemy does is called seizing the initiative. Operational manoeuvre is a movement of forces carried out to engaging enemy and avoiding a positional battle. It, then, is a frontal attack which breaks and crushes enemy resistance and effectuates a breakthrough penetrating the entire depth of enemy that fragments, envelops, and destroys enemy forces. Or, it is a surprise assault carried out by falling on enemy’s flank or rear to encircle enemy forces and cause their disorganisation and destruction. Once taken, the initiative must be retained and adversary must not be given any opportunity to reorganise and re-establish. Once commenced, action must not stop and neither its tempo nor forward movement shall slow down until the objective of operation is achieved. Momentum principle here mandates a relentless forward movement and fighting an unremitting battle. It is about constantly moving and attacking and not losing contact with enemy after establishing it. It forbids a halt or a retrograde movement, flight or retreat, after taking the initiative. It necessitates manoeuvre battle and rejects attritional or positional battle. It permits striking action only and disallows holding action strictly. Frontal offensive maximises friction, which slows down the tempo of offensive and might eventually stop operational advance resulting in a holding action. Enemy always strives by its actions to retard or halt the momentum of assault and a holding action signifies a total loss of velocity of assault, thus submitting to the will of enemy entirely. A stalled offensive, then, must be avoided not by evading a frontal assault but by redoubling activity and unremittingly channelling as much energy into the axis of penetration as needed to break and crush resistance offered by enemy. We cannot avoid frontal attack, more so inside a building, for “tactically,” writes Isserson, “any battle in the end boils down to a frontal attack.” By the tempo of operation I mean a walking pace of operational manoeuvre and losing this tempo means a stalled offensive. A walking pace of tempo must be maintained relentlessly throughout; only pursuit might require running to keep contact with terrorists or to close distance in critical moments. Maintaining this tempo of advance requires boldness more than anything else, for audaciousness plays a decisive role in reaching a decision, that is, the accomplishment of cardinal aim of operation, which is beautifully captured in British Special Air Service motto: Who Dares Wins. Not a high tempo but a constant and steady tempo is what is needed. A bold and audacious

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offensive that manoeuvres continually at a walking pace is high enough for terrorists to react effectively. Such unrelenting advance is what is dictated by the principle of momentum. But it does not ask you to run and race, dart and dash inside terrorist stronghold. Importance of taking the initiative in warfare has been at the centre of discussion for long. Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke who secured German military hegemony in the last quarter of nineteenth century Europe was an ardent admirer of Clausewitz. He wrote, “We can limit the will of the opponent only if we are ready and determined to take the initiative. . . . The advantages of the offensive are sufficiently known. Through the offensive we lay down the law of action to the opponent. He has to conform his measures to ours.” Clausewitz on his part wrote, “Every suspension of offensive action, either from erroneous views, from fear or from indolence, is in favour of the side acting defensively.” But no one had the clarity of Napoleon who said, “It is true that one must seize the moment. An instant sooner or later, and this attempt would have been unavailing. . . . War is an affair of the moment.” He explained, “I have often said that war is like an engagement with sabre thrusts. A thrust in the heart is fatal, but if you wait until your enemy has his hand raised and ready to split your head open before delivering it, you will be out of action before you have been able to make your thrust. A moment ago, you could have made your thrust, but now you are forced to parry and restrict yourself to defending, rather than seeking to kill. This is the nuance, the instant of time that must be seized, which is the spirit of war.” He also said, “When you want to invade a country, you should not fear giving battle and looking everywhere for your enemy in order to fight him.” In combat, surprises cannot be avoided. Unforeseen events will always occur, for nothing actually is in control. But in a sudden turn of events lies great advantage that must not be squandered. To win, we shall quickly adapt to new circumstances, exploit all opportunities arisen unexpectedly, seize the moment always, and retain the initiative throughout. If done, an operation shall be over before long. This, then, is the key to success in a complex rescue operation. XI To free hostages before terrorists can harm them in response to assault on their stronghold, we must break all pockets of resistance simultaneously. It is possible only when we mobilise and concentrate more than sufficient



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forces and more besides in the theatre of operation and deploy them in sufficient numbers to mount a rescue operation. This idea is encapsulated in the principle of concentration and it is an inviolable principle of rescue strategy in a complex terrorist crisis. On the principle of concentration Napoleon said, “When you want to fight a battle, assemble all your forces; do not neglect any of them. . . . The first principle of war is that battle should only be fought with all the troops one can concentrate on the field of operations. . . . The only good detachments are ones made at the time of battle.” For Clausewitz, the superiority of numbers “is decidedly the most important of all. . . . The first rule is therefore to enter the field with an army as strong as possible. . . . Whether the troops thus brought are sufficient or not, we have then done in this respect all that our means allowed.” He said, “There is no more imperative and simpler law for strategy than to keep the forces concentrated.—No portion is to be separated from the main body unless called away by some urgent necessity. . . . Whoever has forces where the enemy does not give them sufficient employment, whoever has part of his forces on the march—that is, allows them to lie dead—while the enemy’s are fighting, he is a bad manager of his forces.” To assemble all available forces for action is imperative, for “the best strategy is always to be very strong, first generally, then at the decisive point. . . . All forces which are available and destined for a strategic object should be simultaneously applied to it; and this application will be so much the more complete the more everything is compressed into one act and into one moment.” Colson explains their rationale, “In tactics, reserves are indispensable for continuing and renewing an engagement. Reserves can restore it if it is in jeopardy. In strategy, by contrast, once the decisive battle has been lost, there is no way to restore anything.” In a complex terrorist crisis, there is just one battle which decides everything. For fighting this decisive battle, all forces must be available to act—mobilised and deployed. In a complex terrorist crisis, we must employ the principle of concentration in strategy and operation and mobilise more than enough forces to converge in the theatre of operation. For what is ‘more than enough’ cannot be prescribed objectively, an entire hostage rescue force shall be mobilised for a rescue operation in a complex terrorist crisis. If there are more hostage rescue forces available which can interoperate, a second such force shall also be called out and assembled in operation’s base. This formula can be applied recurrently depending on the complexity of crisis and the availability of forces.

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XII We have discussed six principles of operation above but left surprise out of our discussion, which is also generally considered an important operational principle. I will explain why I have excluded it. Surprise is a product of facing something unexpected, a result of failed expectations of a man and his view of the world. Surprise primarily impacts the psychological state of man, mostly negatively and temporarily, but may as well have certain physiological consequences, mostly adverse to his performance efficiency. It is likely to help rescuers if terrorists are surprised by their actions. According to Napoleon, audacity delivers surprise. To quote Clausewitz, “Secrecy and rapidity are the two factors of this product.” He also argues that surprise is essentially and more easily delivered in tactical territory than in strategic realm. I have not included surprise in the ensemble of operational principles of hostage rescue, for surprise would be delivered anyway if all the above six principles are indeed practiced and applied. If terrorists expect that the bursting of a few grenades or a blast of an explosive device would force rescuers to retreat, thus temporarily halting their advance towards them, then, arguably, they would not be but surprised if the tempo of offensive mounted by rescuers does not break or diminish by their counteractions and continues instead. There is a possibility of them being not surprised all the same if terrorists have drugged themselves, which alters the state of mind and the workings of brain radically, but surprise would not work against them anyway, then. In most cases, we can safely believe, a sustained momentum of offensive against terrorists secured by the dare of rescuers in battle would produce surprise and its debilitating effects on their adversaries. Liddell Hart could clearly see this and said, “Movement generates surprise, and surprise gives impetus to movement.” Thus, assault and its tempo must continue at all costs and by all means necessary in a rescue operation, no matter what happens in battle. Principle of irruption also delivers shock and surprise. Simultaneity of actions encircling all terrorists everywhere in their stronghold too will produce surprise, for it is not expected to happen usually and also not possible by means of spectacular insertions at heights that special forces are so famous for. Ideally, if no time is wasted after forces have assembled and rescue operation commences immediately, even if terrorists do not take any hostile action



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against hostages, it will surprise them as it is not expected to happen, given the political indecision of democratic societies. But that is beyond our control. Secrecy surprises too but the principles of operation are an open secret. If rescuers follow a strategy based on these principles, it still remains a sound and secret strategy that is more likely to surprise terrorists than not. Because not many terrorists are ever likely to read them and still less would ever know or suspect that rescuers would employ them. All that is needed, in general, is a shroud of silence and a veil of opacity on the existence of such forces. If terrorists happen to know everything, a relatively rare event, then, we can presume, they would also know that they can do pretty much nothing about it and this realisation would only dishearten them further. If strategy is about stratagem, then, there is not much room available for rescuers to manoeuvre and surprise. Fullness and speed of their charge and rescuers’ unstoppable advance is the only way to deliver shock and surprise in a mass hostage rescue operation. XIII In this section I will define certain words and phrases which are relevant to the remainder of book. Operation is best defined in NATO AAP-06 as “a sequence of coordinated actions with a defined purpose.” Operational is what takes a holistic and broad view of operation and involves mobilisation, coordination, synchronisation, and action of all elements until mission is accomplished, which is nothing but the conduct of fighting. Tactical is what takes a narrow and immediate view of action of an element to accomplish operational objective, which is actual fighting. Defensive position is a position taken for fight where physical features are normally used as a means of protection. Cordon is best defined by Clausewitz as “any system of defence in which a series of interconnected posts is intended to give direct protection to an area.” Stronghold is a building, compound, or area taken over and defended by terrorists that also confines hostages.

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Theatre of operation comprises that space where combatants can assail and engage each other. It incorporates the entire interior space of building or compound occupied by terrorists and hostages, its all physical connections with the outside world such as roofs and roads, bridges and wires, trees and tunnels, and also its surrounding streets, features, and areas which can be engaged from stronghold. Decisive points of theatre are those points and features in a theatre of operation which, if occupied by rescuers, cut off terrorists from other areas and do not allow them to regroup, reinforce, or retreat, thus deciding the outcome of operation significantly. Line of operation is a path taken and traversed by forces to assault hostile forces and accomplish operational objective. Operation’s base is a place close to the theatre of operation where all personnel and materiel required for operation are assembled and stored. From and to where all elements and equipments involved in operation set out, supported and supplied, and report back; where injured and hostages are evacuated to, information is received and relayed, and the coordination of all activities is carried out. Police quarantine is a cordoned area close to and a part of operation’s base where evacuees are brought straight from stronghold and processed. They are screened, given necessary assistance, and held here until all operational and procedural formalities are completed, after which they are allowed to go home. This facility is under the charge of police authorities responsible for public safety and the investigation of terrorist incident. Forward detachment is a limited force that sets out immediately, reaches the theatre of operation before other elements do, and acquires and retains as many decisive points of theatre as possible by employing speed and stealth to deny terrorists mobility and opportunity to escape, regroup, or reorganise. It is essentially a holding force that pins down terrorists and may engage them on contact and clearance from command for attritional and erosional effect. It secures lines of operation and also gathers and supplies intelligence to main force. Encounter battle is a battle that ensues upon a contact with enemy. Meeting engagement is the engagement of in-sight enemy by firearms inside effective range.



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Effective range is the range of action by a firearm for intended effect. Assaulter is a fighter who specialises in close combat and manoeuvre battle and mainly fights with a subcompact assault rifle or submachine gun fired through a reflex sighting optics. Breacher is an assaulter with specialisation in the use of explosives for a rapid breaching of gates, doors, windows, and walls and disrupting explosive devices for swift and safe passage. Marksman is a fighter who specialises in both the battle of position and movement from short to medium distances and fights with a lightweight accurised semiautomatic rifle fired through a sighting scope. Sniper is a fighter who specialises in precision engagement of target, both man and material, employing stealth and distance and using a heavy barrel bolt action or semiautomatic precision rifle fired through a sighting scope. For long-range engagements, snipers often work in a team; a shooter is assisted by a spotter in target identification and ballistic correction for accurate shot placement. Reconstitute means to replenish the lost elements of a force or formation. Reinforce means to add extra elements to a force or formation. Reorganise means to re-establish a force or formation from available elements after a reversal. Decision means the accomplishment of cardinal aim of operation. Decision by arms means the accomplishment of operational aim by military force. XIV We will now discuss hostage rescue strategy proper. Although I am against using obfuscating acronyms that paint a euphemistic face by masking its ugliness or make human story sound mechanical, I will make an exception for the ease of communication. Hostage rescue strategy is a bi-cyclical strategy which runs two action cycles spinning continuously in tandem and parallel to each other throughout operation. Its first action cycle is instrumental in nature, run to support a

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second action cycle which is actual and substantive and drives the whole operation. It, then, is like a bicycle whose both wheels spin together without a pause, front paving the way for reaching destination and rear powering its motion. Strategy for dealing with terrorists, which is its first and instrumental action cycle, has four steps, which are confine, contact, confront, kill. Its acronym CCCK is pronounced seek. Strategy for actual hostage rescue, which is its second and substantive action cycle, also has four steps, which are find, control, command, scram. Its acronym FiCCS is pronounced fix. I will call it bi-cyclical seek and fix strategy where seek cycle leads operational bicycle and fix cycle moves it. Both wheels are crucial and must move together always, for bicycle will not reach its destination if one wheel stops spinning. To effectuate this bi-cyclical strategy, we need three main active elements, which are holding force, striking force, and rescue force. These elements enter and irrupt into stronghold in the same order, though, not as scattered bodies but as a contiguous mass. Holding force comprised of assaulters, breachers, marksmen, and snipers spearheads offensive and secures the decisive points of theatre as well as the lines of operation. With its entry into the theatre of operation, forward detachment merges in and becomes a part of holding force or replaced by it in full or in part. Once in place, the first step of seek action cycle is completed. Terrorists now stand isolated and confined, encircled and enveloped, unable to reposition and regroup outside the bounds of stationery positions, open or defensive, taken by holding force inside and outside stronghold; their escape is forestalled and mobility greatly curtailed by a holding force ever ready for meeting engagement. Striking force comprising assaulters and breachers completes the remaining steps of seek action cycle, which are contact, confront, kill. It raids the isolated pockets of resistance and penetrates deep inside to search and destroy terrorists pinned and confined by holding force. Rescue force is a group of assaulters and breachers that acts independently but in synchronicity with striking force and effectuates all four steps of fix action cycle, which are find, control, command, scram in order to search and rescue hostages and trapped persons inside stronghold. While its mission is to extricate the victims of terrorist strike and not to raid and kill terrorists, it is quite capable of and fully ready for fighting encounter battle and destroying



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the targets of opportunity. Rescuers normally trail behind strikers but they might jump them and advance alone if hostages are sighted before terrorists. Rescue force instantly overwhelms hostages and trapped persons and brings them to absolute submission for a total compliance of its command. To do so is absolutely imperative, for the victims of terror might behave irrationally; they might panic or become immobilised or incoherent or might as well display sympathy for terrorists and hostility towards rescuers in reaction to an intense and imminent fear of death. Their evacuation is effected immediately and speedily, for stronghold remains a dangerous place until rendered safe. Scram underlines the urgency of evacuation and a speedy movement of people escaping from stronghold. Implementation of seek and fix strategy also needs two reserve elements which are called into action when required for various purposes but not committed prematurely. Evacuation force is required to move casualties and also to assist hostages and trapped persons who are incapacitated or unable to move rapidly due to illness, shock, old age, or otherwise. Idea of rapid rescue requires a dedicated force for assisted evacuation. All evacuators are assaulters who carry firearms along with lightweight foldable stretchers and other useful equipments. They operate in a team of two. Reserve force of assaulters, breachers, marksmen, and snipers is required to reconstitute, that is, to replenish the lost strength of or to reinforce, that is, to add extra strength to striking force and holding force or any other element as required after the commencement of offensive. A reserve force is necessary because we can make only an initial plan of deployment according to strategy and a crude understanding of crisis; it must be revised and adapted according to new information and ongoing events throughout operation. Factors such as casualty and complexity, fatigue and exertion during operation would need an introduction of fresh troops into action—hence reserve. Both seek and fix cycles of hostage rescue strategy, we know, run parallel to each other throughout operation. But, what if between them we must choose one in case there emerges an irreconcilable and irresolvable clash or conflict? My advice is clear in that case: Choose seek. This in brief is hostage rescue strategy and it fully conforms to all six principles of operation delineated above. Certain important details concerning it are given below.

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Given a large mass of force and its irruption into stronghold for a rapid termination of crisis, the only conceivable entry and insertion of force into stronghold could be from ground floor. One or more entrances to stronghold can be breached for entry and even walls can be breached at one or more places for inserting the whole mass together but there can be no doubt that it has to be done from ground floor. Diversion can, of course, be created by hovering helicopters over stronghold at the time of breaching entrances and walls on ground floor, but the insertion of force at heights by fast roping, abseiling, or any form of descending or ascending through ropes is out of the question and so is any form of escalade. Breathtaking feats involving helicopters, ropes, and ladders to enter a building are incompatible with seek and fix strategy. Offensive here must commence from ground floor and force must move on foot. Holding force occupies all decisive points of theatre. In a multistorey building, for example, entrances, corridors, staircases, and elevator shafts channel the movement of people. Then, all junctions linking horizontal pathways to vertical passageways are the decisive points of building which must be held and secured if we intend to curtail the mobility of terrorists in order to isolate and confine them into the small sections of stronghold and secure our lines of operation. If the floor design of a building is complicated, we might have to additionally take positions at certain junctions and corners on the same floor and secure each floor of building in this manner for achieving our operational objective. All such strategic points shall be identified for their occupation by holding force before mounting offensive. We cannot determine the size and constitution of holding force without this exercise. It is possible that certain decisive points reveal themselves only during operation. Such points are, then, taken belatedly to gain tactical advantage for the remainder of enterprise. For our strategic aim is to isolate, confine, and pin down terrorists into the smallest possible areas of stronghold and deny them freedom to move and manoeuvre beyond these confines, any feature in a theatre of operation which helps us realise this objective becomes a decisive point. Once we take control of all decisive points of theatre, our lines of operation become secured automatically and we can move freely and safely through them. Evacuees are moved through the lines of operation and rushed out of stronghold to police quarantine where security screening, health screening, and identity screening of all individuals is carried out and subsequent actions taken. A terrorist too can sneak out of stronghold in the guise of a hostage and a secondary attack can happen here from within. Protocols must be designed



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in order to deal with it, thus. Frisking of all evacuees for knives, firearms, explosives, and other things that can be weaponised should be done before their admission into facility. Force should be ready for a contingency of secondary attack. A vigilant watch should be maintained continuously over all rescued individuals and their movement should be restricted. Objects that could be weaponised should be removed from holding area. Also, police quarantine must be set up at a safe distance in a safe direction from stronghold so that it does not get caught in a firefight or any spillover confrontation. It should be a secure and guarded place with sufficient space for people to sit in an orderly fashion; on-floor seating is better for surveillance. Basic comforts such as water, food, and toilets should be available. Paramedics, first aid, and ambulances should also be available. Interview desk should be at a distance from holding area. Ground floor of a nearby building is preferable to a tented facility; a school building or sports complex is ideal for setting up police quarantine. It is useful to set it up closer to operation’s base. Operation’s base is a busy place which needs a large space, both indoor and outdoor. It should be located close to stronghold to gain a shortest and safest line of operation connecting base to front. But its location should not be too close to stronghold to fall in a line of sight of terrorists or to be within a spillover range should terrorists manage to breakout successfully and gunfight spills into the streets. A security cordon to cover the base of operation is useful and desirable which should be deployed promptly after the assembly of main force. Theatre of operation is the field of battle that should be evacuated immediately and completely for military operation and around which a protective cordon be thrown swiftly to seal and contain it fully. To be effective, the posts of security cordon must remain beyond the line of sight of terrorists. Stronghold is surrounded and placed under siege by first responders. On the arrival of forward detachment of hostage rescue force, operational primacy is claimed by hostage rescue force and the charge of stronghold is handed over to it. On the arrival of main force, the cordon of first responders and auxiliary forces is pushed further out beyond the limits of theatre of operation. While seek and fix strategy does not seem to prescribe anything beyond killing and rescuing, given the nature of crisis and the purpose of operation, it is implied that after the rescue phase of operation must begin the clearing phase of operation. Search and withdrawal actions must be done meticulously by following the principle of abundance of caution. Only after a thorough job

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a site should be declared safe and operation concluded. Until then, forces must not let their guard down. An operation has several phases and stages, sides and aspects such as initial, middle, and terminal or search and destroy and search and rescue or mobilisation, rescue, and clearance. What is, then, the most crucial and critical part of operation? Different people view it differently. Napoleon said, “The initial moments are the most intense and decisive.” He was absolutely right. Isserson said, “Difficulties must be expected during the course of an operation, since all details cannot be foreseen. One should expect the greatest tension and crisis at the final stage of an operation. . . . Assuming that the final moment of the operation would be the easiest . . . would be a fatal mistake. It is always the first step that is easier. . . . Resistance can display enormous strength at the last stage of an operation.” He was right too. The truth of the matter is, from the beginning to the end an operation is absolutely critical in all facets and it is faulty and dangerous to assume that any of its phases or facets is going to be easier. XV We have abundantly discussed that the future of complex systems is uncertain and also established that forcing a decision by arms in a complex terrorist crisis produces a phenomenon that qualifies as a complex system. That fighting is a complex system where events are not in control and neither its course nor outcome is certain was known to the masters of warfare in nineteenth century Europe too. Napoleon saw it clearly that our strategy might just not work. He said, “Sometimes the good ones fail as a result of chance circumstances; sometimes bad ones succeed by a whim of fortune. . . . Such is the outcome of battles— they often depend on the smallest accident.” Clausewitz also knew it well that we cannot make a perfect plan, for we cannot foresee the future exactly. He wrote, “We see therefore how from the commencement, the absolute, the mathematical as it is called, no where finds any sure basis in the calculations in the art of war; and that from the outset there is a play of possibilities, probabilities, good and bad luck, which spreads about with all the coarse and fine threads of its web, and makes war of all branches of human activity the most like a game of cards.” He also said, “In war, through the influence of an infinity of petty circumstances, which cannot properly be described on paper, things disappoint us, and we



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fall short of the mark. . . . This enormous friction, which is not concentrated, as in mechanics, at a few points, is therefore everywhere brought into contact with chance, and thus facts take place upon which it was impossible to calculate, their chief origin being chance.” Hence, “a general must be aware of it that he may overcome it, where that is possible; and that he may not expect a degree of precision in results which is impossible on account of this very friction.” Moltke too knew about it and said, “We must never forget that a battle cannot be fought without sacrifices and that its outcome can seldom be foreseen with certainty. . . . Operations depend not only on our own intentions but also on the enemy’s. The former we know, the latter we can but surmise.” As a result, “no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact.” We shall never forget this.

Chapter 10 Fighting Tactics for Hostage Rescue

I We know that simple rules when repeated on end by a large number of individuals can produce complex phenomena. We have also discussed that simplicity is generally a superior way of solving problems both in science and elsewhere. As John Gribbin writes, “It is not quite always true in science that the simplest solution to a problem is certain to be the right one, but this approach, known as Ockham’s Razor, has proved an extremely reliable rule of thumb in most circumstances, and it is certainly always advisable to choose the simplest solution unless there are overwhelming reasons not to.” But simplicity is often neglected, for humans intuitively display an additive bias in problem-solving, even when subtractive approach offers a superior solution. It is a psychological phenomenon which has been recently discovered by a team of American psychologists. Nature Briefing sums up this phenomenon in simple language: “When solving problems, people tend to think about adding something before they think of taking something away – even when subtracting is the better solution.” Gabrielle Adams, Benjamin Converse, Andrew Hales, and Leidy Klotz, the authors of paper on human additive bias published in Nature, conclude, “As with many heuristics, it is possible that defaulting to a search for additive ideas often serves its users well. However, the tendency to overlook subtraction may be implicated in a variety of costly modern trends, including overburdened minds and schedules, increasing red tape in institutions and humanity’s encroachment on the safe operating conditions for life on Earth. If people default to adequate additive transformations–without considering comparable (and sometimes superior) subtractive alternatives–they may be missing opportunities to make their lives more fulfilling, their institutions more effective and their planet more liveable.” 461

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On the strength of these general theories, I argue that a few simple rules of morality, a simple operational strategy, and a counterintuitive subtractive method of problem-solving that makes things simpler, when applied and repeated on end by a large number of rescuers, would generate a complex counterterrorist response that will be able to resolve a complex terrorist crisis with minimal loss. Risks will remain nonetheless but we must not forget that all struggles entail suffering and demand sacrifice and a decisive action cannot be discounted or delayed on these grounds. Fighting tactics discussed here for hostage rescue operation are guided by these general theories and even more by the principles and prescriptions of seek and fix strategy. But the complexity of real world is such that the full details of tactics can neither be written nor prescribed; only certain useful ideas, tactical insights, and relevant suggestions can be given and taken. On this limitation, Napoleon Bonaparte had clearly asserted, “One cannot and must not prescribe anything absolute. There is no natural order of battle. Anything that might be prescribed would do more harm than good.” Helmuth von Moltke had also sagaciously advised, “The main point is correctly to estimate at each moment the changing situation and then to do the simplest and most natural things with firmness and caution.” Nothing is absolute in a battle where even simple things are difficult. II Definitions given below are useful in addition to those given in the previous chapter and they should be frequently referred to for clarity. Zone of operation is a defined sector of theatre of operation which becomes the area of responsibility of a contingent it is assigned to. For example, each floor of a multistorey terrorist stronghold could be a zone of operation; all internal zones of building, then, are stacked vertically on top of each other. A larger compound could be divided into several horizontal zones of operation. There are external zones of operation outside stronghold too. Team is a pair of two men who usually train together; more importantly, during operations they remain together and move and act in tandem. Squad is an operational formation of eight men that is made of four teams. Small squad is an operational formation of six men that is made of three teams. Half squad is an operational formation of four men that is made of two teams.



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Forward reserve force is a reserve force that is stationed strategically inside stronghold for rapid response in contingencies. Base reserve force is a reserve force that is stationed at operation’s base for replenishing forward reserves or reconstituting and reinforcing active elements directly. Temporary shelter is a safer area inside a building on fire, free from smoke and heat, where people can take refuge and survive. Reserve post is a place inside stronghold where evacuation and forward reserve teams are stationed and contingency supplies are stored. Release point is the last point that is concealed, covered, and controlled and from where rescuers could be recalled if assault on stronghold is called off. Past this point lies the point of no return. Point of no return is a point on the line of operation that reveals the advancing forces of State to terrorists, thereby revealing State’s intent of immediately resolving crisis by military force to them. Consequently, terrorists in all likelihood resort to the final action of killing hostages. III A hostage rescue force should be organised and structured tactically for the ease of operations in a complex terrorist stronghold. A team of two men is the smallest tactical component, the building block of all operational elements of rescue force. Pairing of two men for action brings the advantages of firepower, cover, support, redundancy, and reserve. An eight-man squad is the best formation for operations due to the advantage of concentration of force and a built-in reserve of two men; a simpler six-man small squad is otherwise enough for action in most situations. A squad can also be split in two half squads, each having two teams of rescuers, if it is required to act simultaneously on two fronts or a manpower shortage is felt to overrun a complex stronghold. In a rare contingency, a squad could be divided into four teams to act independently. A squad is led by point man and ends at last man. It has a formidable front guard and a robust rear guard made of first and fourth teams. Its second and third teams have command elements, squad commander at number three and rear commander at number five positions in line-up; breacher one is paired with squad commander and breacher two with rear commander; breachers can also pair up when they must act together.

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While striking and rescue elements work in squad formations, holding, evacuation, and reserve elements are deployed in team formation. Location of evacuation and reserve teams should not be farther than four floors vertically or fifty metres horizontally for a quick response. Distribute these elements strategically by placing them at various locations inside stronghold on the basis of ‘four floors fifty metres rule’ instead of concentrating all reserves at any one place inside stronghold or at operation’s base. Such placement of forces is consistent with the principle of concentration and makes hostage rescue response more effective. At the same time, do not crowd and choke the lines of operation and empty the base of operation by placing all in hand forces inside stronghold. Push method is applied for a swift reconstitution or reinforcement of active elements. First, a nearest holding team operating at the same floor or in the same zone joins striking or rescue squad that needs an additional team. Then, a forward reserve team moves in to position itself at vacated point and assumes the role of holding element which in turn is replaced by a base reserve team sent in from operation’s base. In addition to being more efficient, this reorganising procedure has two added advantages. On-floor or in-zone assaulters of holding force are rested and they are more familiar with ongoing operations there. They are spatially and temporally integrated to seek and fix operations and more organically linked to operating squads than reserve assaulters positioned in depth. On the other hand, reserve assaulters who have been rushed in for holding operation get to rest there and acquire firsthand situation awareness from static holding location. Problem of readiness for action both in terms of time and exertion is better solved by push method than direct despatch method. In matters of quick decision-making and accurate speed shooting, situation awareness and heart beats do make a difference. We can apply push method recurrently to manage all problems of reorganising active elements. For example, if two teams are required for reconstituting or reinforcing a squad, a closest evacuation team rushes and joins it behind holding team. Evacuation team is nothing but a pair of assaulters carrying a foldable stretcher between them, which is left behind at its post. Then, two base reserve teams are sent in to replenish evacuation team as well as forward reserve team now engaged in holding action. If more teams are required for reinforcing or reconstituting active elements, they are similarly mobilised sequentially from forward reserve force and evacuation force on the basis of their locations. These forces in turn are replenished by base reserve force stationed at operation’s base. For rapid response, forward reserve teams and



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evacuation teams that are closer to active elements join them first followed by base reserve teams despatched directly to join action if still more men are needed for action. Evacuation and forward reserve forces diverted for action are, then, reconstituted by base reserve force. Hence, evacuation and forward reserve forces must be positioned strategically inside a stronghold. Team-level reconstitution by a man is similarly orchestrated by push method. Clashes and predicaments in contingency response are resolved by simple rules. Reorganising event occurring first in time is addressed first. Reconstitution gets priority over reinforcement. Striking force is reorganised before rescue force. Seek and fix operations are more urgent than holding operation. Active elements are prioritised over reserve elements. Evacuation team is diverted after forward reserve team and reconstituted before it. Forward reserve is placed before base reserve and replaced by it. Full team is reconstituted before half team. Forward detachment enters stronghold as striking force if the execution of hostages begins before main force reaches the base of operation. Order of movement is organised in bottom-up and near-far order so that the back of rescuers remains covered throughout; squads assigned to the lowest and nearest zones of operation move in first and those assigned to the highest and farthest zones move in last. Holding force moves in before striking and rescue forces for providing the secure lines of operation. Striking force goes in first, rescue force follows. Evacuation force marches ahead of forward reserve force after all active elements have moved in. Battle order of a striking squad is always a compressed single file throughout approach until the point of entry. At this point, it is further compacted into a single mass leaving no gap between men. A tight line-up for room entry is necessary for minimising time lag between the entry of different squad members into room. Post entry, battle order diverges into different tactical fronts, depending on the layout of interior and threats detected therein. Transition of battle order from a single line of operation to multiple lines of operation must happen swiftly after entry. For terrorists holed up inside could be anywhere, a defective view of space and a delayed divergence of team to cover all fronts could be fatal for rescuers. Explosive charge or concussion grenade should be employed for stunning effect to make up for those instants which are necessarily lost in reorganising by forming a spatial view followed by peeling off manoeuvres to fan out in space and present multiple fronts to face undetected enemy inside, a detected enemy is always engaged on sight by all men who are there. Post operation, all

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men converge again and squad files off to another battle point. No one needs to be summoned in this arrangement, for an operational line springs back to the point of departure immediately after completing operation in its area of responsibility; other things that require attention are taken care of by communication. Exit is tactical after all men have lined up, last man exits first and forms a rear guard before point man is exposed and begins to lead his team in a direction of assault; exit is faster, not relaxed or casual, if rear guard is left outside room. When the rule of divergence and convergence is applied recurrently to split and join men tactically, it becomes a self-organising formula that works on all scales including the smallest, that is, a two-man team storming a single room. Thus, from beginning to end, all tactical formations display spreadcontract-spread-contract and split-join-split-join patterns in operational space. To deal with the problem of failure, every solution should have redundancy built in. Organisation of team, squad, and reserves too follows this rule and incorporates redundancy at all tactical levels, that is, man, team, and squad. It is absolutely imperative, then, to employ the principle of concentration in strategy and operation and mobilise more than enough forces to converge on stronghold when dealing with a complex terrorist crisis. Hostage rescue operation cannot be a protracted battle of attrition. It must be a single, swift, and sudden catastrophic charge—a maximum effort. IV Assessment of your enemy comes before everything else in combat. A quick and common sense analysis and a general awareness of what weapons and means of destruction terrorists can import with them into a stronghold and what a stronghold can provide to them is a first step of preparing for a combat. Do not wait for specific intelligence or attempt to gather information through electronic and optical surveillance, for that would always be incomplete and would not change much as regards your readiness to fight; it will only waste precious time. It is enough to know that rifles, pistols, ammunition, hand grenades, plastic explosives, detonation cords, detonators, switches, batteries, trip wires, and more besides have to be carried and brought by terrorists themselves for their planned mayhem but electricity, knives, glass, metal and wooden objects, inflammable materials, fuels such as kerosene, diesel, petrol, piped natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, and much more besides could be found in stronghold and improvised by them for destruction and killing. Actions, then, must be taken in time to minimise the ability of terrorists to use opportunistically or deliberately what is available in stronghold to their



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advantage. Also, to disrupt their situation awareness and morale, coordination and organisation, terrorist stronghold’s wireless communications frequencies, telephone and intercom lines, television cables, and video surveillance networks must be jammed and disrupted at the earliest. V Action of isolating the theatre of operation by deploying cordons around it marks the beginning of tactical operation. Action of securing the decisive points of theatre by inserting forward detachment into and around terrorist stronghold makes it tactically ready for main effort or storming offensive by main force. Sound-suppressed rifles of snipers and marksmen positioned outside stronghold could be considered for a better focus and situation awareness of forces operating inside. These preparatory actions, however, must be bypassed if terrorists begin the execution of hostages before they are put into place and direct action to kill terrorists is launched instead by all rescuers available on site. In such a situation, deploying cordons and taking over decisive points become irrelevant. VI Holed up terrorists would lock gates and bolt doors behind them. Gaining entry into a compound as well as a building—and also into rooms within—is the first problem of assaulting a terrorist stronghold, therefore. Rescuers can enter a stronghold only after successfully breaching gates, doors, windows, walls, or roofs. Explosive breaching is a method of gaining guaranteed entry through a structure by employing a smallest explosive charge and causing a minimum collateral destruction and damage. Due to the rapidity of its execution and a greater certainty of results, explosive breaching is the preferred method of entry for seek and fix strategy but the principle of irruption would exclude the breaching of windows and roofs for entry. In addition to creating an opening, thus making a way for advance and disorienting people present on the other side of breaching target who might offer resistance, explosive charges employed by rescuers would also disrupt or destroy by sympathetic detonation booby traps deployed at entrances by terrorists, if any. While it brings the advantages of speed and certainty, explosive breaching cannot be employed in the presence of large amounts of hazardous, inflammable, and combustible materials that would cause a bigger problem of explosion, fire, or contamination, stall the offensive of rescuers, and might defeat the whole purpose of operation. Similarly, it cannot be used to defeat the load bearing components of structure that might cause its collapse. In

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the event of a failed breach by an explosive charge or in a situation where explosives cannot be employed due to safety hazards, rescuers should be able to breach building structures mechanically by employing manual, motorised, pneumatic, and thermal tools for cutting, crushing, forcing, melting, and burning their way through barriers. Option of ballistic breaching by a shotgun firing frangible ammunition should also be ready and used for door breaching by breaking and dislodging locks, bolts, and hinges if rescuers find it a more convenient and speedier method of room entry in a situation. Breaching charges are prepared in advance and primed at the nearest concealed position from a breaching point. Placement of breaching charges for gaining entry into stronghold could be done employing stealth wherever possible. Forces are already placed at assault positions, at operationally safe distances closest to their designated points of entry, from where they move immediately after explosion and gain entry into stronghold. Vehicle transfer of forces from the nearest concealed positions or release points to entry points after synchronised detonations is also an option, at times a preferred one too for a mass transfer of troops. At the last driveable points, rescuers swiftly dismount their vehicles, regroup, and commence advance in a predefined order of movement; they should board and dismount accordingly. Certain precautions must be taken when using explosives. Stay away from glass windows and partitions and be mindful of overpressure hazards of explosive breaching in confined spaces. Use a minimum amount of explosive for breaching target to line up closer and to cause minimum damage and risk to hostages. Also, use as few breaching charges as possible to keep things simpler; too many types of charges complicate both logistics and applications. Pressure readings for charges used should be known. Ballistic shields are useful. Safe stand-off distance from charge with a shield is a half of what it is without a shield, for a barrier reduces blast pressure by one half. A shield protects rescuers stacked behind it from fragments too. A shield is even more useful if rescuers are not wearing ballistic helmets. While it all seems impressive, if a gain of distance is just about five metres or less, it actually does not make as much a difference on the ground as it seems on paper. If a ballistic shield is to be used for squad protection during explosive breaching, it could be carried by a breacher in number four or six position. Shielding is not recommended otherwise for advance, in which case a ballistic shield is carried by point man for the purpose of stopping bullets. Body shield for the protection of a moving squad is not useful, for fighting tactics for mass hostage rescue is predicated on manoeuvre, not cover, as you would learn later.



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A pair of breachers working together is useful—one covering the other and together both cross-checking the priming and placement of breaching charges. For redundancy, the dual priming of each breaching charge should be done and a minimum of two actual, not alternative, breaching points must be identified to gain entry into a stronghold. The more the better, for multiple entry points facilitate a rapid insertion of forces and forces assigned to a failed entry are rerouted to a breached point instead of fixing a failed breach for them which undermines the principles of irruption and momentum. Breaching charge misfire procedure must be there nonetheless. Some breachers of a rescue force should have specialisation in bomb defusing and disposal work; they remain in base reserve force and called out for handling an unexploded improvised explosive device found inside stronghold. These are, of course, only general suggestions and the standard operating procedures of a rescue force drawn up on scientific knowledge, field experimentation, and consolidated experience would define in detail all safety drills and operational measures required for dealing with explosives’ hazards including misfires in order for guaranteed entry. The bottom line is that if an explosive charge is more likely to kill hostages then it cannot be used to save them. VII In addition to securing its access into compound, building, and rooms, assault breaching also secures the operational mobility of rescue force by clearing booby traps and improvised explosive devices deployed in its lines of operation. Defenders of a stronghold would build defences and block pathways to thwart the advance of assaulters and do what it takes to repulse their offensive. Rigging the entrances and pathways of building with explosives is their best defence. Awareness of improvised explosive devices inside stronghold for the entire length of operation, therefore, is absolutely essential. Look for booby traps and trip wires. If something suspicious is detected, let a breacher take charge and decide if it should be bypassed, crossed over, contained, or disrupted. Whatever has to be done must be done quickly and if it is going to take time, regroup and reroute squad and call in breachers or bomb technicians from base reserve to deal with it. Do not shift or move objects unnecessarily. Be mindful that anything can be booby-trapped. Do not remove dead bodies from stronghold; a cadaver could be a booby trap; let breachers or bomb technicians deal with them. Move a reluctant, injured, or unconscious hostage only after ascertaining that there is no explosive device on or underneath that person which could be triggered. If a device is

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suspected to be there, let a breacher take charge and decide and, if necessary, call in a bomb technician from base reserve force. Accurate rigging of entire building with explosive charges in a way that bobby traps set up in approach paths set off explosions when rescuers enter and advance is extremely challenging in the stress and anxiety of crisis. Rigging cinema-style collapsible circuits are still more difficult. It is reasonable to presume, then, that it is impossible to rig entire building everywhere. If terrorists can manage such logistics and expertise, they might as well create mayhem by explosive force directly without having to resort to hostagetaking, mass shooting, or active shooting. Ideally, a rescue operation should commence soon after the arrival of main force, even if terrorists do not take any hostile action against hostages. If rescuers are able to do this, arguably, it might deprive terrorists of time to carefully and extensively booby-trap stronghold, even if they have supplies and skills for it. No time shall, thus, be wasted after main force has been assembled and organised, political indecision besides. In any case, when they charge, rescuers must move on, even if a stronghold is thoroughly rigged and a sizeable portion of force parishes in their attempt to kill terrorists and save hostages. A battle is not the time to count your losses; during fight, mind should be occupied with only one thought—a swift annihilation of enemy and a rapid rescue of hostages. In combat, we must deal with what is here and now and not with what is in the past or what lies in the future. Given the rarity of complex terrorist crises, there may not be any such opportunity again in the lifetime of these rescuers. Such spirit is desirable and choiceworthy, not reckless, for what else a hostage rescue force exists for? VIII Segmental corner clearing for advancing in a building is time-consuming and does not uphold the principles of irruption and momentum. On the other hand, robotic remote viewing technology cannot be employed by rescuers in the rescue phase of operation as it goes against these two principles and negates the principle of simplicity too. Also, in a complex terrorist crisis, terrorists are more likely to use hand grenades in combat than not to stall the offensive of rescuers and force them to retreat. Rescuers would lose the initiative and momentum both if terrorists are able to pin them down or push them back by their counter offensive, relying mainly on hand grenades. Hand grenades are a big problem for rescuers, therefore. While scurrying around for cover in response to a grenade attack is permissible, in that an offensive too has defensive manoeuvres, cover should be abandoned



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immediately after blast and squad must regroup to advance as before. In other words, rescuers should not be pinned by a grenade attack and become immobile by the threat of another such attack. Hand grenades are the principal suppressive asset of rescuers in a complex terrorist crisis. To rapidly open blind spaces and opaque depths, use concussion grenades which stun, startle, shock, and disorient people temporarily without harming them lethally. Carry them in abundance and use them liberally for bursting straight into rooms and corridors. Just lob your hand grenades carefully, for it must not fall back and explode on you. You can also solve the problem of hand grenades thrown by terrorists more easily by your overwhelming grenade offensive than by deploying effective defences against shrapnel. It is said, offence is the best defence; against hand grenades in a confined space, grenade offensive certainly is. Hand grenades are used as a primary means of suppression in confined spaces. IX Although now I no longer trust technology to solve our problems as I used to do a decade ago, I would highly recommend through-wall imaging technology to rescuers in a complex terrorist crisis. Deployment of throughwall imaging technology in rescue operation enables a rapid virtual search of rooms from outside, thus being in agreement with the operational principle of momentum. A good handheld micropower wideband radar made for tactical purposes can rapidly sense through a wall and reliably detect life present on the other side without having to ingress or enter, which makes the process of clearing rooms faster and efficient in the critical rescue phase of operation when we are racing against the clock. A repeat physical search of all rooms by breaking in can and must be conducted in the cautious clearing phase of operation when we are not hard-pressed for time. If a door is bolted from inside, however, it is a clear sign of presence of people therein. You must, then, breach it and get in there without wasting time in ascertaining the presence of people inside by imaging tool. You need a good deal of practice with all machines that mask the reality and construct a virtual reality instead. You should be able to read your radar’s visual display in a way that helps visualise the real world in your mind’s eye. And, you must understand the limitations of your radar clearly, what it can and cannot do. X Seek and fix strategy, on the face of it, is driven more by audaciousness than anything else. Daylight offensive, then, is preferred over night offensive due

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to the advantage of vision it offers to rescuers. Night offensive with powerful flashlights mounted on firearms is preferable to going in with night vision devices mounted on helmets. Here, idea is not relativistic, that is, to gain some perceptual and spatial advantage over terrorists. We choose what works best for us and we make up for all other disadvantages by our boldness. Fully illuminated attacks are closer to daylight attacks. Tactical flashlight is a simpler solution and, thus, choiceworthy. Flashlight illumination provides a better depth and detailing of objects and space, thus aiding rescuers in superior and faster decision-making and freeing them from having to deal with a compromised depth perception and aiming difficulties of vaunted night vision devices. To put it differently, a night vision device cannot provide a greater field of view, better visual acuity, and more information than a tactical flashlight. A powerful flashlight would aid rescuers by producing veiling glare or causing ‘light blindness’ to their adversaries by the overloading of optic nerve with more signals than it can process. A better illumination can be correlated to a reduced probability of fratricide too. And, tactical flashlights might be needed and deployed even in daytime, for rescuers are more likely to find low light conditions in the interior spaces of stronghold than not. In all, the choice of flashlight goes with the principles of simplicity and momentum and it is recommended that a weapon-mounted flashlight is used in constanton mode for continuous illumination as against intermittent illumination produced by pressing a momentary switch when required. Flashlights also free you from the politics of night vision technology and restrictions imposed by a handful of countries which own and control it and deny its access to others in a systematic and graded manner. XI A fire in a stronghold cannot be ruled out; it could be ignited by design or started by accident. If the whole building is engulfed by fire, it no longer remains a domain of hostage rescuers. At a point where self-contained breathing apparatus becomes necessary for human survival, terrorist threat ceases to exist. A terrorist stronghold is now a fully fledged fireground. Firefighting forces should always be mobilised and assembled in operation’s base, therefore, and hostage rescuers must cross-train with firefighters for such eventuality and team up with them to save hostages when it happens. Otherwise too, they should be well aware of fire behaviour and combustion processes and should also know about firefighting strategies and tactics, for they might have to face a fire and fire events such as rollover, flashover, and backdraft during an operation. While operating in tall buildings, they might have to additionally deal with stack effect and ventilation problem,



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even if a fire is located remotely somewhere in building. If stairwells and elevator shafts are filled with smoke, hostages and trapped persons cannot be evacuated out of building. They would, then, have to be relocated to a safer area available inside building called temporary shelter and kept there under protection until such time as a stairway or a lift becomes safe for transferring humans or firefighters manage to bring breathing apparatuses for their evacuation. Knowledge and skills of rescuers in first aid become relevant in this situation. Holding teams, evacuation teams, and forward reserve teams would stay put until they can breathe but they would not be able to hold their positions for long after smoke beings to fill in their stairwell. All contingency supplies such as guns, ammunition, grenades, explosives, and more besides stored at reserve posts are removed and taken by reserve teams to the base of operation when exiting stronghold due to fire. They would come back to their holding positions and reserve posts when it becomes safe again, if there remains any need still. In sum, fire is such gargantuan force that can alter the nature of entire crisis and operation in no time. XII Let us discuss close combat now. Conceptually combat is a very simple and straight affair but actually it is an enormously difficult and dangerous activity. It is so because of the uncertain actions and counteractions of your opponent and the risk of losing life or limb if you fail to anticipate correctly and act timely in a state of time-space compression. Carl von Clausewitz comprehended the nature of combat clearly and wrote, “In tactics time and space quickly dwindle to their absolute minimum.” Also, combat is not about a single action taken correctly and timely by one man against his opponent but about all actions taken by all men against all opponents everywhere from the beginning to the end. On this Clausewitz said, “Each combat is a whole in which the partial combats combine themselves into one total result.” For here I can only explain it conceptually which might make combat appear rather simple, I must warn at the outset that it might not be so most of the time when you confront a resolute enemy. Years of reflective practice will surely help but the outcome of battle will be actually determined by what happens in those moments when you and your mates come face to face with your enemy. Combat in a hostage rescue operation is close quarters combat and battle in a terrorist stronghold is close quarters battle. Standard model of mechanics of combat is a spinning cycle of three recurring actions, which are fire, manoeuvre, and cover. Fire is to destroy enemy by the use of firearms.

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Before you set out for terrorist stronghold, your firearms must be ready to fire—round chambered, fully charged magazine engaged, safety disengaged, repeat fire mode selected, sighting optics powered up. Shoot a terrorist on sight. Manoeuvre in combat is tactical manoeuvre. Tactical manoeuvring is swiftly moving while staying in a fight to get out of enemy’s line of fire or to open your line of fire to engage enemy by traversing diagonally, laterally, or around something; it is not retreating, for you do not get away from a fight. You must dash when you manoeuvre tactically. Kneeling down suddenly from upright position in a fight to reduce your profile is also tactical manoeuvring. Cover is used to protect you from enemy fire. But to save time to save hostages, cover is not employed by rescuers in principle. Inside a building—in rooms, corridors, and staircases—cover is also not available in general. Your best defence and surest insurance against enemy fire, then, is not your body armour, your ballistic helmet, or a body shield but your bullets and your ability to read and react faster than your enemy. In other words, your cover inside stronghold is the shield formed of your bullets. It does not mean that you fire indiscriminately to saturate your field of fire for creating a shield of bullets. Instead, it suggests that you react quickly, fire fast, and keep sending bullets to your target until your enemy falls down without leaving a window, gap, or opening between your shots for enemy to penetrate your shield. Number of bullets that would deliver incapacitating shock to your target and realise the objective of your opponent’s postural collapse cannot be prescribed. So, do not count bullets in combat or in practice. Go by the effect of bullets on your target instead. Fire-manoeuvre-cover cycle is the standard model of combat mechanics. Another interesting and popular conceptualisation of mechanics of combat is offered by American fighter pilot and military theorist John Boyd. William Lind, an American military writer, explains it succinctly, “Each party to a conflict begins by observing. He observes himself, his physical surroundings and his enemy. On the basis of his observation, he orients, that is to say, he makes a mental image or ‘snapshot’ of his situation. On the basis of this orientation, he makes a decision. He puts the decision into effect, i.e., he acts. Then, because he assumes his action has changed the situation, he observes again, and starts the process anew. His actions follow this cycle, sometimes called the ‘Boyd Cycle’ or ‘OODA Loop’.” Acronym OODA stands for observe-orient-decide-act. Whichever way you might conceptualise and visualise combat, your actions remain the same in battleground. Certain general but useful rules that can be employed by rescuers in tactical decision-making are: Here and now, first thing first, and one thing at a time.



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XIII Intent is communicated by behaviour but the problem of concealed intention remains while dealing with human beings, which poses a serious problem of use of force in policing. Taking a decision to shoot or not to shoot in a confrontational situation is not easy and it might be criticised, even penalised, in hindsight. In a complex terrorist crisis, however, it is highly improbable to encounter a terrorist who is not armed and not ready to fight. Positive identification of terrorists before engaging them, therefore, is not likely to be as big a problem as it is made out to be. Nonetheless, all rescuers must be trained intensively on end to instantly distinguish friends from foes and to shoot or not. Problem of engaging an unarmed aggressive person charging at you and suspected to be a suicide bomber in a complex terrorist stronghold too is not a realistic problem as it seems to be. That a suicide bomber would run towards rescuers or hostages to get close before triggering explosives is a questionable assumption. Bombs are meant to kill people present in a wide area; inside a building there is not much space available to run and hide; a powerful explosion would most likely kill and injure many people who a suicide bomber can see within a walled space; terrorists who can effectuate a complex terrorist crisis are not dumb enough not to know these things. Though possible, it is also unlikely in a complex terrorist stronghold that a hostage would charge at armed rescuers in rage and aggression after panicking. Deliberations on such intricate and improbable problems can go on forever without resolving them with certainty. In combat, clarity is an absolute must. A decision to shoot must be a decision to kill. If you do not want to kill, do not shoot. XIV You must maintain your full and total focus on your area of responsibility and field of fire, for just a little inattention or non-operational digression can be dangerous for you and other squad members. Squads and individuals shall not attempt any manoeuvre beyond their own zones of operation unless so communicated to them and understood by all concerned parties. Direction of movement of striking and rescue squads should be the same and it must be clearly known to holding teams. Open your line of fire by movement. Split and spread when in contact with enemy. Single file is only for movement; for a firefight men must split and spread out. Do not move when firing and stop before shooting. Let your bullets fly and chase for you, so long as manoeuvring and fleeing terrorists

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are in your field of view and line of sight. Sprint when you must to gain your line of fire or get out of enemy’s line, to establishing and remaining in contact or closing range for accuracy. You follow a shoot-sprint-stop-shoot pattern in combat and do kneeling when necessary; otherwise, the walking pace of operational manoeuvre is what defines the tempo of offensive. Engage a terrorist by rapidly firing three, four, five rounds on torso; by shooting as fast as you can; by sending as many bullets as required to make your target collapse on the ground. Then, rush close, as and if required, to place a quick and accurate headshot, to confirm your kill which you must, to eliminate threat definitely and permanently; if you can take a headshot from your position, you must and need not move closer to your target. Not the ideas of revenge, punishment, or justice underlie this tactics of engagement but the idea of saving lives by eliminating threat to life, early and definitely. Killing is incidental to saving. However reassuring it may seem but this is not enough in a hostage rescue operation. For hostage rescue, deploy all guns on target. It means all guns that can be deployed immediately and safely must be deployed to engage a target. Not one, but all rescuers who are there and not engaging enemy at the time, in whichever roles they are there, should engage a sighted terrorist. It solves the problem not only of time and accuracy but also of ammunition and changing magazine and clearing a malfunction in the middle of firefight behind the shield of bullets. It upholds the principle of annihilation too. So, all rescuers in proximity should reorient and rush to join gunfight by opening their lines of fire. However, rescuers who are behind others must tactically manoeuvre to come close to frontline fighters before firing to avert fratricide. In the heat of close combat and its messy dynamics, those who are ahead of you might just cross your line of fire all of a sudden, unannounced, thus becoming the unintended target of your fire. Also, announce loudly if you must move closer to a fallen target for headshot before you move, for others might still be shooting; move only when firing has stopped. Post engagement, everyone diverges again to cover all fronts. Do not be surprised if you have emptied your magazine in a firefight without being aware of it. Use translucent magazines and check your magazine after every string of fire, which would not be easy in darkness, of course. Change magazine even if few rounds are still left, for tactical reload done before firefight is better than speed reload done during firefight. Carry at least four fully charged spare magazines—the more the better, so long as their volume and weight do not hamper your actions.



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To control hostages, your behaviour should be aggressive and command loud and domineering. Immediately after killing all terrorists in a room, striking squad informs cooperating rescue squad if hostages are also there and leaves its third or fourth team behind to guard them until rescue squad reports. After rescue squad or its team arrives, striking team joins its own squad immediately. In a battle, all jobs are done with a great sense of urgency and no time is wasted anywhere. Save anyone you can and do not discriminate. In rapid rescue, there is no time for pick and choose and there is no triage. There is no need to have embedded paramedics in squads; the first aid knowledge and skills of rescuers especially relevant to firefighting problems will do. Instant evacuation of casualties to operation’s base for professional care where doctors, paramedics, and ambulances are available would take care of medical contingencies. Rapid rescue is preferable to providing paramedic support inside stronghold in a complex terrorist crisis. Fight might be messy but search must be neat and orderly. Do not become jittery and aflutter and do not rush through it during the clearing phase of operation. Also, a premature relaxation of vigilance is absolutely undesirable. Carry out a methodical three-dimensional search everywhere; search everything where a man can hide; search everything where a man can hide an improvised explosive device. After the completion of clearing phase, hostage rescue mission ends and hostage rescue force proclaims its operation as concluded. It now hands over the charge of stronghold to police authorities for subsequent actions. All hazardous places and objects are marked clearly and police authorities briefed in detail as to risks involved and steps to be taken by specialist agencies for rendering them safe. If for some legal purposes rescuers are required to be available at the scene of crime and cannot leave for their base immediately, they should remain in camera, not in public, and be available only to legal authorities responsible for discharging their duties. To the larger world, they should appear as gone. XV Certain questions that might bother you are answered below. How do you cover longer ranges and corridors inside stronghold? By marksmen deployed inside tactically as holding element.

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How do you mark and designate a building for the purpose of tactical coordination and synchronisation? I prefer standard orientation based on its main entrance which makes its front; its backside is called rear, and its sides are called left and right. Here front, rear, left, and right mean the front, rear, left, and right of building, not yours or mine. This orientation is fixed and anyone who has a picture of building in mind, which everyone must have, can visualise it clearly. Floors are counted numerically from top. Top floor of a ten-storey building is designated as floor one, its ninth floor as floor two, and so on. If a floor is also a zone of operation, then, top floor is zone one and ground floor is zone ten. Reverse order of floor marking is superior to standard method, in that it communicates the same message to all snipers and marksmen deployed outside, irrespective of a view of building available to them from their positions. Even if an in-between structure screens stronghold and allows a partial view of it, there is no miscommunication and misunderstanding as regards its floors. Do not worry if these methods appear counterintuitive and confusing, for practice would sort it right and all rescuers would exactly know what they are talking, contrarian arguments besides. Where do you locate reserve force in a vertical structure? In a ten-storey building, for example, an evacuation team and a forward reserve team each can be stationed at three places on a staircase, on building’s left or right or on both sides if building is wide and has two staircases. For it is easier to climb down than climb up, it is better to locate reserve teams closer to upper floor in the area of their responsibility. Following these rules, a reserve post is set up on landing between forth and third floors to cover first four floors from ground up. From their post, teams would reach fourth floor just by climbing one flight of stairs and to reach all three floors below they would need to move downwards, assisted by gravity. In this scheme, then, a second reserve post is set up on landing between seventh and eighth floors and a third reserve post between ninth and tenth floors. Their tactical designation would be based on building orientation and tactical floor labelling done in reverse order. For example, reserve post that is assigned to tenth and ninth floors would have zones one and two in its area of responsibility and it could be designated as reserve post one. Its building orientation can be suffixed to distinguish it from another post stationed at the same elevation on its opposite side. It, then, becomes reserve post one left or reserve post one right. Standard operating procedure for tactical designation would incorporate all rules with illustration. Men at reserve posts should make sure that stairways are not crowded and choked, their equipments do not become tripping hazard, and the lines of operation always remain clear for rapid movement.



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Do you mark its door before leaving a cleared room? Door marking could be done during the clearing phase of operation but could be avoided during rescue phase if that would retard the tempo of operation. You must save every moment that you can when set out to search and destroy. What to do with enemy weapons? You can leave them as and where they are or quickly remove loaded magazines and rounds from the proximity of gun. Doing more than that would stall your offensive and go against the principle of momentum. What if terrorists hide behind a shield of hostages? Carry out flanking manoeuvre or breakthrough manoeuvre to open a line of fire and engage them. What if a terrorist surrenders? One team carries a roll of duct tape for restraining. Tie arms, seal lips, and hand over to a holding team. From holding point, terrorist is taken by a forward reserve team and transferred out of stronghold. Surrendered terrorist is handed over to a base reserve team at entrance for transfer to operation’s base; forward reserve team now returns to its post. What about attack dogs? Dogs have no role in resolving a complex terrorist crisis. I am against weaponising dogs, for endangering someone’s life without awareness and choice is against morality. These are our problems and we better solve them ourselves. XVI Even after experiencing an unexpected and serious setback such as triggering a bobby trap and sustaining casualties therefrom, the initiative must be retained and advance continued with the remainder of force unless only one man is left in a squad, unsupported and all alone. For whatever safeguards were to be taken against such eventuality should have been taken prior to explosion. At this point, it is in the interest of rescue mission to assume that a lurking danger has emerged, struck, and passed and it needs be no longer feared; there is no point in freezing or retreating now, for route ahead in all probability is safe. Relief is instantly despatched, in this case always a full squad, to make up for loss suffered by squad and casualties are also evacuated to operation’s base. In a complex terrorist crisis, such cold-blooded, unshakeable, and invincible mindset of rescuers is absolutely imperative for saving the lives of hostages at the risk of losing their own. Combat is a bloody affair and we should be prepared to lose men in this enterprise. Too much caution

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causes too much friction and fills your mind with too much uncertainty which, then, decimates the advantage of offensive; it will surely turn you feeble at the time when you must be most formidable. Once begun, the initiative must be retained and momentum maintained at all costs. XVII If terrorists and hostages are concentrated at one place such as theatres and large halls, then, rescuers will have to concentrate entire effort at that point for eliminating terrorists first. We cannot have striking and rescue forces operating side by side here as both arms of strategy cannot be effectuated simultaneously. Multiple entries to break into such space and swarming along two adjacent walls for a clear field of fire hold the key to success in this situation. When physical movement towards its centre is required for eliminating hiding terrorists or a tactical combing of space, then, both perpendicular arms must move in simultaneously to avoid friendly fire. At this point, evacuation commences behind the back of rescuers; not all men can and need to move centrewards. Evacuation force too can now move in. A full-scale evacuation of hostages follows the elimination of terrorists. All exit routes of building and compound must be occupied before assaulting this centre of mass. Unarmed fleeing persons, if any, are restrained and commanded to exit in orderly fashion and channelled to police quarantine where they are frisked and seated methodically for subsequent processing. All escaping armed men and women are engaged and killed instantly and unarmed hostile persons reduced to submission by less lethal force. Action must be decisive and lightning. There is always a scope for personal judgement in unstructured situations but in the business of saving life, no rule is more important than saving a life. Option of using incapacitating gas in a very difficult hostage situation such as 2002 Nord-Ost crisis in Moscow should be considered seriously. Short of capitulating to the demands of terrorists to save hostages, deploying an odourless and colourless anaesthetic agent to knockout all human beings present in an enclosed space is a better option than fighting a bloody battle in such situation. If not readily available but there is political will, a chemical agent for rescue operations could be invented by chemists. A research and development programme, then, could be launched to invent such a gas and study its effects as well as precise amounts and exposure time for the purpose of rescue operation along with the identification and production of drugs and protocols for post-exposure treatment. This programme must develop a comprehensive plan for post-release operational preparedness and build



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capacities for rescuers’ protection from gas, antidotes’ stocks and supplies to treatment facilities, patients’ timely evacuation to designated hospitals, their treatment by trained medical personnel, and more besides. These matters are as important as rescue itself for the purpose of saving lives. In order to be effective, this programme must be kept secret but secrecy shall not become an overriding value that begins to hamper preparedness and capacity building to manage the aftermath of its release. XVIII We have discussed just a few tactical ideas here and left a good deal of tactics unexplored. But that should not disappoint practitioners, for this is not a field manual. Human imagination and ingenuity can solve all problems of human scale, they must know. A reflective practice done methodically over a long period of time with intent to learn and improve will purvey accurate insights and provide formidable foresight in all aspects of combat. A self-critical and analytical engagement with subject matter will resolve all problems of coordination and synchronisation, techniques and procedures in due course. I will discuss more on this later. It is sufficient to say here that seek and fix strategy does not require much of planning and rehearsing for its effectuation during a crisis. All that is required is a quick realisation that a complex terrorist crisis has occurred and a rapid transfer of sufficient personnel and materiel to crisis site. Nothing, then, is more important than the operational and logistical preparedness of such force, of course, after its men have been transformed and become rescuers.

Chapter 11 Overcoming Group Size Barrier

I There exists an understanding or agreement in certain form—a social contract—between the members of a group as to a view of the world and a way of life. This brings into existence certain shared goals too, to be pursued by all members individually and collectively in the interest of group. People cooperate and work for shared goals only if they trust others to reciprocate and believe that everyone is under obligation to cooperate and work for shared goals. Notions of trust, obligation, and reciprocation, then, prepare, convince, motivate, and compel individuals to collaborate and cooperate. Relationships based on trust, obligation, and reciprocation increase social harmony and cooperation, reduce the stresses and tensions of working and living together, and channel personal energies and efforts entirely into realising shared goals and maintaining collective well-being instead of having to watch their backs and settle old scores, thereby increasing the productivity and performance of individuals and group both. But trust, obligation, and reciprocation are the outcome of two causal conditions—shared beliefs and group size. Assuming that moral accord exists in a group, then, everything comes down to the size of group. Based on biological, ethological, historical, anthropological, sociological, ethnographic, and experimental evidence, evolutionary psychologists led by British evolutionist Robin Dunbar have asserted that a person can have a social network of a hundred and fifty stable and coherent relationships built on trust, obligation, and reciprocation. A corollary of this evolutionary constraint is that a harmonious and cohesive group created by the stable relationships of trust, obligation, and reciprocity can have a hundred and fifty members. 483

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Dunbar’s argument constructed on ‘social brain hypothesis’ seems compelling. He asserts, “The social brain relationship manifests itself in primates as a cognitive limit on social group size that gives rise to a correlation between social group size and brain size.” Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that social brain hypothesis is valid for monkeys and humans both and “applies not only at the species level but also within species at the individual level. . . . The bottom line for our story is that the social brain hypothesis provides us with a precise equation for predicting social group size from brain size. . . . Because humans belong to the ape family, we need to use the equation for the ape grade rather than the one for primates as a whole when estimating human group sizes. Interpolating the neocortex ratio for modern humans into the ape equation gives a predicted group size of approximately 150.” This, then, is natural community size with stable and dependable relationships for modern humans, Dunbar argues. “Humans fit this primate relationship between group size and neocortex size surprisingly well,” write Dunbar and his co-authors Louise Barrett and John Lycett. “The typical size of hunter-gatherer communities (around 150 individuals) is exactly the size predicted by the relationship between group size and neocortex volume in primates (and, specifically, the relationship for apes). In traditional horticultural societies, villages typically consist of around 150 people. More importantly, recent studies suggest that this size of social grouping may even be characteristic of post-industrial societies. A study of Christmas card distribution lists, for example, revealed that the number of friends and acquaintances a person has is of about this order too (a mean of 154 individuals for a sample of 42 respondents).” There are plenty of examples of human organisation in all fields, also of studies done on social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, all pointing to the critical limit of one hundred fifty stable relationships. People in this network of close relationships are known to a person as individuals with their personal histories and they are recognised as friends. Friendships, in the words of Dunbar, are “intense, emotionally close relationships that don’t involve sex and reproduction. These contrast starkly with the rather loose here-today-and-gone-tomorrow relationships” that one has with people falling outside one’s circle of trust called acquaintanceships or just “faces we can put names to.” Social significance of our ways of relating to others is immense. Dunbar elaborates, “Our research over the last decade points to a striking division at the outer edge of the 150 layer: those within are people we know as individuals, based on relationships that have historical depth and involve trust, obligation and reciprocity; they are



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the people that we don’t really think twice about helping when they ask. In contrast, our relationships with those in the layers beyond 150 are more casual, unreciprocated and often lack history; we are demonstrably less generous to people in this outer layer.” Dunbar, Barrett, and Lycett write, “The figure of approximately 150 seems to correspond to the number of people whose relationship to you is explicit and personal, with a history of past interactions and some level of intimacy. These are the people with whom you like to try and maintain contact, in whose life histories you have more than a passing interest. They are the people who, you feel, would be willing to help you with a favour – mainly because there was a sense of obligation between you, either because of some level of intimacy or because of an obligation of kinship or fellowship in an organization or community.” Beyond this network of close relationships, “we can recognize many of them as individuals, but we know little about them as people. Our relationship with these individuals lacks the personal warmth that characterizes our relationships with the inner group,” they argue. From our experiences too we can tell that personal relationships and close interactions between members are necessary for maintaining social harmony and fluent cooperation in a group and close relationships can exist only if a group is small. A large group, on the other hand, often has the weak bonds of community and diminished cooperation and reciprocation between its members owing to superficial interpersonal relationships. Dunbar, Barrett, and Lycett too seem to agree and state, “Face-to-face contact seems to be crucial in maintaining the quality of the relationship at any given level; failure to maintain contact with someone will have the result of weakening the tie.” Also, the social harmony and stability of a large group in which people cannot relate to all members individually and call them friends is constantly threatened by free-riders or a suspicion of there being free-riders exploiting their generosity. Free-riders are those members of group who want to enjoy all the benefits of community without contributing their share to it. On the destabilising effect of free-riders Dunbar, Barrett, and Lycett write, “Suspicion and a reluctance to engage in reciprocal deals, will increase, making the natural flow of interactions and relationships less fluid. Willingness to co-operate on trust will decrease and gradually the virtual bonds that hold the social system together will dissolve.” On the basis of the above insights, we can argue that a hundred and fifty members seem to form a natural size barrier for group harmony and social stability and a group of humans cannot transcend its natural size barrier created by cognitive constraints without diminishing its social harmony

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and stable relationships built on the intimate personal knowledge of and close interactions with each other. Also, if its size is further increased, it becomes inevitably plagued with the problems of large groups, the end result being a significant loss of trust, obligation, and reciprocation among its members and consequent reduction in the quality, degree, and spontaneity of cooperation. Of a hostage rescue unit, we can, perhaps, raise size to a maximum of two hundred and fifty or three hundred members by taking the advantage of solid moral values of rescuers and by means of a planned social interaction of group members shored up additionally by communications technology available to us today. But that is just about it and unit size cannot be increased beyond this critical limit without impairing its social harmony and cooperative character. This fact is somehow known to special forces community, for all special units worth their salt have a small band of fifty to three hundred warriors; units bigger than this are special in name only. These special forces are known to compensate for their numerical inferiority by achieving relative superiority early in operation—by taking the initiative and thereafter retaining it by maintaining the momentum of offensive throughout until their mission is accomplished. More than anything else, then, their actions are characterised by secrecy, stratagem, surprise, and speed. And, they are able to achieve inconceivably spectacular feats by superabundantly inflating the operational and logistical capabilities of individuals and organisation both, an apt description of which is found in a couplet: Sawa lakh se ek ladaoon, which roughly means, ‘I make a single man fight a hundred thousand,’ credited to Sikh Guru Gobind Singh—a great Indian general and a master of unconventional warfare who raised a band of committed fighters called Khalsa, meaning ‘pure,’ in 1699 to challenge the Great Moghul. II A hostage rescue force conceived and created for the wishful and desirable resolution of complex terrorist crises by the force of arms while being special in every way and all respects does not rely on achieving relative superiority over its enemy by a considerably inferior strength employing stealth and ruse. Instead, its response dictated by seek and fix strategy is based on an absolute, overabundant, and all-round superiority over its enemy. It has to have numbers on its side, thus. Let us do some arithmetic to get a sense of such rescue operation in a complex terrorist stronghold.



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Seizing and defending a multistorey building full of people and rooms is a sound strategy and also the most economical hostage-taking operation for terrorists. A similar objective by attacking a large compound with several built-up clusters would require many times more resources and would be a much more difficult enterprise for them. Given its high probability, I will do some calculations for such a stronghold in order to reflect on how very resource intensive it is to implement seek and fix strategy. Our problem is a terrorist stronghold of ten floors and two staircases. We need two holding teams of two men each on the landings of each floor to cut off both staircases, making it a total of twenty teams of forty men for holding operation in this building. We have ten zones of operation here, each zone requiring a striking squad and a rescue squad of eight men each; ten striking squads need eighty men and ten rescue squads need another eighty men, making it a total of a hundred and sixty men for killing and saving or search and destroy and search and rescue operations. We need a minimum of three reserve posts inside this building located on a staircase between ninth and tenth floors, seventh and eighth floors, and third and fourth floors respectively. Each reserve post requires an evacuation team and a forward reserve team of two men each, making it a total of six teams of twelve men. We need a base reserve force stationed at operation’s base for the reconstitution and reinforcement of active elements operating inside stronghold. If we keep two squads and six teams for this purpose, we need twenty-eight men for base reserve. We need men deployed in team formation to cover stronghold from the external zones of operation and to lay siege to the theatre of operation by deploying a cordon around it. Number of men required for these operations would depend on the layout and structural features of surrounding locality but if we assume that we need ten teams of assaulters for cordoning theatre and ten teams of snipers and marksmen for covering stronghold from all sides and also the top of building as well as its entrances and approach routes, we need another forty men as active elements positioned outside stronghold. If snipers and marksmen cannot cover its flat roof from a vantage point of higher building, then, we would need at least one more team of assaulters inside to secure it.

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If we transfer entire holding force and striking force from release points to entry points by vehicles, we would need extra men to drive a hundred and twenty men and bring all vehicles back to operation’s base. In all, then, we need two hundred and eighty men plus drivers, nearly three hundred men, for rescuing hostages from this stronghold of terrorists. Commanders, command post staff, bomb technicians, and logistics personnel, all of them indispensable, are excluded from this estimation, which would exceed actual manpower requirement much more than three hundred. It is more than an entire unit of rescuers if we raise it to the maximum size of three hundred stipulated by the natural size barrier of human organisation based on mutual trust. Given the social obligations, injury, sickness, vacancies, and outstation training and other official assignments of men resulting in a continuing shortfall of certain percentage of force, it is impossible that even a largest cohesive hostage rescue organisation can pull it off. These calculations, moreover, are done for a simple architectural design of building with each linear floor having two rows of rooms serviced by a shared central corridor accessed by two staircases located on both ends. Imagine the complexity of operation if, for instance, it has additional five or more floors or if its geometric layout is not a straight line but something more stylish and complicated such as T-shaped, Y-shaped, X-shaped, or H-shaped, adding many more rooms, corridors, and stairwells to structure. And, what if terrorists choose to strike and seize more than one skyscraper; we must admit that we cannot control the choice of terrorist targets by hardening all potential targets all over. We can safely assume, then, that it is seemingly impossible to effectuate seek and fix strategy in a complex terrorist crisis situation with just one hostage rescue unit. III It can be argued that an infantry battalion of more than a thousand men can easily supply such numbers as we might need in a complex terrorist crisis but we all know that a battalion is an unwieldy mass controlled by a very powerful command structure. A hostage rescue organisation created to militarily resolve complex terrorist crises cannot be structured and managed like a large infantry unit; it must be self-regulated, not command-controlled. Size constraint in organising is shown schematically in figure 11.1 and we have already discussed all this at length. By inflating the size of unit to three hundred self-organised men, we can get the benefits of both maximum numbers and maximum cooperation to create an ideal organisation for mass hostage rescue.

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Universal Trust Line

Cooperation

Self-Organisation Command Organisation

Social Order and Stability Line

150

300

Group Size

Size Constraint in Organisation Figure 11.1

Let us refresh again why we cannot expand the size of a unit further. We know that self-regulation in social exchange to achieve selfless and altruistic goals shared by all is not possible without mutual trust. There cannot be any trust between two men without intimate personal knowledge about each other’s character and personality and a repeated vindication of such knowledge by the truth of experience. Acquisition of first-hand knowledge about another man is possible by means of living and working with that man and observing him decide and act in the world in different situations especially unnerving and trying ones. It is also possible indirectly by hearing about his character and personality from significant others, which is usually communicated through stories describing him as a person. For begetting trust, all members of rescue force should accurately know the beliefs and behaviours of all others based on their past actions and should be able to correctly predict what positions and actions they would actually take in the real world on different occasions; their thoughts and actions, moreover, should be shared by all and must espouse the moral values and goals of organisation. For want of close contacts and validation of impressions, however, an organisation larger than the critical limit of three hundred men is more likely to create trust problems among its members than not. And, a lack of trust would surely hurt and decimate its self-organising social processes. To be effective still and able to deal with free-riders, then, a battalion-size organisation would necessitate the regulation of its members by a powerful command element located externally in place of self-regulatory mechanism. But once the locus of control shifts from inside to outside, man’s intrinsic

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motivation—the source of achieving personal excellence by giving his best especially where selfless interests and altruistic goals are involved—begins to wane and organisation begins to drift towards mediocrity. Such metamorphosis of organisational culture brought about by its expansion would compromise its excellence and germinate mediocrity that would begin to grow and expand, only to become the mainstay of work culture sooner or later. We cannot create a battalion-size 1000-strong rescue force, therefore. Then, how can we overcome group size barrier and scale up our operational capacity without diminishing its quality? IV So far in this book we have discussed and solved the problems of conceptualising and materialising a hostage rescue unit. But in order to cross over natural group size barrier and have enough men to resolve complex terrorist crises, we would need several hostage rescue units which are able to interoperate fluidly and seamlessly without confusion and chaos in the heat of battle. Our biggest problem, then, is the interoperability of different hostage rescue units and the effective resolution of interoperability problem holds the key to overcoming group size barrier. It can be argued that the sameness of moral values, organisational culture, philosophical doctrine, operational strategy, fighting tactics, weapons and equipments, manpower organisation, personnel selection, training systems, and more besides would make interoperability to occur and flow rather naturally. Here is a proposal to get over natural group size barrier based on this premise. To begin with, we launch the pioneer phase of programme to set up a single rescue unit of maximum size of three hundred men so that we have about two hundred and fifty men in hand for mobilisation at any moment. It gives us best possible capacity for manpower-intensive operations dictated by seek and fix strategy while remaining within the critical limit of cohesive group size. We cannot do with anything less or more, for the emergence of unitlevel operational capacity for mass hostage rescue in a complex terrorist crisis is ruled out below and beyond this limit. As shown schematically in figure 11.2, it peaks in a very small region of a bell-shaped curve. Before this region, it does not develop a critical mass necessary for handling a complex terrorist crisis. Past this region, it rapidly descends into an operational nightmare for want of intense cooperation and instinctive coordination. Unit that we create first is called nucleus unit. It is located somewhere close to its geographical centre in order to cover the whole country. But this is

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hardly enough in a complex terrorist crisis, even if the entire strength of unit is available for operation. Such crisis is a nightmare scenario and it is safer to assume that one hostage rescue unit cannot have enough resources to handle a complex terrorist crisis independently. To save hostages here, we must apply the principle of irruption which cannot be done without first effectuating the principle of concentration. We need more hostage rescue units, therefore. And, to create a national-level supercritical mass for dealing with complex terrorist crises, pioneer phase is followed by a two-pronged second phase of programme consisting of a population phase and a consolidation phase.

Complex Terrorist Crisis Level

Hostage Rescue Capacity

250 300

Organisation Size

Size Constraint in Operation Figure 11.2

We commence the population phase of programme only after the full capacity of nucleus unit is built and its processes stabilised. Relying on this repository of expertise, we now clone replica units. For meshing them perfectly in operations, nucleus unit is entrusted with the tasks of planning, building, arming, equipping, recruiting, training, monitoring, and managing all aspects and processes of new units until they are finished and settled. Nucleus unit is consulted even in choosing geographical locations and identifying the tracts of land for new units to establish their bases and training centres. In a way, thus, nucleus unit becomes a turnkey consultant-cum-contractor for executing the population phase of programme. Once created, however, these new units, to all intents and purposes, assume full independence and complete autonomy from their creator—so much so that at the end of population phase, we have several hostage rescue units, nucleus unit being just one among them, all

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having vibrant and vigorous relationships and regular exchange programmes with each other for cross-familiarity and interoperability. While the principle of sameness is followed in the right spirit during the process of replication, it does not prevent nucleus unit from making improvements in the course of setting up replica units and calibrating itself to these improvements made elsewhere. On the other hand, a desire for improving continuously must not keep things in a constant flux. A fetish for upgrading technologies, which change very rapidly but mostly in form and not so much in function, should be checked in particular. Standardisation of arming, equipping, and training cannot be sacrificed unless we obtain significant operational dividends by introducing a new weapon, tool, or infrastructure and when something must be changed, such change should be implemented in all units. We will discuss more on this later. A parallel consolidation phase of programme is also initiated for the higherorder integration of all hostage rescue units and also that of all external cooperating agencies and support organisations for crisis resolution purposes. It brings into existence a mechanism of joint rescue command headed by a chief commander, a two-star general at least, with his own staff and secretariat located in the capital of country. All commanders of hostage rescue units are the ex officio members of joint rescue command and they are controlled and supervised by the chief of joint rescue command. And, the chief of joint rescue command is controlled by the office of country’s chief executive directly or through national security advisor or other such mechanism that exists and has enough authority to empower and enable this national framework for mass hostage rescue by rallying national mandate behind it. Chief of joint rescue command is also represented in the highest political decision-making body constituted for handling national emergencies, a sort of national crisis management group headed by the chief executive of country, for enabling it to take decisions in the light of first-hand, unprocessed, and unfiltered information supplied by rescuers as regards the resolution of large-scale hostage crisis by the force of arms. Operational activation and mobilisation of hostage rescue units during a crisis is done by joint rescue command through its highly alert and efficient control room that functions round the clock. Cardinal function of joint rescue command, both routine and emergency, is multi-agency coordination which is realised through a commonality of thinking and standardised procedures. It holds internal coordination meetings, seminars, and workshops regularly both in national headquarters



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and field bases to facilitating cross-familiarisation, joint training, and collective brainstorming programmes between all hostage rescue units. Similarly, in order to educate and prepare various external agencies for an effective, smooth, and synchronous national crisis response, it conducts regional coordination programmes including joint tactical training and war gaming involving police forces, fire services, medical services, investigation agencies, air force, civil aviation authority, and more besides that are needed for supporting a complex mass hostage rescue operation. Also, it remains in touch with all concerned at all times through hot lines and radio communications infrastructure set up for the immediate exchange of information. It goes without saying that this programme remains a State secret, has its absolute backing, and people chosen to implement it are not constrained by resources and bureaucracies in any manner whatsoever. These three conditions are absolutely imperative for realising the purpose of programme—so much so that in the absence of these conditions, the whole proposal and everything written in this book becomes stillborn, no matter how badly you want and how hard you try. V Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “The art of troop placement is the great art of war. Always place your troops in such a way that, whatever the enemy does, you can bring them together in a few days.” In our case, we must bring them together in a few hours and in it lies the answer as to how many rescue units should be created. How many replica units are required is determined by simple rules. For they are more likely terrorist targets than small towns and villages, every major city of country is covered by two hostage rescue units. To converge both rescue units at a crisis site in about an hour’s time with about five hundred men ready for rescue operation, one unit is situated within a hundred kilometres of road distance from city centre and second unit is stationed within five hundred kilometres of flying distance from airport. This is how we calculate the number of replica units required. It, then, creates a nationwide network of hostage rescue units, dispersed and distributed throughout the geographical expanse of country for total area coverage and quick response. However, for a country haunted by the spectre of terrorism, irrespective of size, a minimum of four hostage rescue units are necessary for creating a capacity of a thousand men available for operations at any time and this is what I mean by supercritical mass required for dealing with complex terrorist crises. The bottom line is that one hostage rescue unit is not enough at all.

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VI Certain additional useful suggestions are given below for fixing various problems of cohesiveness in a group and the demands of manpower for effectuating seek and fix strategy in a complex terrorist crisis. A very small and highly efficient administrative, accounts, and information technology staff to support command element in organisational management and a small engineering cell for the maintenance and repairs of hardware and infrastructure is the only non-combatant manpower of a hostage rescue force; all others bear arms and wear uniforms. Its office administration is fully automated and formal communication between offices is routed through a wired network of computers providing a secure and encrypted channel for data transmission. Print station is centralised and minimal paper is consumed. A robust open-source operating system and a military-grade open-source cryptographic algorithm are better tools for constructing this network vis-à-vis patented solutions marketed by large corporations which may have back doors; an open-source quantum resistant cryptographic algorithm will be still better when available. This network of computers must remain permanently and perpetually offline, all machines everywhere. For research and other purposes, a separate internet station with print facility is provided and shared by all. For achieving cohesiveness based on intimate personal knowledge, social interaction within a unit is planned carefully and pushed effortfully by its leadership instead of leaving it to men themselves or to occur naturally. Routine task allocation is done to maximise social intermingling and interpersonal interaction. Also, many opportunities are created by organising social and professional life to bringing people closer to know each other better. We cannot cross the natural size barrier of a hundred and fifty men otherwise. While setting up hostage rescue units, we should bear in mind that, to quote Charles Perrow, “personnel specialization limits awareness of interdependencies” and an “extensive understanding of all processes” facilitates “easy substitutions.” In order to overcome the constraints of manpower in a small unit, multi-skilling for multitasking is unavoidable. By this I mean that a man is able to execute various tasks proficiently as allocated to meet the demands of situation and not in the sense of word used in common parlance that he is expected to do different things simultaneously. Depending on the nature of operation and depending on the way situation evolves during an operation, task requirements and priorities might change constantly necessitating a continuous revision of task allocation. Ideally, such adjustment should be reflexive and autonomous, not necessarily directed by



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command but spontaneously decided by individuals themselves following the principle of necessity and usefulness. We better learn from ants here, for we are not as smart as we think we are. Deborah Gordon describes their amazing organisation: “Task allocation is the process that results in certain workers engaged in specific tasks, in numbers appropriate to the current situation. . . . Task allocation is a solution to a dynamic problem and thus it is a process of continual adjustment. It operates without any central or hierarchical control to direct individual ants into particular tasks.” Such fluid task allocation and quick substitution within a small hostage rescue unit operating to resolve a complex terrorist crisis is possible when rescuers, in addition to being specialists in their respective fields, are highly skilled generalists too who cross-train intensively, extensively, and regularly for crossfamiliarisation with each other’s jobs. In countries where resource scarcity does not allow multifarious dedicated emergency response organisations to exist, a hostage rescue force can be equipped, trained, prepared, and transformed to combine the additional functions of a disaster response force. For its men are rescuers as it is, a transition from hostage to casualty rescue and tactical to technical intervention will not be difficult. It is, however, advisable that diversification and consolidation programme for casualty rescue should be introduced only after the elementary processes of transforming common men into hardcore rescuers to save hostages from complex terrorist stronghold have been concluded. Also, for their new role, they should have a different identity and uniform and all technical rescue equipments should be stored and managed separately. Regularly switching their training between tactical and technical will make learning better and faster, more absorbing and involving in both fields of specialisation. Disaster response would also be a good cover for a counterterrorist organisation. At the same time, I would forcefully discourage the employ of rescue forces for fighting terrorists and insurgents in situations where hostages and victims are not involved directly because, then, rescuers will become unhinged and unanchored, operate unsupported by their doctrine, strategy, or purpose, and act just as soldiers do to save their own lives first, which would amount to altering and repurposing the whole character of force built so painstakingly over the years. These are the ordinary problems of maintaining monopoly of State on violence which could be handled by other police or military units. Hostage rescue units should be located closer to an air force base or an airport or any functional airstrip for immediately airlifting personnel and

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materiel in a crisis situation, day or night. Even civil aviation equipments, passenger or cargo planes, can be used for airlifting rescuers from their bases. There is no need to wait for military aircrafts if they cannot be flown in immediately; use whatever is available to transport at the earliest. Motor transport of required types and sufficient capacity should be lined up at landing site before aircrafts carrying troops and supplies land there. Free driving lane should be available for the unhindered emergency movement of rescuers. Time is a very important operational resource and a key influencer of outcome of a complex terrorist crisis; it must not be squandered for want of planning and effort, support and cooperation necessary for transferring forces to crisis site. For achieving the goals of interoperability and meeting the needs of tactical coordination during joint training and operation, all units should have a shared bandwidth of radio frequencies and the same set of transmission equipments for wireless communication. All units and men should also use a standardised language and identical communication protocol for fluid coordination. Different zones of operation and areas of responsibility should be assigned to different units for maximum coordination and minimum confusion, even if they cross-train frequently and can interoperate fully. Also, the reserves of the same unit should be used for the reconstitution and reinforcement of active elements. Finally and most importantly, activate all hostage rescue units, not just those required and mobilise four units, not just two in a crisis if they are not called out simultaneously for operations elsewhere. These rules are in agreement with the operational principle of concentration and mitigate the consequences of unforeseen developments. Napoleon and Clausewitz would indeed be happy to see us do this.

Chapter 12 Finding and Managing Our Men

I I believe we have come far enough to clearly understand what a complex terrorist crisis looks like, what it takes to rescue hostages from a complex stronghold, and what kind of men can pull this off. But to pull this off, we have to find our men first. The irony is that these men we shall never find unless we build them ourselves. And, for that we need to find the right type of men first who can become our men; we cannot fit a square peg in a round hole. It cannot be denied that individuals are born with different traits and dispositions, for example, some are more aggressive than others. But that does not mean that those who are deficient in certain psychobehavioural traits cannot acquire them through the process of learning. In fact, human character can be radically altered by self-realisation, self-regulation, and indoctrination—so much so that militaristic societies become pacific and peaceful peoples turn aggressive. History of German, Japanese, and Jewish peoples before and after Second World War provides compelling evidence that such change is possible, or rather attainable, and if societies can change themselves so radically, then, why not individuals who build them? Only if a man is driven by powerful intrinsic motivation and supported by enabling social environment, he would achieve desired psychobehavioural characteristics sooner or later. Advantage of having basic building blocks in him is that intended transformation becomes organic, easier, smoother, and faster. Conversely, if a man’s characteristics become obstructions and roadblocks in his transformational path, it is doubtful that he would ever complete his journey and, more importantly, if he would ever have intrinsic motivation to set out and carry on, given the arduous and long-drawn-out nature of this personal journey, constructive social support notwithstanding. In other words, 497

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all the desirable characteristics of rescuers can be learned and acquired by repeated practice and reflection done regularly over an extended period of time. If they are already there in certain observable and superior magnitude, it will greatly aid and assist a man to become a rescuer. But more importantly, he should not have the unwanted, undesirable, and negative characteristics of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that would resist, obstruct, and impede him in transforming his self. Our first priority, thus, is to discern and sift out those men who display conflicting and inhibiting characteristics and a second priority is to identify and select those men who have more of desirable and catalytic characteristics. We shall never get ready-made rescuers from society, so we must prepare the kind of men we want for hostage rescue. Our quest and search, then, is limited to finding right material, not right men. But even such a limited objective is extremely difficult to realise because man is not an ordinary animal who cannot lie, fake, feign, bluff, cheat, or deceive. For he can do all that quite easily indeed, he is fully capable of giving a false impression about his self, his nature and character, his beliefs and behaviours, his moral values and altruistic disposition. To know who they actually are is an everyday challenge while dealing with people but more so in a formal setting structured precisely for judging intelligent people to find out their real personality and dispositions. While there seems no fail-safe way to penetrating facades that people put over to appear what they are not other than observing them closely behaving in the real world for a long time and especially in adverse and testing times, all that we have is the science of mind called psychology to bank upon before the fact. But personality psychology is a complicated field of study and the tools and techniques of personality assessment are still more intricate which are better understood by psychologists alone. So, I will discuss here only the kind of men we need for complex rescue operations and leave the science and method of personnel selection to the better judgement of psychologists themselves. II It all begins with the resolve of State to possess a credible hostage rescue capability for dealing with complex terrorist crises. That resolve translates into discreet but definitive orders and notifications as regards setting up a nucleus hostage rescue organisation, its structural framework, decisional autonomy, and financial sufficiency. These steps are followed by the appointment of hand-picked leadership of nucleus unit that has a direct and assured access to the chief executive of country for routine briefings and specific interventions



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for smoothly implementing the pioneer phase of programme. Given sensitive dependence on initial conditions, it is still better if leadership selection precedes the bureaucratic processes of creating administrative structures, which will help a great deal in taking correct initial decisions. Thus empowered and enabled by a national mandate, organisational leadership promptly takes three foundational steps: It puts together a highly efficient staff for administrative and financial management, sets up a very proficient and skilled engineering cell for infrastructure planning and project management, and establishes a highly competent personnel selection and research cell for finding suitable men. Rest everything flows from these groundbreaking mechanisms which set in motion the parallel processes of site selection and infrastructure building, the procurement of arms and equipments, and the research and development of personnel selection strategies and tests. Personnel selection and research cell is made of a diverse team of applied psychologists with credible theoretical knowledge and practical skills and collectively having solid theoretical grounding in the fields of trait psychology, behavioural psychology, positive psychology, social psychology, organisational psychology, clinical psychology, and psychoanalysis. They should have access to a good library and relevant journals for research and should also be able to seek and obtain specialised support from qualified statisticians, mathematicians, computer programmers, animation artists, and artificial intelligence experts to bolster their research and develop superior psychometric tools. In formulating strategies and designing tests, this team of psychologists is assisted by the commanders of hostage rescue unit and also by a set of key individuals who form the core group of nucleus unit. These pioneers are carefully selected from different military, police, and rescue organisations on the basis of personal recommendations, career performance, detailed interviews, intelligence and cognitive efficiency, linguistic proficiency, command and control ability, and other available means of assessment. They are first imparted detailed lessons in the character of rescuers, the culture of rescue organisation, and the theory and method of rescue operation by commanders for a few months and thereafter sent out for various domestic and foreign training courses in small teams for knowledge and skill acquisition and for a wider exposure to the world of fighting techniques and tactics in different cultures. They are groomed to become training instructors but sensitised against and discouraged from blindly following the particular sets of received instructions, as students usually do, without subjecting them to a collective scrutiny and adversarial analysis first and without calibrating and modifying them to making them compatible with and integrating them to seek and fix strategy.

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Personnel selection and research cell is born in nucleus unit but it is subsequently integrated into joint rescue command and gets relocated in national headquarters from where it services all hostage rescue units. It not only plays a pivotal role in personnel selection but also contributes meaningfully in designing training programmes, syllabus construction, content preparation, emotional intelligence and social skills development, stress management, distress counselling, post-traumatic stress management after an operation, helping families, and much more besides. In due course, the psychologists and psychometric practitioners of joint rescue command are also allowed to help and assist other emergency response, military, and police organisations with their expertise and experience base to hone their knowledge and skills further. III Desirable attributes and positive characteristics of a person can be distributed into three broad categories of moral virtues, behavioural traits, and personal abilities. For the purpose of their selection, I would list certain attributes and characteristics that we should look for in men, for they would indicate their potential for becoming rescuers. We know that a rescuer’s cardinal moral virtues are courage, respect, responsibility, humility, integrity, and rescue. We also know that no moral value can stand alone and independently in the real world and each value must be undergirded and scaffolded by several cooperating and supporting values without which it cannot bring itself to bear on the world. These cardinal values have been described and their cooperative values discussed in chapter five from where they can be gathered and listed. To them I would add two overarching moral values of altruism and selflessness on which the whole edifice of morality rests. Desirable psychobehavioural traits and personal abilities of men who could be considered for the job of hostage rescue are sangfroid, mettle, tenaciousness, resilience, stress resilience, stress buffering, emotional stability, relaxedness, aggressiveness, boldness, braveness, fortitude, decisiveness, determinedness, perseverance, adventurousness, venturesomeness, risk-taking, neophilia, changeableness, adaptivity, flexibility, meticulousness, conscientiousness, orderliness, industriousness, hardiness, independent, selfassured, self-determined, self-controlled, self-regulated, self-motivated, selfdirected, reflectiveness, thoughtfulness, sincereness, truthfulness, trustfulness, trustworthiness, reliableness, cooperativeness, teamwork, group orientation, organisational citizenship, person likeableness, extensivity, social responsibleness, higher working memory capacity, concentration, attentiveness, alertness, vigilance,



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hypervigilance, situation awareness, mindfulness, interoception, inner strength for resolve, mental energy depletion, ego depletion, mental energy reserve, psychophysical endurance, briskness, vigour, performance under stress, mental ability, intelligence, emotional intelligence, mechanical intelligence, technical comprehension, creative adaptive improvising, ability to repurpose things, problemsolving, lateral thinking, foresightedness, visualisation and realisation ability, visual memory, spatial ability, perceptual speed, reaction time, psychomotor skills. Except for mental energy depletion and ego depletion, all other factors are required in higher gradations. All undesirable and negative attributes and characteristics of a man that, I believe, would render him dysfunctional for the job of hostage rescue and make him unfit to be a rescuer are listed together. Such attributes and characteristics that cannot be ignored and overlooked if detected in considerable magnitude are lying, faking, bluffing, cheating, deceiving, conning, self-serving, self-promoting, self-projecting, self-advancing, glib, shallow, superficial, charlatan, phoney, wicked, malicious, malevolent, sly, wily, malingerer, irresponsible, fails to accept responsibility, shallow affect, irresponsiveness, callousness, insensitiveness, unrepentant, remorselessness, guiltlessness, jealousness, enviousness, superciliousness, conceit, grandiose selfworth, grandiosity, narcissism, authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, parasitic orientation, eagerness for admiration, reward dependence, dependence, submissiveness, obsequiousness, cowardice, diffidence, timidity, harm avoidance, risk aversion, neophobia, anxiousness, anxiety proneness, nervousness, stress proneness, neuroticism, suspiciousness, sensation seeking, stimulation seeking, poor behaviour controls, impulsiveness, promiscuousness, arrogance, dishonesty, cruelty, meanness, manipulativeness, cynicism, maladaptive perfectionism, straggler, divided attention, inattentiveness and also all kinds of personality disorders listed in the latest edition of American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which include a range of mood disorders, anxiety disorders, fear disorders, distress disorders, externalising disorders such as alcohol dependence, drug dependence, tobacco dependence, antisocial behaviour, and conduct disorder as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. I have listed many ability and trait adjectives and nouns above; you can add many more as there are hundreds of them. It is obvious that some of them have overlapping connotations and similar descriptions. For example, self-promoting, self-projecting, self-advancing, and self-serving, in that they all describe a man who opportunistically and routinely, excessively and even falsely projects his qualities and achievements in front of others to promote himself with intention to seeking and securing personal benefits. Similarly, a

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man cannot fake, bluff, cheat, or deceive without possessing an underlying property of lying—so much so that we can assert that a liar could be a potential faker, bluffer, cheater, and deceiver. All these numerous descriptions make a long list which is compressed into a short list by psychologists employing a reductionist method called factor analysis. So, do not worry if you think I have left out something important and relevant; you can add as many properties as you want or do not want to these long lists. How these characteristics and attributes could be measured or if they could at all be measured, I do not know. All that I can tell is what kind of men we need for rescuing hostages. It is the job of psychologists to provide us the best solutions they can. For the sake of clarity, however, I would elaborate some of these positive characteristics and underlying notions. I have defined moral values in chapter five. Let us now discuss the main concepts of trait psychology here. Personality, in the words of American psychologists John Horn and Hiromi Masunaga, is “a theory that describes what people do and explains why they do it.” Behavioural trait, also called personality trait, is “a characteristic that persistently distinguishes one individual from another despite variation in the circumstances in which individuals are found. . . . A behavioral trait is a way of behaving that emerges through learning over a course of development. It may be shaped partly by genetic predispositions, but it is shaped also through societal and cultural influences that involve learning. It becomes characteristic of an individual as development proceeds.” Behavioural traits not only develop but also decline; they can be learned and unlearned too. “Behavioral traits thus are at once somewhat stable and somewhat dynamic. They are characteristics that persistently distinguish one individual from another despite variation in the circumstances in which individuals are found, but they are ever changing as well. . . . Also important, behavioral traits are not absolutes; they are probabilistic patterns of behaviors. The patterns indicate constructs – that is, abstractions. The precise set of behaviors that indicate a behavioral trait in one individual can be different from the set of behaviors that indicate the same trait in other individuals. The behaviors of such different sets are all parts of the same pattern, however. That is why they indeed do indicate the same behavioral trait,” explain Horn and Masunaga. You would not be alone if it confuses you; let us leave the challenges of discerning patterns and discovering traits to psychologists. German and American-Israeli psychologists Wolfgang Bilsky and Shalom Schwartz distinguish personality traits from moral values in three ways: “(1)



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Personality traits are typically seen as descriptions of observed patterns of behaviour, whereas values are criteria individuals use to judge the desirability of behaviour, people, and events. (2) Personality traits vary in terms of how much of a characteristic individuals exhibit, whereas values vary in terms of the importance that individuals attribute to particular goals. (3) Personality traits describe actions presumed to flow from ‘what persons are like’ regardless of their intentions, whereas values refer to the individual’s intentional goals that are available to consciousness.” Sangfroid is defined by Merriam-Webster’s Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary as “the ability to stay calm in difficult or dangerous situations.” Resilience, as defined by American social workers Carol Kaplan, Sandra Turner, Elaine Norman, and Kathy Stillson, “is the capacity to maintain competent functioning in the face of major life stressors.” Resilience is such ability of a man that lets him successfully deal with adversity, rebound after disruption, and reinvent after collapse. Aggressiveness of an agent can be broken down into four components and sensed and experienced by others through them. Intention of taking on a threat or a target decisively and confronting it directly and immediately is the basis of aggressive action. Force is unleashed and channelled into problem space as a translation of intention into action. Direction of force all the time and throughout action remains towards threat or target. Momentum of action is sustained until objective is realised. In this broader sense, aggressiveness incorporates decisiveness, determination, and perseverance. In a rescuer, aggression could be an asset as well as a liability; while aggression is absolutely essential to winning a fight, uncontrolled aggression could be counterproductive and self-defeating. American psychiatrist Joel Yager studied violence perpetrated by American soldiers in Vietnam that was “of questionable necessity from the military, tactical point of view–whose military necessity was doubted by participants and observers” both. To differentiate it from battlefield violence, he incisively called it “personal violence.” Israeli psychologist Ben Shalit, while discussing individual differences in aggression, summarised Yager’s findings and wrote, “Individuals with a history of violent behavior were found to be more likely to volunteer for active service and were also found to be those who engage in ‘unnecessary violence’ during war.” To indulge in violence could be pleasurable to such men. We have to be very careful about double-edged traits such as aggressiveness, boldness, braveness, adventurousness, venturesomeness, risk-taking, and more besides,

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which have potential for overreaction and consequently harming hostages in the heat of battle. Such sensitive traits must be checked and moderated by counterbalancing traits and restraining values. That is why certain seemingly contradictory characteristics are included in the above inventory. Hardiness, writes American psychologist Salvatore Maddi, is “a set of attitudes or beliefs about yourself in interaction with the world around you that provides the courage and motivation to do the hard work of turning stressful changes from potential disasters into opportunities instead.” Attitudes or beliefs that produce and power hardiness are commitment, control, and challenge. He explains, “If you are strong in commitment, you believe it is important to remain involved with the events and people around you, no matter how stressful things become. It seems like a waste of time to withdraw into alienation and isolation. If you are strong in control, you want to continue to have an influence on the outcomes going on around you, no matter how difficult this becomes. It seems like a mistake to let yourself slip into powerlessness and passivity. If you are strong in challenge, you see stresses as a normal part of living, and an opportunity to learn, develop, and grow in wisdom. You do not believe that easy comfort and security is a birthright.” Extensivity indicates the sense of attachment a man has towards others and his feelings of responsibility towards them. I find mindfulness a very useful construct for our purposes, so I am emphasising and expanding this notion beyond its usual sense and description. Mindfulness is the ability of a man to be aware not only of events occurring around him in the external world but also of his changing internal states as well as perceptual and physical abilities and how his mind and body are interacting with the physical world and having effect on it. Mindfulness, thus, operates at three different spheres—external, internal, and their interface. Level one mindfulness makes a man externally or internally aware. Level two mindfulness is realised by external as well as internal awareness. Level three mindfulness makes a man aware of how his mind and body are interacting with the physical world, the effects of this interaction on him and environment, and corrective actions required to have a desired effect on the world. A current and past awareness of events happening at self-environment intersection along with how the surrounding world is changing and what is happening to his person is the highest level of mindfulness. For a man cannot be aware of all three spheres simultaneously due to limited attentional resource, his superior ability lies in a rapid and repeated scanning of external, internal,



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and interactive spheres which enables him to stitch a meaningful, coherent, current, and reasonable space-time picture for the purpose of taking quick, correct, and timely actions in order to achieve his goals. In a broader sense, thus, mindfulness becomes a general overarching ability which subsumes in it several abilities such as alertness, attentiveness, vigilance, situation awareness, internal awareness, interoception, proprioception, and more besides. Ego depletion concerns self-control and self-regulation. American psychologists Mark Muraven and Roy Baumeister write, “Self-control is the exertion of control over the self by the self. That is, self-control occurs when a person (or other organism) attempts to change the way he or she would otherwise think, feel, or behave. Self-control behaviors are designed to maximize the long-term best interests of the individual. People exert self-control when they follow rules or inhibit immediate desires to delay gratification. Without selfcontrol, the person would carry out the normal, typical, or desired behavior (e.g., would fail to delay gratification or would respond automatically). Self-control involves overriding or inhibiting competing urges, behaviors, or desires.” They further write, “Acts of volition and self-control require strength. . . . Self-control strength is limited, in the sense that a person has finite capacity for self-control: People can override only a finite number of urges at the same time. It is quite possible for the resource to be depleted. . . . All self-control operations draw on the same resource. Directing one’s self-control efforts toward one goal should diminish the resources available for self-control in any other sphere. . . . The success or failure of self-control depends on the person’s level of self-control strength. . . . A depletion of strength may result in breakdown of self-control. Also, tasks that require more self-control are more affected by depletion than tasks that require less self-control. . . . Self-control strength is expended in the process of self-control. Acts of self-control not only require the use of strength but also reduce the amount of strength available for subsequent self-control efforts.” Notion of ego depletion is based on the strength model of self-regulation introduced above. American psychologists Roy Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, Mark Muraven, and Dianne Tice state, “Many crucial functions of the self involve volition: making choices and decisions, taking responsibility, initiating and inhibiting behavior; and making plans of action and carrying out those plans. The self exerts control over itself and over the external world.” Ego depletion refers to “a temporary reduction in the self’s capacity or willingness to engage in volitional action (including controlling the environment, controlling the self, making choices, and initiating action) caused by prior exercise of volition. . . . The core idea behind ego depletion is that the self’s acts of volition draw

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on some limited resource, akin to strength or energy and that, therefore, one act of volition will have a detrimental impact on subsequent volition.” Briskness is defined by Polish psychologists Jan Strelau and Bogdan Zawadzki as a “tendency to react quickly, to keep a high tempo of performing activities, and to shift easily in response to changes in the surroundings from one behaviour (reaction) to another.” Emotional intelligence is defined by American psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” It is a set of skills that contributes “to the accurate appraisal and expression of emotion in oneself and in others, the effective regulation of emotion in self and others, and the use of feelings to motivate, plan, and achieve in one’s life.” Realisation is the moment of formation of correct foresight in the mind of a man—validated only by later developments—that makes him aware of what is happening and where it is heading, thereby revealing the true nature of a future yet to happen by means of early signs available in a situation. It, then, gives him a critical lead right in the beginning, which is otherwise denied to him in its absence. Realisation is what decides the quickness of action and determines if a man would take an anticipatory, timely, and pre-emptive action or would be forced to react late. Even if all other things are equal, realisation would make a difference between a sharp and a slow action that might affect the outcomes of events significantly. Realisation is the first gear of visualisation through mental modelling. IV Discussion in this section is meant for policymakers and force commanders who should be aware that problems in psychological screening abound and the job of psychologists is not easy. They have a difficult task of designing questionnaires or selecting one or more published instruments or marketed tools or doing both for finding men with potential for rescue operations from within specific cultures and populations. A second problem is that of evaluating these questionnaires and batteries for their occupational usability, internal consistency, temporal stability, and predictive validity. Initial questionnaire development for measuring traits is problematic because there are no real rescuers in the beginning to validate its usability and reliability. It, then, remains a hypothetical tool of uncertain predictive validity. An alternative approach



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for criterion validity is meta-analysis which may provide a better assessment tool based on questionnaires employed by professional counterterrorist forces as well as firefighters, coastguards, lifeguards, fighter pilots, and deep sea divers. This option is not easy either, for selection systems employed by the reputed counterterrorist forces of proven track record in the world would in all probability be out of bounds, inaccessible and unavailable. Yet another method is ‘construct validity’ which employs a scientific theory and available empirical data and analysis used for theorisation. But criterion validation here is as good as a theory itself. It is also provisional, given a constant publication of new research findings requiring correlational adjustments between personality traits and external criteria. Deliberate impression management by individuals through self-enhancement and faking strategies is another significant obstacle to personality assessment by self-report method, even more so in dishonest cultures where lying is commonplace. It puts psychologists in a double bind. While purposive self-distortion must be managed by measuring social desirability and correlating with lie scales, it should not end up penalising genuinely idealistic and perfectionist persons having few faults or else assessment will be self-defeating—they are precisely persons who we are actually searching and struggling to find. Our organisational theory, moreover, is predicated upon morality but morality does not actually belong to the realm of personnel selection psychology. As a result, the groups of traits put together painstakingly by trait researchers and organisational psychologists such as 16PF , California Psychological Inventory, Occupational Personality Questionnaire as well as higher-order personality schemes such as Big Five and Gigantic Three may not be very useful in identifying candidates that we must select for their moral beliefs. In the face of all such difficulties, psychologists must deliver. To do their best, they should begin their research with the premise of comprehensive assessment. They should explore the possibility of employing mathematical modelling and artificial intelligence in developing and repurposing robust assessment tools. They should develop and choose instruments that yield the best possible and most congruent results for occupational purposes. Above all, they should not be constrained by the cost-effectiveness of research programme, for nothing is more important than solving the problem of finding right material in men. If they do all that, I am sure they will come up with something very useful. While we must trust them and their methods and tools, we should not become euphoric about solutions offered by psychologists and should be mindful instead that personality trait assessment by psychometric test batteries in the end is indicative, not definitive. It is quite possible that

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promising candidates turn problematic and projected assets become pestering liabilities in days to come. In fact, a truly reliable assessment of a man is possible only in real life—by judging his behaviours over a long period of time in interpersonal interactions and trying circumstances. Nonetheless, psychological testing is a good way to start; if it is discarded, there is nothing left in hand. On the other hand, if our tools do not deliver us our men, we rework our tools to get our men. Men are real, tests are hypothetical. We have nothing without men. Another way to partially overcoming reliability problems is relying on extended multistage combination testing strategy. Some ideas and suggestions on this are given below. Maximum information should be eked out from candidates by employing multiple methods which include self-reports, computer tests, field tests, and interviews. Both forced choice or closed question and descriptive or free narrative formats are recommended. Explicit self-reports are very useful but certain implicit personality tests such as implicit association test, situational judgement tests, thematic appreciation test, defence mechanism test, and more besides would also help in a comprehensive assessment. Lie detection test could also be useful for comparative and corroborative purposes. Selfreport on parenting and upbringing may also be useful. Four-dimensional assessment by testing behaviours and actions, beliefs and thoughts, feelings and emotions, and cognition, visualisation, and realisation is essential. Multiple overlapping tests are suggested for gathering a good deal of confirming and disconfirming information and to deal with the limitations of various instruments, their base rates and cutting points. Comprehensive, diverse, and extensive testing for the repeated verification and validation of findings would establish a better consistency of characteristics. It, then, could go on for weeks. But extended testing should not breed laxity or levity; it remains a serious business through and through. Interaction of candidates with each other and joint strategising for tests should be discouraged and minimised by taking necessary steps. Field tests should involve strenuous physical tasks and monotonous routines with unpredictable and uncertain changes. Stress should be produced by physical exertion in the presence of loud noise, bright light, cold water, darkness, confined space, and isolation. Measurements of pre-stress, post-stress, and average heart rate and heart rate variability could indicate stress levels. Consequences of peripheral and panoramic vision and its distortion and loss,



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visual hyerfocus, perceptual narrowing, impaired or heightened visual acuity, aural exclusion, attenuation, or amplification, temporal alterations such as a slow or fast motion of events, fine motor and complex motor performance, a loss of motor control, a loss of near vision, reading efficiency and speech impairment, ability to recognise and discriminate, ability to remember and recall, complex motor skills learning, and more besides could reveal useful abilities. Resiliency and vulnerability of individuals vary with the types of stress; a person who is resilient to certain types of stress might be vulnerable to certain other types of stress while another person might show a different pattern of behaviour. Hence, a broad spectrum of tests should be prepared and given to create different types of stressful situations for judging individual’s response to each type of stress. Psychologists work with the members of unit. Organisational members who are not psychologists but who are assigned to evaluate candidates should have the basic knowledge of psychology with emphasis on observing, interviewing, judging, and rating, of what they should do and should not do, and how to deal with personal biases and social prejudices. They should be trained and prepared by psychologists for their assignments, top commanders included, for most of us are incapable of making correct judgements for want of scientific knowledge. All judges, especially commanders, must dispel a widely prevalent misconception, their zealously guarded myth, that people know it all only by virtue of their role, rank, and stature. Between objective and personal comes social and shared which we can bank upon in the absence of objectivity. There should be at least two independent judges for evaluating each person or event for redundancy and reducing point of view errors and inattentional errors; it is better if one of them is a psychologist. Signs and indicators are enough to judge a man; evaluative approach is relative, not absolute; both scientific information and intuitive judgements are useful and considered. For a subjective assessment of human performance in areas and activities where responses, efforts, and outcomes cannot be measured quantitatively, I suggest a simple scale of four descriptive ratings comprising substandard or unacceptable, satisfactory or acceptable, good or desirable, and excellent or exceptional, which makes better sense to a human judge than precise rating by numbers, for example, on a scale of ten with fractions. For the purpose of averaging, comparing, and integrating data, we can assign progressively rewarding or penalising numerical values to these grades on a scale of ten, for example, 1, 3, 6, and 10 respectively, which is done later at computational

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back end and not in real time by front-end assessors. It is not free of all faults but seems to me a better solution to the dual problems of metric and normative distortion. Certain factors are given more weight than others, by classifying them into primary and subsidiary with superior and inferior grading, in the final collation, integration, conflation, and interpretation of data. All confirming and disconfirming evidences are discussed threadbare in the final stage of assessment. We should generally be more wary of undesirable and unwanted characteristics than elated about desirable and wanted attributes. However, all decisions and interpretations should be informed by and all anomalies, ambiguities, uncertainties, differences, and disputes should be best reconciled and resolved by science and moderated by best decision strategy employing cost-benefit analysis. Given the continuum of personality, undesirable attributes and extreme types in moderate gradations should be tolerated. Similarly, given the constraints of evolution, cognitive distortions, perceptual constraints, and behavioural dysfunctions under stress in moderate magnitudes should be accepted unless they disable a man abnormally. The whole purpose of this enterprise is to ascertain person-environment and person-job match or, more importantly, to avert person-environment and person-job mismatch. The greater the match, the easier the transformation, and vice versa. A comprehensive self-report is asked among other things from applicants and careful documentary screening is carried out to invite suitable aspirants. Some individuals drop out at this stage. Of invited candidates, health examination is conducted first to sift out those who have medical conditions, psychosomatic disorders, and physical disabilities that would impede extreme physical exertion. Next, qualified candidates are given field tests to select those who fulfil the minimum requirements of physical performance. At this point, selected candidates are briefed about the actual nature of hostage rescue job and its risks without revealing about organisation, explained the extreme nature of subsequent stages of selection programme, and given option to opt out of selection process. Selected and willing candidates are now put through a two- to four-week general residential testing programme for the in-depth assessment of emotional, behavioural, intellectual, and physical faculties. In these tests, decisions to reject are not taken hurriedly, attrition is minimised, and the potential population of testees is maximised. At this juncture, selected aspirants are told about the actual details of organisation they would be part of if selected finally. Candidates are, then, put through an extended ten- to twelve-week residential testing and basic occupational training programme with multiple recursive components of assessment for final validation and



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permanent selection. Attrition is maximised in this stage as if it is the last opportunity to weed out unwanted elements. The best are selected in the end. A month-long break should be given between these two arduous residential stages of selection process. Expenses incurred on the boarding of candidates as well as on basic amenities and medical care given to them are born by organisation. Voluntary written consent of candidates and parents or guardians to safeguard against lawsuits in case of accidental death or injury is essential but all efforts must be made to keep tests safe, scientific, and civilised. Consent of candidates is also obtained more than once at different stages on a condition that the self-reports, self-assessment, and self-ratings of finally selected candidates on personality questionnaires would be public documents within organisation and they would be displayed transparently and accessible to all members for community oversight. Banners, letterheads, and websites of existing personnel selection bodies of army, navy, air force, police, coastguard, counterterrorist forces, and rescue organisations could be used as a front for newspaper and online advertising to give a cover to hostage rescue establishment. Direct contact programme by approaching educational institutions and sporting organisations could indeed be very useful and should be a priority. Presentations made here should be impressive and inspiring and motivational short films should be shown to attract the best talent. National mandate would ensure that necessary cooperation is readily extended by all. V Problem of manpower management is multifaceted. Selection of suitable men is just a first challenge; their retention becomes a continuous challenge thereafter. In this and subsequent sections, we will discuss turnover problem and its management. Before they are inducted, aspirants who are selected finally are asked to sign a stringent indemnity bond aimed at making five-year service in hostage rescue organisation mandatory. Job hunting and quitting in between is not allowed so that it is not used as a stopgap until a preferred career break comes about. It will solve the problem of retention to certain extent but not entirely as involuntary, unavoidable, and penal discharge due to accidents, injuries, medical conditions, moral transgression, interpersonal deviance, organisational deviance, and voluntary absenteeism would occur anyway. In any case, turnover is unavoidable in the fullness of time because people grow old and they cannot be retained forever; sadly, even the best men

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have to go eventually. So, for how long should we retain our men after induction? Experience matters a great deal in life because a man has a limited foresight and his experience base expands his foresight as it grows. As a result, an experienced veteran is able to see things happening in the future which are often not seen by a young novice. It can be argued, then, that the more the experience, the better the decisions. We have discussed the ten-year rule of expertise in chapter four and underlined that a complex terrorist crisis can be resolved with minimal loss only by expert teams. We must, then, retain our men for more than ten years. But for how long after decisive ten-year mark? Aging is natural; it catches up with all and our psychophysical performance declines with age. Experts too are men; they cannot reverse the effects of aging but they are able to resist and delay the onset of age related decline. “That experts acquire the critical skills in their domain at younger ages and that related mechanisms remain available throughout later adulthood” to them is known. “The most likely reason for the age-graded stability of performance in older experts,” write Belgian and American psychologists Ralf Krampe and Neil Charness, “is that increased age brings with it increased job-specific knowledge and skills.” Horn and Masunaga, on the other hand, argue that “it takes years to reach the highest levels of expertise. Some of this, perhaps most of it, has to be in adulthood. Therefore, the abilities of expertise should increase, on average, in adulthood, not decline.” While aging causes slowdown in men, the physical slowing of experts is more than compensated by anticipatory lead gained by powerful foresight. Experience, thus, continues to matter for quite some time in an expert’s life. Also, by relying on sustained deliberate practice and purposive reflection, experts are able to successfully devise specific strategies and mechanisms to adapt to and compensate for decline, deterioration, and constraints imposed by aging on the accuracy and speed of cognitive, perceptual, and psychomotor processes and functions. While all this is reassuring, what about the expertise of hostage rescue which has a dominant physical component? Hostage rescue expertise has two components of physical and cognitive performance. Both cognitive and physical components develop jointly and shore up each other to deliver combined cognophysical or active-operational performance in the journey of man towards expertise. But at certain point in life due to age related changes, the performance paths of these components begin to unravel and disentangle. At this point experts begin to develop specific compensatory strategies and mechanisms to deliver expert-level



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performance, age related degradation notwithstanding. However, the paths of these components continue to separate and diverge from each other as they age. Paradoxically, these two components have altogether different futures after separation. Post bifurcation, physical component begins to dip and decline while cognitive component continues to flourish and grow, thus producing the inconsistent and opposite effects of constraining people by lowering the accuracy, quickness, agility, speed, and endurance of physical performance while enabling them to make faster and superior intuitive decisions by rapidly judging ambiguous situations. Eventually, at certain point in life, experts find it beyond their wits to deal with their decline and their innovative adaptations fail to maintain expert-level joint cognophysical performance any longer. This is the point of quitting from active operations but not for a complete retirement from the active rescue world. Their cognitive component goes on to build upon itself and becomes still better and superior with time. They now become even more useful and sharper in certain background and support tasks where cognitive resources play a dominant and decisive role. This eventful and intriguing journey of hostage rescue experts is schematically depicted in figure 12.1. Here is my proposal which draws upon what we have discussed above. We select young men between eighteen and twenty-three years of age. We give them ten years to become expert hostage rescuers. They reach the age of twenty-eight to thirty-three when they climb onto expert level. We retain them until the age of thirty-eight years for active hostage rescue roles. We, thus, get between five to ten years of peak performance with expert-level advantage from them. It means that in a true sense, a hostage rescue force is ready for handling complex terrorist crises only after a decade from when its first men are inducted and put through basic training course. It also means that due to the ten-year rule of expertise, pioneers in all uniformed ranks and rescue roles are retained for at least twelve years until a unit develops its first batch of home-grown experts to take over from them. Can we break or bypass the ten-year rule of expertise in our context which has a dominant physical component of performance? Given its operational complexity and the extremes of decisional difficulties in rescuing hostages from a complex terrorist stronghold, I have no reason to believe that hostage rescue expertise can have a shorter gestation period than ten years needed by the other domains of expertise. In the absence of scientific studies and evidence contradicting this rule, I have stood by it and recommended tenyear rule for hostage rescue expertise too. My own professional experience only convinces me about its applicability to our context. Also, we should

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not unduly worry about a mature retirement age of rescuers here, which may seem too old by sporting standards and prevailing practices in special forces. In the third decade of life, age related degradation is less pronounced and not starkly perceptible anyway, much less in practicing and reflecting rescuers who develop specific higher-level compensatory strategies and mechanisms to offset limitations imposed by aging on them and their work related performance. Problem-solving

Point of Emergence

Expert Level

Cognitive Performance

Start

10 Years Point of Emergence

Expert Level Combating

Cognitive and Physical Performance Entry

Expertise Retirement Time

Formation and Future of Expert Rescuers Figure 12.1

VI Negative employee retention can only hold our men for five years. We need to have a positive employee retention policy too. Some suggestions on it as well as on operational planning and career progression are given below, which could be selectively explained to aspirants at an appropriate time, including in direct contact briefings to motivate them.



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We know that in a rescue operation employing seek and fix strategy, the size of active force is determined by the size and plan of terrorist stronghold. Irrespective of the size of force required for an operation, however, certain rules of task allocation are applied. Forward detachment is constituted almost entirely of expert rescuers so that a contingency assault is mounted by the best men available. If no such contingency occurs, they are reassigned to other tasks before deliberate assault is commenced. Expert-level rescuers are first assigned to striking element and next to rescue element. If expert rescuers are still available, they are assigned to holding and forward reserve forces. Holding operations can also be assigned to less experienced rescuers. Evacuation and base reserve elements are formed by still younger rescuers. Base security assignment is given to novices. On the other hand, planning and logistics operations are assigned to senior experts who have crossed the maximum peak cognophysical performance age of thirty-eight years but retained in unit for background operations that are driven and determined overly by superior cognitive performance, which they can deliver in abundance, where they continue to excel and do better than others. In a rescue force, assaulters are generalists while breachers, snipers, and marksmen are specialists. All men begin their careers as generalists and only after a five-year training experience they are designated as specialists. All snipers begin their careers as marksmen and only after a year-long marksmanship experience they are upgraded to sniping training. After a year of sniping experience, thus, marksmen and snipers become interchangeable; they can switch roles by switching weapon systems. Training of generalists and specialists is governed by two-thirds rule. Designated breachers, snipers, and marksmen devote two-thirds of field training time to specialist combat skills and remaining time to generalist combat skills while prospective breachers, snipers, and marksmen devote two-thirds of field training time to generalist combat skills and remaining time to specialist combat skills. Rescuers become designated specialists only after five years of training experience but they become prospective specialists immediately after basic training course. Annual rotation of domain specialisation is mandatory in the first five years of career for all-round skill development, cross-familiarisation, fluid task allocation, and neophilic fulfilment. Domain of specialisation could be rotated even afterwards to meet and satisfy organisational and personal needs. If casualty rescue is combined with hostage rescue, rescuers train for one week in technical rescue after every three weeks of tactical rescue training but this diversification programme commences only after they gain two years of foundational hostage rescue experience.

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For administrative purposes, hostage rescue organisation is divided into seven divisions to manage operations, logistics, training, general administration, financial administration, engineering, and health, education, and welfare. Operations, logistics, training, and general administration divisions have two commanders each and finance, engineering, and health, education, and welfare divisions have one commander each to supervise their functions. All divisional commanders jointly constitute general staff headed by a deputy chief of staff and a chief of staff. A unit, thus, needs two high-ranking commanders at the top and eleven mid-ranking commanders below them to directly supervise various organisational functions. We do not need specialist supervisors for financial and administrative management in the ethical social environment and emergency response atmosphere of a hostage rescue unit. A general spirit and approach of enabling, not disabling, assisting, not resisting, facilitating, not obstructing, and providing, not depriving is enough to guide routine decisions. Rules of business are rationalised, simplified, and minimised for easy and intuitive decision-making in a pervasive culture of trustfulness and truthfulness. You do not need pedantic bureaucrats here who are utterly impervious and entirely insensitive to purpose and problem-solving; rescuers assisted by specialist clerical staff can manage the administrative and financial affairs of organisation excellently. The same principles guide the selection and service of commanders of hostage rescue unit who are required to deliver cognitive performance. For expertlevel advantage, however, they have to develop cognophysical component for the first ten years of career. Their eligibility criteria specify education, not age; they should have acquired a bachelor’s degree at entry level but a cut-off age is also fixed, which I propose to be under twenty-six years at the time of submitting job application. They become hostage rescue experts at the maximum age of thirty-six and go on to command for another decade thereafter. After crossing the age of forty-five, they are moved up to joint rescue command or shifted to military, police, or disaster response professions or given advisory roles in policymaking bodies or given voluntary retirement for migrating to corporate sector or self-employment. An attractive package of salary and allowances coupled with appealing incentives, perks, and privileges are necessary for drawing the best men to hostage rescue force. Policy and rules governing career progression and termination are such that provide special and tangible benefits in order to adequately reward risks taken and efforts made by men so that talent is continuously and irresistibly attracted to hostage rescue.



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Men are given timed promotions to climb up in hierarchy, which is a usual organisational feature. More importantly, all rescuers are rehabilitated usefully and honourably both in government and private organisations after they retire, given their early age of retirement. After crossing the age of thirty-eight, rescuers can continue in unit and reassigned to general staff, logistics, or training functions or migrate to another unit in these roles where vacancies are available. They can also move to joint rescue command in planning, coordination, and advisory roles. They can be transferred to other forces as specialists in advisory, leadership, and training roles. Men are also allowed to take voluntary retirement from government service and move to private sector. Not merely formalities such as writing the letters of recommendation are done but our outgoing men are genuinely facilitated by organisation in securing livelihoods and serious efforts are made by system to settle them down. For example, for their post-retirement placement, a meeting of military and police leaders and corporate human resource and security heads is organised by the chief of joint rescue command at national headquarters to brief them about the quality and quantity of men available for hiring and how well they could be employed and utilised in their organisations. It is a periodic routine done a few months before mass turnover is scheduled. For isolated cases, phone calls are made and personal meetings are arranged. All these efforts are coordinated by the national headquarters of joint rescue command. Everyone who is responsible and sensible would readily grab such highly trained and talented individuals not to be found elsewhere only if our assets are properly presented and marketed. While all these efforts would be required only after a decade and a half from the time of commencing project, it should be borne in mind throughout, starting from the very beginning and solid foundations should be laid when project commences. It will attract superior talent to hostage rescue work in abundance if favourable policy and enabling rules are notified right in the beginning to facilitate the post-retirement placement of rescuers in suitable advisory, instructional, and leadership roles in various military, police, and emergency response organisations and contingency planning positions in various departments, ministries, and governments. However, this must happen without ego clashes, bureaucratic obstructions, and turf wars. While their private sector re-employment remains uncertain until it actually happens, in government sector it can be guaranteed beforehand. Power of State can make everything possible. All members are allowed, encouraged, and facilitated to continue education and pursue higher studies for personal growth and career prospects. For this,

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hostage rescue units are affiliated to various reputed educational institutions and universities, which guide them in designing and choosing short-term and long-term educational programmes, provide course material and teaching faculty, and award diplomas and degrees. Required books are bought and loaned and journals are subscribed by unit libraries which are integrated to each other and with the library systems of educational institutions. Visiting programmes for faculty and students to come and stay in units and universities respectively are developed to make classroom instruction possible and provide wider exposure to the educational world. A wide variety of relational, useful, enjoyable, and employable fields of knowledge in which study is possible through distant education and online learning are offered and made available, for instance, security management, disaster management, business management and also theoretical and applied sports, social, psychological, philosophical, political, historical, geographical, mathematical, statistical, computational, computer, design, military, strategic, literature, linguistic, ornithological, evolutionary, earth, ecological, and climate sciences. By ‘science’ I mean a body of organised knowledge and a field of methodical study here. Since the frontiers of knowledge keep expanding, newer subjects and courses are introduced and offered when available. Education adds wonder to the whole experience of life; it is good and choiceworthy and ought to be pursued and promoted. Neither we can find three hundred men together nor we can train them together. We have to build a unit slowly, thus. For turnover management later, if we select thirty men each year for a unit, a set-up of four units would require one hundred and twenty men to be selected annually and centrally, which a larger country and population can supply easily. Policy of readily expandable salary budget and stretchable manpower strength when required is advisable and helpful in effecting a timely intake of additional members to manage turnover problem without reducing the maximum operational size of unit below three hundred rescuers, about half of which should ideally be expert rescuers. VII Some are indeed hopeless, in that their characters cannot be altered much but a vast majority of men can be reformed and transformed beyond belief by altering their beliefs and self-concepts, building their bodies and skills, and providing them a supportive social environment. However, we must not forget that, irrespective of efforts we put in selecting and training individuals for combat, we should be prepared to see some of our good men fail in



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actual combat. To quote American military psychologists Howard Garb and Jeff Cigrang, “Even the most thoroughly trained, stable, well-behaved, and apparently resilient war fighter can find himself or herself quite suddenly unable to perform very well-learned tasks under the uniquely stressful and sometimes traumatic conditions of real combat.” Ultimate validation of a fighter happens only in a battleground and only a battle-hardened fighter can be called a real fighter. Until then, uncertainty persists.

Chapter 13 Arming and Equipping

I Failure is not normal and no one wants to fail. Occasionally when we fail in some significant ways, most of us want to know why did we fail and want to fix our problems in order not to fail again. While men are immediately seen to have failed after a major failure, before long men are elbowed aside and initial narrative usually makes way for another tale that is told quietly but repeatedly in the corridors of power. Here, failure is often apportioned ‘rationally’ to a lack of resources, to obsolete technology and ageing tools. Solution, then, seems quite simple: Pour money to buy technology to insure against failure in the future. Otherwise too, the lure of technology, the attraction of machines is immense and irresistible. Technology has fascinated all of us and now become the answer to all human problems. It suits all. Getting new technology is easy; all you need is money and some approvals and sanctions. It is fast; you can see the fruits of your labour in a short period of time. It makes everyone happy; some get to make money, some get stories to brag, and some get toys to play. Infusion of technology is an absolute win-win deal, thus. Also, like all new things, new equipments bring with them a lot of excitement, elation, and pride; they indeed make a child in you feel good and empowered, even larger than life. This euphoria, however, does not last, for it only occurs in the minds of people, in the realm of affect and emotions; it does not change things much in the real world outside. Feelings of elation produced by something new and superior invariably have a short life as we soon become accustomed and used to new ways and things. Like all new things, the excitement of new equipments too withers and wanes quickly; to see things and use them becomes routine, or rather prosaic and trite. Everything becomes ordinary and commonplace in a little while—so much so that though you see them, things are not seen once the newness of things effaces. On the flip side, new technology generates a 521

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false belief in your safety and preparedness. An imagined sense of security thus creeps in and a misplaced optimism and unfounded confidence in a world where all is well and things are in control is born. This view of the world is erroneous and defective, not real, because machinery is just one factor in your success or failure; it is shattered instantly by a misfortune of facing the reality. Fortunately, in the world that happens to settle for order over chaos and organisation over disruption, your luck does not desert easily and you unsurprisingly get away with your defective worldview for a good long while. It is an intriguing story much of which we have heard in chapter seven and what remains to be known for arming and equipping is told here. II We need equipments, machines, and devices to do things that cannot be done by our bodies and minds alone. Equipments, machines, and devices are the fruits of technology. Decisions as regards arming and equipping a hostage rescue force, then, are decisions to introduce technology for the purpose of hostage rescue. For doing their job responsibly, decision-makers must understand the nature of technology and be mindful of its encumbrances, constraints, and consequences too. If a hostage rescue force they lead and command embraces seek and fix strategy, their technological decisions must be guided by and consistent with the operational principles of seek and fix strategy—foremost being the principle of simplicity in the context of technology, its introduction, integration, and deployment. Also, their decisions must uphold and maintain the centrality of men in operations since men are at the centre of seek and fix strategy—technology should not be allowed to enslave men and dictate the way they work; it should instead be in the service of men and subservient to the way they work. These questions, however, cannot be solved merely by knowing the sciences of physics, mechanics, electronics, and ergonomics and doing field evaluations based on them to test the performance of professional tools. The question of technology is much broader in nature, scope, and consequences. We will discuss it first before coming to the actual business of arming and equipping, therefore. Let us begin with a basic question: What is technology? Chilean engineer Fernando Flores and his American co-authors Michael Graves, Brad Hartfield, and Terry Winograd define technology in a broader associational and consequential sense. They write, “In using the word ‘technology’ people are generally concerned with artifacts—with things they design, build, and use. But in our interpretation, technology is not the design of physical things. It



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is the design of practices and possibilities to be realized through artifacts.” Technology, in a broader sense, thus, is not only products but also what products do to their users and how their relationships bring themselves to bear on the world and shape its future. It is not only about machines but also about men, their lives, and their world. It is about the team of man and machine that delivers and also about why it fails to deliver, for when they fail, men do not fail alone in most cases; it is man-machine coupling that actually suffers a breakdown. Man is inseparable from machine; men work with machines and machines work for men and shape their lives and the world. A reductionist and narrow view of technology, then, is defective; it is dangerous and pathological too. It has caused the pathology of technocentrism—demanding too much from technology, depending too much on it, and ceding too much to it. The net result of leaving man out of technological equation is that man has been pushed from foreground to background, from a lead role to a subservient ranking. Worse still, technology does pretty much nothing on its own and needs man to make it work; man, in turn, becomes a scapegoat for all shortcomings and failures, for if technology is always good as believed, it must be man, when something goes wrong. I will use ‘technology’ in its broader sense for both products as well as their social effects. Canadian human factors scholar Kim Vicente recognises this pathology well. He bemoans, “More and more technology is being foisted upon us at a faster and faster pace. . . . All these gadgets are supposed to make life easier, but they often make it more difficult instead. . . . Before we learn to use the latest technological ‘convenience,’ there’s a new one on the market with more ‘advanced’ features.” We are increasingly developing “technology that is well tailored to the physical world but too complex for human beings to handle. . . . More and more, we’re being asked to live with technology that is technically reliable, because it was created to fit our knowledge of the physical world, but that is so complex and so counterintuitive that it’s actually unusable by most human beings. . . . It leads to human error, anger and frustration” and brings a lot of anxiety and stress into our lives. “Technological systems have never been as complex and as troubling as they are now.” Even more worrying is that “the Mechanistic tendency to focus its one-eyed gaze on gadgetry goes beyond everyday technologies to large-scale, safety-critical systems.” It is pervasive now; it has become a culture. “No matter where we look, whether at everyday situations or complex systems, we see technology that’s beyond our human capacity to control.” But “few people are aware of the immense magnitude and breadth of the threat posed by complex technological systems.” The fact is that “technology – with all

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its promise and potential – has gotten so far beyond human control that it’s threatening the future of humankind.” Technology that is too complex to grasp, use, and control is called clumsy technology. It is harmful and hazardous to live and work with clumsy technology. David Woods and his co-authors write, “In general, ‘clumsy’ use of technological powers can create additional mental burdens or other constraints on human cognition and behavior that create opportunities for erroneous actions and assessments by people, especially in high criticality, high workload, high tempo operations. . . . Clumsiness is not really in the technology. Clumsiness arises in how the technology is used relative to the context of demands, resources, agents, and other tools. . . . It is not the technology itself that creates the problem; rather it is how the technological possibilities are utilized vis à vis the constraints and needs of the operational system.” If clumsiness is about technological decisions and the integration of technology with people and system, bad technology is about design itself. On the good and bad design of things, American engineer and cognitive scientist Donald Norman says, “Well-designed objects are easy to interpret and understand. They contain visible clues to their operation. Poorly designed objects can be difficult and frustrating to use. They provide no clues—or sometimes false clues. They trap the user and thwart the normal process of interpretation and understanding.” According to Vicente, “They all have one thing in common: they make unrealistic assumptions about human beings, creating a bad fit between people and technology.” Another problem of technology is caused by what Norman calls featurism. Featurism “is the tendency to add to the number of features that a device can do, often extending the number beyond all reason.” It increases the complexity of device and makes it and its users vulnerable to failures. “Complexity probably increases as the square of the features: double the number of features, quadruple the complexity. Provide ten times as many features, multiply the complexity by one hundred,” suggests Norman. Solution to the problem of technological encumbrance is rather simple. Vicente suggests, “We should ensure that the design of the technological system is problem-driven, that it aims to fulfill a human or societal need, so that we avoid the Mechanistic tendency to design technology for its own sake.” American mathematician and philosopher Norbert Wiener advises, “We must consider an invention not only with regard to what we can



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invent but also as to how the invention can be used and will be used in a human context.” But no one listens. So, who is responsible for the hazards and encumbrances of technology? Designers? Engineers? Spirit of innovation usually makes technology superior and things better for users in terms of utility and usability. However, beyond a point in technological development, innovation begins to clutter things internally and kill their clean structures and neat functions. It happens when people no longer improve for the ease of users but for the sake of improving and offering something new and more under the pressures of increasing sales or outdoing competition or staying relevant by delaying obsolescence. When profits dictate all design decisions, designers can do pretty much nothing, even if they are aware and willing to apply human-centred problem-solving approach to design. It becomes all the more impossible if users themselves begin to drive technology towards complexity by their preferences for an increasingly greater number of features and an ever-increasing power of technology—shaped by the forces of greed and gratification, imitation and demonstration. Against these larger forces, poor design engineers are compelled to pursue additive approach to design which breeds featurism and increases complexity. When forced innovation occurs, the increased power and capability of technology always comes with “added complexity and sometimes decreased reliability,” asserts Norman. Sometimes, though, designers themselves do not realise the intricacies of their own creations and to that extent they are responsible for creating bad technology. To quote Vicente, “Since they have so much scientific and engineering expertise, they tend to think that everyone knows as much about technology as they do. . . . But most of us aren’t like that. . . . The result is often technological systems that are technically sound and easy for other designers to use, but that bury ordinary people in a quagmire of complexity.” There is yet another problem of technology which is not caused intentionally. “Ironic unintended consequences” of technology which unwittingly begin to defeat the very purpose of inventing and using it are called ‘revenge effects’ by American researcher and writer Edward Tenner. He writes, “Whenever we try to take advantage of some new technology, we may discover that it induces behavior which appears to cancel out the very reason for using it.” But “technology alone usually doesn’t produce a revenge effect. Only when we anchor it in laws, regulations, customs, and habits does an irony reach its full potential. . . . Revenge effects happen because new structures, devices, and organisms react with real people in real situations in ways we could not foresee.” Problems that crop up as a result of revenge effects are “not necessarily

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more severe, but more subtle and intractable” such as “overintensified life” dominated by “the endless rituals of vigilance. . . . Chronic problems almost by definition demand maintenance rather than solution; while the need for vigilance and care becomes itself a chronic irritation.” This is the least price that we must pay for habitually outsourcing all problems to technology. The irony is that the safer and superior the technology, the greater the vigilance. But vigilance too is not a reliable solution, for “sometimes vigilance is more of a reassuring ritual than a practical precaution,” cautions Tenner. It seems that simplicity might be the answer to technological encumbrances. But the ‘simplicity’ of technology is also not problem-free and could even be deceptive. Tenner warns, “Far more often, . . . the apparent simplicity of technology conceals underlying problems that then become far more difficult to diagnose and treat.” The fact is that we can never really solve technological problems, for solution does not lie in technology, for “technology demands more, not less, human work to function. And it introduces more subtle and insidious problems to replace acute ones.” Tenner’s conclusion of his decade-long reflection on the problem of technology is profound: “What appears to be a technological question—how much of anything we really need—is in the end a social one.” Eventually, the answer lies in morality, our view of the world, and choices that we make. On technology, Vicente has made three distilled observations: That “the technical stuff is frequently too complex for people to manage, creating confusion at best and potentially devastating consequences at worst;” that “the ‘softer’ aspects of technological systems (work schedules, team coordination, and so on) can also make people’s lives more difficult than they need be, contributing to the chaos;” that “our problems with technology are only getting worse, not better.” How can we, then, mitigate the problem of technology in the world where technology is increasing and increasingly encumbering, where its risks are worsening? We will answer this question next. III In order to avert complications or, still worse, failures in our operational work, technological choices that we must make as regards hostage rescue should be made very carefully and our decisions should be consistent with the dual directives of strategy, which are the primacy of men and the principle of simplicity. At the centre of technology selection must be men, their immediate goals, operational strategy, and overall purpose and not what designers, developers,



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manufacturers, and marketers believe and tell. A terrorist stronghold is not their laboratory, test bench, or proving ground; what they do there might be good science and sound engineering but not necessarily that works best in an operational system deployed in actual missions. Tenet of centrality of men makes it incumbent upon us to investigate and answer certain higher-order questions which are more complex than simpler lower-order technical and ergonomic questions usually pursued in physical and field evaluations. This strategic tenet directs us to ascertain by imagination as to how a machine or device will interact with man; what additional cognitive and behavioural burdens it will impose on him; how this change will affect his situation awareness, his error proneness, his fluidity of various combat actions, and his overall operational performance; how it will generate the additional demands of communication among team members and how it will affect team coordination and its fluidity; how it will work with and affect the working of other tools of trade which are used side by side; how its specific behaviours will come into conflict with other learned behaviours and if it will require the unlearning of certain behaviours; whether the ensemble of operational behaviours will become inconsistent or if various mental processes and behaviours will coexist without contradiction in the theatre of operation after the introduction of a new technology into operational system. More importantly, how all these relationships will change in high-stress, highworkload, high-tempo periods during actual operations, what this change will do to our ability to practice the principles of operation, and what all of it in the end will mean for our cardinal purpose? Only by reflecting individually and deliberating collectively on these intricate questions and standing by the conclusions of this paramount intellectual exercise can we hope that in a dangerously technocentric and technophilic world, men, not machine, will control the outcomes of rescue operation by faithfully adhering to and implementing all six principles of rescue operation on which seek and fix strategy is built. Principle of simplicity is the first principle of operation and we have discussed it in chapter nine. For the purpose of arming and equipping, it means that things should be simple and selected parsimoniously by a general application of Ockham’s razor, which we discussed in chapter seven. I propose three general rules for the purpose of technology selection. Rule number one: If men can do without something just fine, do not burden them with it. Rule number two: It is better to do something with less than with more. Rule number three: Anything more simple which does the same thing is better than anything less simple. These rules will not motivate you to clutter your warehouse with equipments in the first place and they will discourage and stall you if you

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are still driven towards things out of a fascination for technology or an urge to spend money. If you believe in them, you will not embrace technological evangelicalism, will not become technocentric and technophilic, and will not habitually outsource all human problems to technology. We will now approach the problem of equipment selection from the standpoint of engineering and technology, which is the basic level of technical problemsolving. IV Design of things is important and so is production. A good design could be marred by substandard manufacturing and, no matter how well something is fabricated, it remains problematic if its design is not good in the first place. We should, therefore, evaluate both design and construction. Additionally, technical evaluation also investigates operation, function, and performance in detail. Certain important things that we should keep in mind while carrying out this exercise are discussed below. Our technical evaluation should be guided by our problems. It should focus on what we want technology to do, not what technology can do for us. By a problem-driven approach, I mean that a product should not be bought simply because we can buy it or we like it. It should be acquired only when it is genuinely felt that it would solve a significant problem that could not be solved before or it would solve a problem significantly better than before; that its operational advantages are truly non-negligible and it would not disturb or disrupt the equilibrium of operational system in place. A problem-driven approach mitigates vulnerabilities without adding liabilities. Our evaluation should be centred on users and pivot around purpose. Whether a technology is good or not should be determined by users and operators, not by manufacturers and salesmen, politicians and bureaucrats, however reputed and credible, big and powerful they might be. We should determine and establish how good it is for us, our men, our operations, and our purpose and not how good it has been for others in the world. While using something, if you are habitually doing something wrong and if there are many people who are repeating your mistakes, then, something is wrong with the design of thing; we should have faith in users, not engineers. Our evaluative approach should be user-centred and purpose-driven, not cost-centred and market-driven or pressure-driven. Our analysis should be in-depth and independent, not externally motivated and guided by an invisible hand. Our conclusions should be strategic and sagacious, not shallow and superficial.



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Decision-makers should follow a hands-on approach; they should understand technology by doing themselves, not just by reading brochures, watching videos, witnessing demonstrations, and perusing reports. Armchair strategists, theoretical leaders, and inexpert commanders are incapable of making independent and prudent decisions in technological matters. We should choose structural and operational simplicity over complexity. But external simplicity is not enough if there is invisible internal clutter. A machine that uses fewer parts and processes is better than a machine that uses more, so long as a simpler device is able to do what we want it for. Addition of parts increases dynamic interactions and interrelationships by an order of magnitude—use it as a rule of thumb, even if a universal scientific formula cannot be established for this purpose. It may not be so always but it is safer to assume that a more complex machine might be less reliable and one with lesser parts, especially moving parts, would suffer fewer failures simply because it has less number of things that can fail. A greater number of features make things more complex; useful and rarely used features and their ratio should be determined and we should strive not to be burdened with and pay for features we would not use. We should ascertain if the design of product, machine, or device itself helps in error mitigation and management. Norman says, “If an error is possible, someone will make it. The designer must assume that all possible errors will occur and design so as to minimize the chance of the error in the first place, or its effects once it gets made. Errors should be easy to detect, they should have minimal consequences, and, if possible, their effects should be reversible.” It is always better and desirable if relevant parts and processes as well as the state of system are visible. Norman calls visibility one of the most important principles of design which increases usability and reduces errors. He says, “The correct parts must be visible, and they must convey the correct message.” Feedback is an important method of error management. According to Norman, feedback means “sending back to the user information about what action has actually been done, what result has been accomplished.” Feedback tells if you are doing it right and alerts when you are wrong. We should ascertain if a device has been designed to communicate information about itself and its current state and provide feedback to initiate a critical action or correct an erroneous action. One which does it is better than one which does not. Feedback should be prompt and prominent; it could be tactile, visual, or aural.

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Forcing function is another method of error management by design. Forcing functions designed in a machine or a device are very useful as they force you to do things right. Norman writes, “Forcing functions are a form of physical constraint: situations in which the actions are constrained so that failure at one stage prevents the next step from happening.” A loose design is not always bad and a snug design is not always the best. Slack and play introduced deliberately in the arrangement and operation of a machine might play a role in delaying malfunctions. A machine which is tightly coupled and has tight tolerances could be more vulnerable to failure as a malfunction in one part or end might interact instantaneously with others and speedily propagate through system causing its breakdown. Slack built in as a principle of design and operation, then, might increase the reliability of system owing to its wider tolerances, even if it seems to compromise efficiency and does not inspire confidence. While evaluating a machine or a device, we should ascertain how natural and intuitive, easy and comfortable is its design and operation, handling and manipulation, carry and deployment; how flexible it is to fit different needs and choices; if it is ambidextrous and if it could be operated by a single hand. These are the questions of ergonomics and tactics. There is a difference between something that works with you naturally and something which you learn to work with effortfully. Mastery of natural design saves considerable time and energy; it is more likely to be retained and work reliably under stress and psychomotor dysfunctions caused by stress. Conversely, anything that hinders or hampers, impedes and obstructs, restrains or restricts physical movement, vision, or hearing is not good and might fail you, for nothing is more important than situation awareness, swift manoeuvre, and lightning reaction in combat. A machine should be versatile. By versatility I mean that it should be operable in day, night, low light, rain, and in different climes. Shape coding provides tactile feedback for handling without viewing; it should be easily discernible. We should ascertain these elements in the course of evaluation. To establish reliability, we have to find faults and failures and calculate their rates through extensive field testing and also make sense through manufacturer’s data. We should seek lab test reports and methods used to establish the mean rate of failure. There is a difference between fault and failure. Polish occupational safety specialist Marek Dźwiarek writes about it. Fault is “the inability to perform a required function, excluding inabilities



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during preventive maintenance or other planned actions or due to lack of external resources. A fault is often the result of a failure of the item itself, but may result even without any prior failure.” Failure is the “termination of the ability of an item to perform a required function.” He clarifies that “‘failure’ is an event, whereas ‘fault’ is a state.” Reliability is a product of consistency maintained across space and time and an outcome of sound engineering and rugged construction. A reliable machine has wide functional, environmental, and temporal tolerances. Remedial actions, troubleshooting procedures, time taken in resuming operation, boot sequence and boot time should also be found out. We should ascertain the operability of machine by means of prolonged testing to establish variance or invariance in speed and efficiency, accuracy and consistency, heat generation and dissipation, power and fuel consumption and supply, if there, its state of readiness, the frequency and downtime of preventive maintenance, and overall vigilance required for its operability. We should ascertain the safety of machine by means of short-term and long-term risks, hazards, and dangers it may pose to users, bystanders, and environment during operation, carry, transfer, storage, and disposal. Safe disposal protocols for device and its consumables are also ascertained. Logistics is a crucial aspect of operational preparedness and the exercise of evaluation should investigate and throw light on logistic considerations too. For it, we should consider the matters of warranty, after-sales support, maintenance processes and routines, repair and overhaul procedures, spare parts and their scales for stocking, special tools and gauges, including diagnostic tools, cleaning accessories, storage requirements, total operational life or what is called the ‘end of life,’ and more besides as well as tactical training needs for operating it and technical training needs for maintaining and repairing it and instructional support provided by company trainers and technical, material, and training aids supplied by manufacturer, including user manual, maintenance manual, the catalogue of parts and accessories, training films, cutaways, and much else besides. Company profile, its health, history, and prospects should be ascertained to satisfy our concerns regarding sustainable support and supplies. Assured, easy, and timely supply of consumables, their sources and availability, time taken in the process of replenishment, and the size of stock required for sustaining uninterruptible operations are crucial questions that we should investigate and answer. Mechanisms for receiving updates, upgrades, and modifications for improvement should be evaluated. Possibilities and assurances as regards recall and replacement if significant

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changes are made to cure any design or manufacturing defect at a later date should be explored. Soft aspects of management such as a secure mechanism of communication with manufacturer, an efficient response and disposal of issues, a point of contact and the intimation of changes in staff, and more such things are important and should be enquired into during evaluation. Larger geopolitical issues are also considered to determine its current availability and future supplies in the light of prevailing and prospective export or import restrictions and if these barriers could be circumvented by alternative routes and other means if we must face that eventuality and how our men and system would adapt, in case our access to it is terminated by politics. Everything must fit in and become the organic part of a single operational system, for nothing works in isolation and stands alone when you rescue hostages. Evaluation should, then, establish its interoperability and cooperability with other equipments, activities, and system, if there are certain non-negligible problems of integration, and whether its introduction and integration would be harmonious or discordant and outcomes would be synergistic or disruptive. While all this is investigated and ascertained in the course of evaluation, we should begin with basic information such as physical characteristics, mechanical properties, electrical specifications, the structures of joints and junctions, the types and actions of springs, the nature and life of seals, the types of bolts and screws and sealant used to fix them, complete operational action, the current version of software and firmware, and standard occupational and safety compliance certifications. Device should be disassembled to examine these questions in addition to studying technical literature; if satisfactory information is not found, questions should be referred to manufacturer. It is useful to know about materials and machinery, methods and processes, sciences and theories used for design and construction. Do study and understand hidden action, operational mechanics, and internal processing through diagrams, flow charts, films, and cutaways in order to know how a machine or a device actually works and delivers. While evaluating a machine or a device, we strive to ascertain its technical understandability, operational usability, functional reliability, and temporal operability through our experience base, literature, discussions, laboratory reports, and field tests. We should employ all these sources of knowledge and information for a comprehensive evaluation that considers function not fashion, performance not prevalence, and relevance not reputation for equipment selection. Our evaluation should establish what it can do and



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cannot do, its strengths and weaknesses, capabilities and limitations for a considered decision. Evaluation report should be exhaustive, containing answers to all questions, leaving nothing to chance. V Before coming to actual things, I must say that to write this chapter from now on is truly challenging, mainly because much fashionable and attractive words such as modern, advanced, improved, contemporary, new, latest, and many more which characterise technologies and products in our everyday conversation and marketing lexicon are all too elusive—here today and gone tomorrow, they are inseparably attached to time; they flow with time and mean nothing without time. Things that we so proudly and arrogantly present as state-of-the-art become obsolete, outdated, and anachronistic before long. While certain things do deserve such labels at certain point of time, if such claims are made with a sense of mindlessness and timelessness, if our assertions belie time and beliefs are made with reckless disregard for the transience of the world, our statements soon become misleading and look truly grotesque and absurd when seen from afar after a passage of time. For technology will continue to evolve and new things will keep coming on end, I will refrain from using these words and making product recommendations and only by way of example will I discuss the design and engineering of specific items, when I do. Also, product manufacturers given here may change with time because the ownership of companies too keeps changing. Human ingenuity is boundless, innovators never settle, and technology perpetually changes. Newer versions, models, and generations of things are more attractive and in some ways better than older ones. That notwithstanding, our inventory of operational equipment need not match the pace of technological change. As a rule of thumb, only when a compelling, decisive, and far-reaching operational advantage is gained by introducing a new technology should an old one be replaced. A minor or operationally insignificant improvement in technology should not be a good reason for re-equipping all over again. If we fail to resist the temptation of technology and fall into its trap, we will be condemned to forever remain in a state of flux and will never become stable to operate expertly. It is possible that certain technological improvement has a sound theoretical rationale but weak operational purpose in a specific context. Change, therefore, should always be driven by internal reasoning and operational necessity and not by external rationale or resource availability. Conclusions of context-free evaluations and decisions based on such conclusions could be utterly meaningless, entirely wasteful, and extremely

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risky. As Woods and his co-writers argue, “Context-free evaluations are unlikely to uncover the important problems, determine why they are important, and identify criteria that more successful systems should meet.” Use technology as a tool and do not develop a pathological dependence on it. A device is made to assist a man and solve his problems; it should not add to his burden and stress. Exhilaration induced by technology always has a life; sooner or later its side and revenge effects become all too obvious to ignore, even for its most ardent believers and blind supporters. Technology is not the answer to all human problems and our obsession for solving problems by technology which could be easily solved by men and their altered beliefs and behaviours has proven immensely expensive and immeasurably destructive. People often fail to realise that only men, not machines or money, can solve problems which are wrongly attributed to a lack of resources, equipments, and technologies. All told, it is not good to be technocentric and technophilic and we should be extremely cautious in introducing a technology for operational work, for it will invariably tie our men to itself and alter the way they work. In matters of technology, we should follow the principle of less is more. VI A terrorist is stunned by a blast and killed by a bullet. So, all we need to kill terrorists is guns and grenades. We can kill them only after we enter their stronghold. So, to breach our way through doors and walls we need explosives. Everything else required in combat is subsidiary, needed only to facilitate the primary task of killing, and subsidiary things as they are should be given secondary importance. People, including professionals everywhere are enamoured with guns; they like to talk, watch, and read about them more than other weapons. But little do they realise that their guns actually do not kill but bullets do, which are often neglected, receive inferior attention when they occasionally do, usually taken for granted, and merely treated as an accessory. This is a fallacious way of making sense of a weapon system. Way back, I saw a poster of a main tank gun firing a shell in the foreground of woods in Jane’s Ammunition Handbook on which was annotated a definitive answer to this fallacy: “Remember, the projectile is the weapon; the gun is merely the delivery system.” In agreement, British weapons engineers D.F. Allsop and M.A. Toomey also write, “While the weapon has received the notoriety, often of mythical or romantic legend, it is the ammunition that provides



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the results. A small arm only exists to fire the projectile.” Guns are not only delivery mechanisms, they are also durable. Guns last for a couple of decades and more and their spare parts can be stocked on a scale that suffices for the lifetime of guns. Ammunition, on the other hand, is consumable; it is consumed continuously and needs to be replenished regularly. If you have no ammunition, your guns are good for nothing, merely the contraptions of metals and plastics. If that is so, then, I must begin with a brief comment on ballistics, the science of projectiles. Ballistics investigates a whole gamut of events that ensue when firing pin strikes the percussion cap of cartridge locked in the chamber of gun which causes a tiny explosion of primer generating the short flashes of fire and hot gasses that pass heat through anvil vent and ignite the propellant charge of cartridge which begins to deflagrate or burn rapidly and produce a copious amount of hot and expanding gases that thrust bullet forward through the bore of barrel and out into atmosphere. At a point where a bullet exits muzzle and becomes airborne, it becomes a projectile. Thus launched, a projectile moves with certain velocity and flies against the pull of gravity and the resistance of air and, resultantly, it progressively falls downwards and slows down until when it comes to rest at a terminal point which might arrive after its interaction with material and living targets that happen to be in its flight path or trajectory. These events are grouped into four different subdivisions of ballistics for a systematic study, that is, internal, intermediate, external, and terminal. Wound ballistics is a specialised area of terminal ballistics concerning living targets. Ballistics is a very complex field of study in which not everything is clearly known and fully understood and there is a difference of opinion as regards many events studied by ballisticians. Also, like any other organised body of knowledge, in ballistics too the more you know, the more you realise that there is much more to know. A practical problem of ballistics is its predictive limitation brought about by the variability of a large number of factors. American firearm enthusiast, author, and engineer Robert Rinker explains, “No two guns are exactly alike, nor are loads of powder, bullets, primers, or anything else connected with ballistics. The variables are why ballistics is not as precise or accurate a science as we wish it were. The mathematics may be precise, for example, but the numbers fed into the equations are based on variable amounts. That is why the figures for your gun or situation may be different from someone else’s, and yet both can be correct. . . . Ballistics is full of variables that can change the outcome.” We should, then, bear it in mind that certain technical data and mathematical

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values given for certain types of firearms and ammunition by manufacturers are just statistical values; they are stochastic, not precise and exact. Target that concerns us is human body which is composed of a lot of soft tissues, some hard bones, and some body fluid. Together they offer a much denser medium to a bullet in motion as compared to a much rarer atmosphere of earth where the flight of bullet remains aerodynamic and stable due to spin imparted to it by the rifling of bore. In fact, a tapered or pointed projectile is not entirely stable, in that certain amount of controlled instability is necessary for keeping it nose-forward in its trajectory. This is achieved by yaw which is engineered purposefully for striking a target point-forward and penetrating it efficiently wherever it might be in its flight path. Properties of bullet, propellant, bore, and flight determine how it behaves inside a body. However, human body is not a uniform medium but a highly variable target that varies both in depth and constitution. Much would, then, depend on where a bullet strikes, at which angle of incidence it enters body and with what velocity, and what path it takes inside body. Therefore, how a type of bullet would actually behave each time it engages a human target in combat cannot be said with certainty. American weapons engineers Donald Carlucci and Sidney Jacobson emphasise this uncertainty and write, “The reality is that ‘anything’ can happen when a bullet interacts with a human.” Nonetheless, certain useful assumptions about its terminal behaviour in body can be made by studying how it would behave after frontally impacting and entering torso, which is a high-probability event in close combat. These assumptions can be reasonably drawn from bullet’s behaviour inside tissue simulants such as gelatine and soft soap mediums used in ballistic experimentation, which are prepared to offer resistance similar to what a bullet would face while wading into the soft tissues of body. Some useful concepts related to ballistics and firearms are elaborated below, largely as defined by British weapons engineers G. M. Moss, D. W. Leeming, and C. L. Farrar. Small arms are the individual and crew served firearms of a wide variety of calibres starting from 4.5 mm and exceeding 12.7 mm. There is no standard definition of small arms, though. Allsop and Toomey define small arms as “man or crew portable, relatively flat trajectory, largely shoulder controlled weapons, in calibres up to 12.7mm, used primarily to incapacitate or suppress the enemy with bullets or fragments. Cannons take over after 12.7mm and can go up to 50mm.”



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Firearms “are devices for propelling projectiles toward specified targets: their common component is a tube in which both motion and direction are imparted to the projectiles fired.” Gun is “a mechanical device in which heat, liberated by a burning propellant, is converted into the useful kinetic energy of a projectile, and its function is to propel projectiles toward specified targets.” Barrel is the tube of gun from breech end to muzzle that may house ammunition in chamber at its rear end for firing. It exists to impart velocity, spin, if rifled, and direction to fired projectile. Barrel is the most decisive component of gun for the purpose of weapon system and it is also the most loaded and stressed part due to the extremes of pressure and heat it has to withstand in firing each shot; it is more load than borne by any similar machine and survives only because the duration of events is very short. Due to a very high load of mechanical and thermal stresses, its bore generally wears out—forcing cone to be exact which is a tapered section after chamber that forces a bullet’s jacket into the grooves of rifling for sealing it completely and erodes first—before the others parts of gun except smaller and weaker parts such as firing pin, extractor, and springs. A floating barrel mounted at breech end that is not touching anything else anywhere along its length fires more consistently than a barrel which is tied to some part or furniture of frame or that comes in contact with or rests on an external object. Effects of such interference are negligible in close ranges but they become increasingly more visible and pronounced at longer distances. Barrel life is measured by the number of shots required to wear it out and a barrel is “considered worn out when the gun cannot achieve its required accuracy in normal use.” Calibre is “the internal diameter of the barrel. . . . If the barrel is rifled the calibre is the diameter of the bore prior to the cutting of rifling grooves in the bore surface.” Bore describes both the interior space and internal diameter of barrel excluding chamber. It is used interchangeably with calibre. Ammunition is a term collectively applied to “the components that are renewed for each firing of the gun,” which are “the projectile, the propellant charge, the primer and, where applicable, the cartridge case.”

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Internal ballistics “is the scientific study of the operating processes within the gun from the moment that the burning of the propellant is initiated.” It is also called interior ballistics. Expansion ratio is a ratio between total bore volume, including powder chamber volume and powder chamber volume, which indicates room that is available to gases produced by combustion to expand. It is also called expansion factor. Action time is the interval of time between the point of firing pin striking percussion cap and igniting primer and the point of release of bullet from muzzle. Intermediate ballistics “is defined as the study of the transition from internal to external ballistics, which occurs in the vicinity of the gun muzzle. . . . Roughly three-quarters of the available energy passes through the muzzle; the majority of it is carried by the propellant gases in the form of heat, pressure and motion. After muzzle exit, the behaviour of these gases has considerable influence on the projectile and gun motions; they also give rise to the effects known as blast and flash.” Muzzle blast is “the effects produced by gas pressure waves in . . . intermediate . . . ballistics. The most familiar feature of blast from a gun is the noise produced by the release of high pressure propellant gases into the atmosphere when the gun is fired.” Silencer is a muzzle device designed and used to suppress noise produced by muzzle blast. It is also called sound suppressor. Flash “is the light emitted in the vicinity of the muzzle by the hot propellant gases and the chemical reactions that follow as the propellant gases mix with the surrounding air.” Flash hider is a muzzle device designed and used to reduce muzzle flash. It is also called flash suppressor. Stand-off attachment is a muzzle device of shotgun used for efficient ballistic breaching by direct contact with target. It is also called breaching device. It has a serrated or toothed front for a positive placement of barrel on target that maintains a most effective distance between target and muzzle by keeping them three to four inches apart. Recoil “is the rearward motion of the gun in reaction to the forward motion imparted to the projectile and propellant gases. The forward momentum



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gained by the projectile and gases is accompanied by an identical gain in rearward momentum of the gun. . . . Typically, a gun will have attained about half of its final recoil energy when the projectile leaves the muzzle; the remaining half of the recoil energy is gained by reaction to the rapid outflow of gases at the muzzle.” Muzzle brake is a muzzle device designed and used for recoil reduction. “A large proportion of the outflowing gases can be deflected backwards by a muzzle brake, and so generate a forward thrust that partially counteracts the recoiling motion of the gun. . . . An efficient muzzle brake can reduce recoil by over 50%, though such muzzle brakes are complex, costly and . . . can damage hearing. Practical muzzle brakes reduce recoil by about 25% by deflecting some of the gas flow sideways rather than backwards. . . . Muzzle brakes can be designed to deflect gas mainly upwards, for example, to control the upward muzzle jump of submachine guns. The prime disadvantage of the muzzle brake is that it increases the blast noise suffered by the firer. It can also subject the fore-end of the barrel to excessive stress.” Felt recoil is different from recoil. A part of recoil energy is absorbed and distributed by the self-loading mechanism of gun and buffer springs, if there, so recoil or kick that is actually felt by a shooter in his shoulder is not exactly the same as generated by forward forces. Felt recoil is also affected by many external factors such as hold, grip, stock, butt, and pad. Jump is the movement of muzzle that is generated by firer’s reaction to recoil. External ballistics studies the behaviour of projectile after it has left muzzle and flown beyond the forces of venting gases. “Once the projectile has left the gun and the influence of the emerging gases, the part of the flight known as external ballistics begins. There are a number of factors which affect the motion of a projectile, some associated with the projectile itself and others with the atmosphere through which the projectile is moving.” It is also called exterior ballistics. Yaw is “the angle between the body axis and the vertical plane.” It is also called equilibrium yaw that keeps projectile’s nose pointed along the curvature of its trajectory to strike point-first. Terminal ballistics is “defined as the study of the effects of projectiles on a target. The conditions under which missiles impact against targets vary widely, depending on strike velocity, strike angle, and the type of projectile and target.”

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Wound ballistics is “defined as the study of the motion of missiles within the body and the wounding capacity of them.” Penetration is “defined as the entrance of a missile into a target without completing its passage through it.” Perforation “usually implies the complete piercing of the target by the projectile.” Action is the operating or functional mechanism of firearm involving loading, firing, and unloading. It is a mechanical process, unrelated to ballistic ‘action time’ defined above. Misfire is the event of failure to fire that occurs after successfully completing all steps to fire. It results from a failure of striker or primer or propellant. Cook off is the event of unintentional firing of a cartridge due to the spontaneous combustion of propellant charge caused by ambient heat. Extraction is the process of withdrawing fired case or unfired cartridge from cartridge chamber. Ejection is the process of expelling extracted case or cartridge from feedway. Point-blank range is the distance of engaging a target effectively without having to hold over or aim higher to compensate for bullet drop. In the next section, we will discuss certain useful and practical suggestions derived from ballistics and weapons engineering for arming a hostage rescue force. VII Our tactic of shooting non-stop until a terrorist collapses and to blow his brains out after he falls would kill with any ammunition. Killing a man, therefore, is not our main concern with ammunition; it instead is to prevent the unintended engagement of hostages by our bullets and not to injure or kill those who we want to save. As this is our sole purpose and the only reason for which we exist, I will be overabundantly cautious in my analysis for averting harm to hostages. To avoid a catastrophic collateral damage that defeats the very purpose of our existence and action, we need a type of ammunition which does not perforate or overpenetrate our target. A bullet which mostly stops inside its target, thus transferring its entire energy into



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target, is better than a bullet that mostly manages to exit target and carries on further with some residual energy and potential for killing a human being. Two variables that increase the odds of a bullet stopping inside human body are its limited kinetic energy and propensity to disintegrate, deform, or tumble in a denser medium of body. At short distances, bullet would retain most of its muzzle energy which, then, becomes an important indicator of its terminal behaviour in combat that takes place inside a stronghold. A high-energy bullet is more likely to perforate a limited depth of barrier that human body presents in its path and exit it with a lethal amount of residual energy. Mass, shape, construction, velocity, yaw, and the energy of bullet determine how it would behave inside body, all else being equal. A bullet that maintains its form and orientation and stays stable in its path, thus maintaining its hydrodynamic efficiency inside body, is more likely to exit it with a lethal amount of energy retained. Kinetic energy is a resultant property which is determined by the mass and velocity of a moving object. For the same kinetic energy, therefore, there could be a lightweight bullet travelling at a high velocity or a heavy bullet moving at a low velocity. In this case, bullet’s mass, form, and internal structure will determine its terminal behaviour significantly. For instance, a light spitzer or pointed bullet that becomes unstable inside body and loses momentum rapidly is less likely to perforate target than a heavy cylindro-ogival mass that remains stable in its track and retains considerable momentum in the course of target penetration. Another major concern is the accuracy of fire while engaging terrorists speedily and at the same time sparing hostages present around them. Factors— extraneous to a firer, his skill and judgement, and external to consistency maintained in the production of ammunition—that determine the accuracy of rapid repeat fire in combat are the curvature of trajectory that a projectile follows and recoil that is generated in firing and felt by a firer. Flight path of a low-velocity bullet is more curved than a high-velocity bullet. It happens because gravitational force exerted by earth on objects is a constant and does not vary with the mass of object. All flying objects are pulled downwards with the same force and fall towards the surface of earth with the same velocity if we ignore the effects of atmosphere which could be ignored in our comparisons; a faster object, however, manages to traverse a greater horizontal distance for an equivalent vertical fall or it drops less in traversing the same distance—hence a less curved trajectory. For our purposes, then, a low-velocity bullet would require a greater adjustment of sights than a high-velocity bullet to hit the same type of target at closer and farther distances or, to put it simply, the less curved the trajectory, the lesser the sight adjustment. A less curved trajectory made by a high-velocity cartridge

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increases its point-blank range, that is, the distance of engaging a target effectively without having to hold over or aim higher to compensate for bullet drop, which is a significant advantage in combat as it makes you fire faster without reducing accuracy, so long as your target is within its pointblank range. Recoil determines how much muzzle would jump in firing and how soon firer would reacquire his target after firing, all else being equal. Yet another consideration is projectile’s interactive behaviour with the structural elements of building and how it can influence the probability of collateral damage. All else being equal, on striking a hard surface such as a brick-and-mortar wall or a concrete column, a bullet that digs in is better than a bullet that bounces off causing ricochet. In other words, a pointed bullet with a hard tip is better than a rounded bullet with a soft head for the purpose of rescuing hostages from terrorist stronghold. In sum, for our work we would want such ammunition that is less likely to perforate human body—something that disintegrates, deforms, or tumbles inside body and has a limited energy, sufficient to kill or lethally injure a person but not enough to exit our target and grievously injure or kill another person behind target; something which has a less curved trajectory that gives us an extended point-blank range and which produces less recoil and is less likely to ricochet. In general, due to a very slow development of ammunition and a quite rapid development of guns, we have many options of guns but very limited options of cartridges available to us. In the context of hostage rescue, our choices for ammunition further narrow down, or rather shrink drastically. Standard cartridges that are available today and can be employed for close quarters combat are 9 × 19 mm and 5.56 × 45 mm. By 5.56 × 45 mm cartridge, I mean SS109, also known as NATO ball, which has a dual core projectile. 9 × 19 mm ball is inadvisable, for it is more likely than not to exit human body, retaining more energy than what is estimated to be sufficient to kill a human being. We have to look for innovative bullet designs in 9 × 19 mm such as hollow point which expands reliably inside human body and deposits entire energy in it. Since guns are designed to fire ball ammunition, we must ensure by extensive testing that expanding or fragmenting or frangible ammunition that we choose also cycle the action of our guns without developing malfunctions. 5.56 × 45 mm is a high-energy cartridge developed for engaging targets at longer combat ranges encountered in military battlefield. Its dual core spitzer bullet which has a propensity for tumbling and disintegrating inside a denser medium may also exit human body especially if not fragmented



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and may wound a hostage mortally but its terminal behaviour cannot be predicted with certainty as compared to 9 × 19 mm ball round. Between ball ammunition in these calibres, therefore, I would choose 5.56 × 45 mm, even though it has much greater recoil. Two more interesting and even more suitable cartridges, as if made for our purpose, are available today. They are 5.7 × 28 mm and 4.6 × 30 mm. Both of them give us all the advantages of penetration, energy, point-blank range, recoil, and ricochet discussed above. In fact, they are just perfect and ideal for hostage rescue and if you can get one, you must. Even if a 5.7 mm or a 4.6 mm projectile manages to exit the body of terrorist in an unlikely event, it will have a considerably less residual energy for seriously injuring or killing a hostage it might hit next as compared to the standard ball bullets of pistol and rifle calibres. An additional benefit of using these calibres is their ability to penetrate soft body armour and damage a protected target after going through it. In this job, 9 mm fails completely while 5.56 mm gives a considerably superior performance. None of these can defeat plate armour, though, but it does not mean that we would need armour piercing ammunition for hostage rescue. Probability of terrorists possessing body armours is low and in combat, plate armour can be tactically defeated by engaging head and pelvis instead of protected torso, if a timely realisation of such protection dawns on a rescuer and he immediately alerts his squad mates too. Knowledge of terrorists having body armours prior to commencing assault on their stronghold is vital, therefore. Calibres and cartridges discussed above are relevant to the assaulters of rescue force. For snipers, I recommend 7.62 × 51 mm and for marksmen 5.56 × 45 mm. In both cases, however, match-grade precision ammunition would fare far better and should be procured for target engagement by snipers and marksmen. By employing a specially designed and constructed 7.62 mm monolithic bullet, a sniper can accurately engage a target behind angled glass without any deflection or fragmentation of projectile after hitting a glass barrier. 7.62 × 51 mm is a very powerful round which has a dependable oneshot killing power but it would just not stop there. That should not worry us, though, for the risk of overpenetration and consequent collateral damage is effectively controlled by an accurate shot placement on target by sniper. For breachers, standard 12 gauge ammunition is good but frangible pellets are required for breaching doors. VIII Only after selecting ammunition do we come to selecting guns. Two most important factors to consider are reliability and manoeuvrability. A firearm’s

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reliability is determined by its mechanical and functional reliability. Its construction and components should be rugged and lasting and its action should cycle without malfunction. Certain failures to fire could be attributed to ammunition alone but other stoppages could be due only to gun or to the interaction of gun and ammunition. A firearm designed and constructed to meet stringent military standards and specifications can be considered mechanically reliable; all that we need to ensure, then, is that we choose good quality ammunition that makes our weapon system fully reliable. In addition to a flawless mechanical operation, reliability also includes the questions of service life, maintainability, repairability, trainability, and prompt availability or readiness for combat. Mean time between failures is an important statistical indicator of the reliability of weapon system if it is available. Another reliability indicator is defects per million opportunities with corresponding z-score on Six Sigma scale if this tool is deployed for quality control or similar rating calculated by any other technique or system used for this purpose. I have not seen or known any firearm manufacturer that employs any of these two indicators of quality; it is possible, however, that someone chooses to control quality more systematically and stringently in future and, hence, I have mentioned them. Manoeuvrability of a gun is assessed by the ease of carry, rapidity in aiming or the speed of target acquisition, duration for which it can be carried and held ready to fire, and how quickly it can be moved in space in a given context of operation, in our case, in confined spaces. Manoeuvrability is, then, a factor of combined ergonomics and mechanics of man, machine, and environment. It also considers weapon’s controllability during fire and the speed of replacing magazine. Ambidexterity too is a factor which is useful in fully enabling left-handed firers and for switching shoulders for tactical manoeuvres. Versatility is also considered in it and required for effectively operating in various firing positions and ambient conditions. Many of these factors are influenced highly by the skills of operators but a reasonable judgement can be made based on weapon’s shape, size, weight, and the other features of design and operation which determine man-machine-space interface. Ease of transporting firearms or transportability from permanent base to operation’s base is also considered. Sourcing is also important. In general, it is always better to buy weapons and ammunition made by reputed manufacturers trusted by military and police forces worldwide. At the same time, we should not altogether ignore and brusquely disregard newcomers and little known players especially if solutions they have to offer seem to deliver significant operational edge and



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advantage to us in the context of our operational strategy, fighting tactics, and above all, our purpose. In both cases, however, we must ascertain and satisfy ourselves as to the usefulness of technology in terms of its combat purpose, battlefield usage, user-friendliness, firepower, reliability, and manoeuvrability through an elaborate and extensive evaluation programme. While making comparisons by analysing data thus gathered, we should not view things from a purely numerical perspective or pedantic viewpoint. We must instead assess the practical usefulness of superior scores in each field against our operational context and take an insightful decision on the basis of a holistic view. Imagination is what makes a man different from a computer and an operator different from a clerk. In case we conclude that a new technology produced by a small company is more useful for us, we should make sure that a sufficient stock of spare parts, consumables, tools and gauges, and everything that supports our solution and produced and supplied by this company is bought on a large scale, preferably for the lifetime of weapon system if possible. It is imperative, for not all great ideas are appreciated in the world and not all good things take off in marketplace; a small company is more likely to go out of business and shut down than a large corporation which, then, would land us in a serious situation of no after-sales support and supplies available for our future needs. Also, sometimes big companies buy up small entities to make their portfolio more diverse but after takeover, they stop promoting these specialised products due to a change in policy or limited sales from their perspective. An alternative plan should be prepared to deal with the eventuality of a sudden disruption of supplies due to factors beyond our control and influence. We will be worst hit in the case of imported ammunition. Five- to ten-year stock of ammunition is, therefore, suggested as geopolitical sanctions once imposed last for years. Such stock would give us enough resources for training and operations and also provide sufficient time to switch over to another system without feeling the heat of crisis and having to do firefighting. Once stocked for contingencies, we should procure new ammunition annually and consume older lots first for maintaining a credible contingency reserve. For this reason, only military-grade ammunition should be ordered and the supply of ammunition should be ordered in military-grade sealed metal boxes which keep moisture away instead of cardboard cartons or wooden crates. Gun’s reliability and trouble-free function is absolutely essential, which gets precedence over all other considerations. Assuming it as a given, among 5.56 mm assault rifles, one which has the shortest barrel is better than those with longer barrels, for this would not only be easier to carry and manipulate in

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confined spaces but it would have somewhat lower muzzle energy too for the same cartridge as compared to standard-barrelled rifles due to its lower expansion ratio, which suits our purpose and intent of minimising collateral damage. Here, the length of barrel is important, not the length of gun. If you are getting a similar length of gun in a bullpup layout with a standard barrel, choose a gun of standard layout with a shorter barrel. All else being equal, a shorter barrel might give lighter recoil due to reduced duration for which pressure is applied. Recoil is important and any design element or mechanism internal or external to a firearm that reduces felt recoil without compromising the manoeuvrability of gun is good because it would increase the speed of sighted repeat fire without proportionally reducing the accuracy of aimed fire, all else being equal. For sniper rifles, a heavier and thicker barrel which is more rigid and stiff is better because it tends to whip, flex, twist, and vibrate less. Length of barrel determines the performance of a cartridge. A longer barrel with a greater action time and expansion ratio is required for realising the full potential of cartridge. A longer barrel increases the duration of time for which the pressure of expanding gases is applied to bullet causing it to accelerate inside. Up to a point, then, the longer the barrel, the greater the velocity. Greater velocity, in turn, gives a less curved trajectory and imparts greater kinetic energy to projectile, all else being equal. A longer barrel is usually preferred in a sniper rifle, thus. But a longer barrel is not necessarily more accurate in our ranges as the gain of velocity is not much. Action of expanding gases inside a sealed barrel and the resultant linear and rotational movement of bullet in a narrow rifled bore and a sudden departure of bullet and gases from it together cause a barrel to whip, flex, twist, and vibrate in firing a shot. These distortions may increase with the length of barrel as the duration of time for which various forces on barrel get to act on it increases. A 26 inch barrel, then, may not be necessarily more accurate than a 20 inch barrel of a 7.62 mm sniper rifle. While these variables are a problem of weapons engineers, not users, our understanding helps us decide which length of barrel we should choose for our sniper rifles. A relatively shorter and heavier barrel is good enough for precision work in our sniping ranges. We do not fire automatic bursts to engage terrorists, so we do not need automatic mechanism in our guns. Demand a semi-automatic-only submachine gun or assault rifle with a simple on-off switch or lever, for this is all we need for hostage rescue. It makes a gun simpler and, therefore, more reliable. Since automatic mode is a military requirement, all military-grade submachine



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guns and assault rifles have automatic function. We need to make sure, then, that our semi-automatic gun conforms to military standards and specifications and what we get is not a civilian equipment. A semi-automatic firearm may also be easier to import from certain countries due to its non-military configuration. Translucent polymer magazines are slightly bigger but certainly better due to visibility factor and also because they do not bend but break and crack instead which is readily visible. Metal, on the other hand, can deform permanently and damage to a metal magazine may not even be visible while it might be sufficient to cause failure to feed at any time, thus stopping the functional cycle of firearm. High-capacity magazines protruding much beyond the standard dimensions of guns do give greater firepower but they also make these guns clumsy and difficult to manoeuvre in relation to what they otherwise are. It sounds like a great idea in theory but it does not work in combat where it is always better to carry two standard magazines than a single double-capacity magazine. My advice is to avoid them. Ammunition and gun are not enough; aiming system and firer’s skill to rapidly and correctly aim and fire also determine the firepower of gun, which is its most important combat property. Firepower is the potential of firearm for destruction which is determined by the effect of projectile on target and the accuracy of engaging target; it is determined also by the number of projectiles it can fire continuously and the speed of fire. On the importance of aiming device, British and Czech weapons engineers Derek Allsop, Lubomír Popelínský, Jiří Balla, Vladimír Čech, Stanislav Procházka, and Jiří Rosicky write, “The aiming system as a whole decides the probability of hitting the target. The weakest element is usually the firer of the weapon. Hit chance is affected by skill, stress and the conditions under which the weapon is being fired. . . . Accuracy and the time to acquire the target are interconnected and both are dependent on the skill of the firer and the characteristics of the weapon. Thus it is not possible to evaluate the aiming system on its accuracy only.” In fact, nothing would make much sense if we remove man from context. “There are many ways in which the weapons are used on the battlefield. On some occasions the accuracy requirement predominates, whilst on others the time to engage the target is the important factor. The design of weapon and its sights for maximum accuracy will be different from that of a weapon and its sights designed for minimum engagement time. . . . In general, the aiming error of a weapon increases as the aiming time decreases.” For close combat, in addition to a reflex sight, “the weapon design must ensure target acquisition in the shortest possible time.”

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Optical and optoelectronic sights commonly called reflex sights are better than the conventional iron sights of submachine guns and assault rifles for quick target acquisition. A sighting system that enables a firer to shoot with both eyes open and one that gives the widest field of view for maximum situation awareness should be chosen for close combat. It should be nonmagnified and parallax free, that is, its reticle should not shift and the apparent position of target should not be displaced when you shift your viewpoint. Since most of these devices are powered, one that gives a longer battery life is better, all else being equal. While battery type, power consumption, and total run time are important factors to consider in making decision, they are of secondary importance, for nothing is more important in combat than the speed of acquiring your target; battery problem is manageable. A powered device usually gives a better illuminated aiming dot or reticle than those which harness ambient light through optical fibres for this purpose and it reliably works in all ambient light conditions, so long as its battery is not dead. Optics must be protected in a rugged housing so that sight is not damaged during training and operation; still better is a sight that functions, even when its display window has somehow cracked and damaged. Anti-glare display window is better. Choose an efficient sight based on these parameters and make sure that it meets military standards and specifications. These days, all sights are designed for mounting on standard accessory rail. Pistol iron sights with a prominent front sight and a wide rear sight are better for fast target acquisition at ranges where mere pointing is not enough to engage a target accurately. An example of such design is XS Big Dot sights made by XS Sight Systems, USA. Do not fall for glamorous gizmos such as miniature optoelectronic and laser dot sights; they are not required for reflex shooting in close ranges where pistol is effective and might even slow you down when you need to be lightning fast. Precision optics or telescopic sights for sniper rifles is an altogether different class of devices. Suffice to say here, a telescope that packs optical performance in a shorter tube is better, all else being equal. We will discuss more about sniper and marksman optics, rifles, and ammunition later in a separate chapter on sniping. Your aiming devices should be compatible with your night vision devices if you use them, for a brightly illuminated reticle does not support them well. An adjustable stock is useful in giving a firer an ergonomic length of pull to fit his body type. Standard accessory rail is a very useful interface for the



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versatility of weapon system. It allows you to mount various external devices on your gun for different purposes, mainly for aiming and illuminating. A total of four such rails fixed on the top, bottom, and sides of frame give a firer multiple options to configure his gun for mission and preferences. For night offensive, powerful white tactical flashlights which could be mounted on our firearms are required. Since we keep our flashlights constantly on, we do not need pressure pads to activate them momentarily without shifting our grip on gun much. Its light source should be reliable and lasting; lightemitting diodes last longer than incandescent light bulbs, all else being equal. A single-point bungee sling is better for manoeuvring your gun; it also facilitates running with a gun. A good quality secure quick draw holster is critical for carrying pistol. Choose a pistol which has a narrow grip if several reliable options are available in the calibre of choice; not all men have long fingers to wrap around it tightly. Use of sound suppressors on sniper and marksman rifles could be considered. A silent shot delivers surprise on that side and eliminates noise-induced flinching caused by muzzle blast on this side. Silence might help in maintaining calmness and control and it is good for coordination too. But silencers are not recommended for use by assaulters. We have discussed certain desirable characteristics of design, operation, and performance of weapon system above. An example will illustrate how exactly these ideas translate into the reality. I have introduced readers to 5.7 × 28 mm cartridge and its advantages. It is fired by a submachine gun called P90, which is a very compact, beautifully curved, solidly built, fully ambidextrous fighting machine in bullpup configuration constructed to military standards and specifications. Its top-mounted translucent magazine is non-protruding and provides high capacity for superior firepower and direct visibility in illuminated environment for feedback to timely replace magazine. In addition to its low recoil ammunition, P90’s relatively heavier mass reduces felt recoil still further and gives much greater controllability. With a reflex sight on it, you can aim and shoot a terrorist rapidly and repeatedly well beyond one hundred metres without having to worry about external ballistics. You can mount a flashlight too on it as it has three accessory rails. It also has a companion pistol with a high-capacity magazine and all the other advantages of 5.7 × 28 mm cartridge. 5.7 mm weapon system is manufactured by FN Herstal, Belgium. A magazine-fed semi-automatic shotgun is recommended for serial door breaching in a complex terrorist stronghold. Breaching barrel with a stand-off attachment is useful in ballistic breaching. An intriguing and unconventional machine is 12 gauge AA12 shotgun. It is a magazine-fed automatic gun

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without semi-automatic action but its unusually long action keeps the rate of fire low and with little practice it can be controlled to fire single shot at a time; it is especially useful for firing two or three shots in quick succession on a target for positive breaching. Its full stainless steel construction is truly remarkable and together with its rather loose mechanism, it makes AA12 an extremely rugged and reliable gun, perhaps, as much as or even more than any other firearm available today. It requires negligible maintenance and no lubrication as carbon itself makes its parts slick; you take it apart and simply wash it with soap and water when occasionally you would want to clean it. You need not stock its spare parts either, for everything in it is built so rugged. While drum magazine has larger capacity, box magazine keeps it light, compact, and manoeuvrable for close combat. AA12 shotgun is manufactured by Military Police Systems, USA. Countries which cannot or do not import guns and ammunition due to external embargos and internal restrictions but have their own ordnance factories manufacturing small arms and ammunition can do experimentation with reduced load for obtaining lower muzzle energy from a standard round which may otherwise overpenetrate. What is most important to ensure is that a reduced charge that lowers muzzle energy continues to cycle the action of gun reliably. Lower amount of charge leaves a room inside the powder chamber of cartridge case and creates conditions for propellant charge to shift its position and change its shape which may sometimes result in an incomplete or uneven burning of propellant charge. Pressure, then, may not be sufficient to push bullet out of bore every time. A bullet thus lodged inside bore will plug it and create an obstruction for the next round and may create adverse conditions for firer and gun, especially barrel, if it is fired again in the event of unawareness. Low quality of standard ammunition may also create this condition occasionally due to a less amount of powder filled in some cartridges. An extensive testing of reduced load is required, therefore. After we have determined that a reduced load would cycle action reliably, we strive for its consistent performance. To quote Rinker, “Whether the powder is positioned forward, rearward or level is not as imperative as for it to be the same for each shot.” Similarly, a shortened barrel can also reduce the muzzle energy of an available cartridge. It may produce a louder muzzle blast for firer, though. IX While the main weapon of an assaulter is his submachine gun or assault rifle, hand grenades are a powerful suppressive weapon used by assaulters



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to support their charge. We have discussed the tactical applications of hand grenade in chapter ten on tactics. A quick revision is helpful in placing technology in its context. Seek and fix strategy mandates a continuous and unimpeded tempo of advance coupled with swift tactical manoeuvres; it cannot be implemented if we do not advance unstoppably and fail to irrupt all over stronghold to quickly kill all the terrorists holed up in there. With such constraints, we cannot afford to clear corners and blind spots by employing the methods of sweeping spatial segments incrementally and progressively, for it is time-consuming and time is what we do not have in a large-scale mass hostage rescue operation. Instead, we must liberally and aggressively employ concussion grenades to stun hiding terrorists and irrupt in front of them the very next moment to engage them squarely. Hand grenades are also used in effectively countering the grenade offensive of terrorists. We, thus, need, carry, and explode a lot of concussion grenades. Properties of a hand grenade that are decisive in rescue operation are its fragmentation, blast pressure, smoke, size, and weight. What we need is an ultra compact lightweight hand grenade without preformed metallic fragments and the dangers of case fragmentation—something designed not to kill but stun. In shape and size, then, it should resemble Offensive HGr 86 made by Rheinmetall Waffe Munition ARGES, Austria but in performance it should be less powerful than this hand grenade. Its plastic casing may be redesigned and explosive content reduced or reformulated to produce non-lethal fragmentation with a pressure of 3 psi at a distance of 4 feet from the point of detonation in order to bring it down to the level of less lethal pyrotechnic stun grenades which are big and bulky, thus creating the problems of logistics that would multiply in a complex terrorist crisis and its resolution by seek and fix strategy. It is possible, I believe, but experts would know better as to how this problem could be solved; human hearing might suffer a permanent damage when eardrums receive 4 psi of pressure without sound suppression; anything below 4 psi pressure limit could be considered safe, then. Low smoke is required for a better visual acuity to operate inside a room instantly after detonation. X High-explosive charges used for breaching building structures are the most dangerous of our weapons. Their safe and successful, quick and confident handling requires a high degree of expertise and considerable hands-on experience. However, here we will discuss not how to breach but what we would need to breach. Let us begin with the definitions of certain useful terms commonly used in explosive breaching.

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Primed charge is an explosive charge which is completely ready for initiation. Initiation is the action of starting an explosive train which ends in a detonation or deflagration. Initiator is a device used for initiation; it can be likened to the trigger of firearm. An initiator should be compatible with charge or else it will misfire or fail to fire. Detonation is the process of converting an explosive mass into expanding gases by transmitting a shock wave through it at high velocity. While a detonation causes almost instantaneous combustion, deflagration causes a rapid burning of explosive material at low velocity. Detonator is a device used for generating a detonation wave. A detonator should be compatible with explosive used in base charge or else it may cause a low-order detonation, that is, an incomplete consumption of explosive or a low-velocity explosion. Sympathetic detonation is a detonation of an explosive device that occurs when another explosive device is detonated besides it. Tamping is a method of reducing the risk of blast pressure and fragmentation hazard on attacking side by covering explosive charge with a tamping medium on its rear, which is the opposite or back side of charge set on a target. Tamping medium could be water, sand, clay, or gel—anything which is heavy enough to direct a greater proportion of explosive energy to target by prolonging the duration of pressure pulse on it and does not produce fragmentation hazard. A more efficient action of explosive energy on target reduces the net explosive quantity of a tamped charge than what is used in an untamped charge for doing the same job. It is especially useful in breaching heavy and strong structures such as walls and steel doors which require the larger amounts of explosive. Dud is an explosive device which has not been primed or which has failed to explode after initiation. It is also called blind. Disruptor is a device which contains a shaped charge lined with water and uses focussed explosive energy to form and project a high-velocity jet of water for the physical disruption of an improvised explosive device by component separation—mainly for separating the initiation mechanism of device from its main charge, thus disabling it. Not all disruptors are driven by explosives;



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some are powered by 12 gauge cartridges in place of high explosives but they are less powerful and efficient. A disruptor could be directional for targeted disruption or omnidirectional for general disruption. An omnidirectional disruptor could be deployed faster than a directional disruptor. Depending on its charge load, a disruptor could produce an energetic disruption of low or high magnitude with varying effective range. Fixings are such devices that are used for securing doors with their frames for easy and efficient opening and closing. They include hinges, locks, and bolts. Besides high explosives such as plastic explosive, flexible sheet explosive, lead sheathed or copper lined flexible linear shaped charge, slip-on booster, and detonating cord, what we need for breaching is a reliable and safe initiation and detonation system which is also rapidly deployable and easily transportable. For this, I recommend shock tube system. Shock tube is a linear non-electric signal conductor which is insensitive to electrical and electromagnetic interference, which means it is not affected by static electricity and radio frequency. It is water resistant and also has very low sensitivity to heat, impact, and mechanical influence. An instantaneous-output dual shock tube used with a full strength detonator that provides dual path redundancy from the point of initiation to target and initiated by a single-handed firing mechanism or a single hand grip switch employing a pre-installed percussion primer provides us the best tactical option for detonating breaching charges that is available at the time of writing. Flexible linear shaped charge comes in varying core loads measured by length in the same way as detonating cord comes in different charge weights measured by length in metre or foot, for example, a typical military detonating cord has ten grams of explosive per metre length. Professional detonating cord cutter is useful in cutting it clean, straight down; a sharp blade on a nonmetallic surface can also be used. Sheet explosive too requires a non-metallic cutting surface; a wooden or plastic cutting board is good for field use. A non-sparking anti-magnetic knife is safe for handling high explosives. Cutting tools must be sharp to avert the risk of friction during cutting. A dummy detonator or a punch of suitable dimensions is required for making indentation in plastic explosive for a good snug contact between explosive and detonator. Double-sided adhesive tape with good tack strength is required to stick a charge reliably on various surfaces; it should also lift easily for repositioning a charge and should bond strongly with surface yet again. A self-bonding silicone tape without adhesive can also be used variously for sticking, binding, filling, and sealing jobs. Electrical tape is needed to seal the

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end of detonating cord after cutting; yellow electrical tape is recommended for marking primed charges. General-purpose duct tape is always useful. Cable ties could also be useful for fastening and securing and should be available. User filled ready-made plastic charge containers can also be used. Mechanical breaching tools such as petrol-powered rotary or circular saw, pry bar, and bolt cutter are required for follow-on interventions post blast such as cutting reinforcing bars and opening outward opening metal doors and also for cutting chains, padlocks, and wires to gain silent entry for charge placement. Use only military-grade components in your breaching charge especially detonators as commercial detonators may not always be compatible with military explosives and due to their inadequate strength may cause a low-order detonation, that is, an incomplete consumption or a low-velocity explosion. In breaching, what we aim for is a high-order detonation that consumes the entire amount of explosive mass of base charge almost instantaneously by propagating a shock wave through it at high velocity. Entry charge is used to gain entry or full access through a barrier. It, then, must create a man-size hole in target to walk through rapidly. A shaped charge delivers an efficient cutting performance due to focussed explosive effect and requires much lower net explosive quantity, all else being equal. An impulse charge pushes, not cuts, a target; a water impulse charge tamped on both sides is more effective in breaching heavy steel doors. Correct positioning of breaching charge against target is crucial. In fact, everything is most important in explosive breaching, that is, charge configuration, preparation, placement, and initiation. Breachers should be skilled in charge weight or explosive load calculation with weapon danger area, stand-off distance, and reflected pressure hazards in closed spaces and should be able to modulate their charges to various targets encountered in stronghold after a quick situation and target assessment which is a matter of judgement determined by their experience and training. They must deliver explosive accuracy with a minimal net explosive quantity and must do their job quickly. Unsurprisingly, the easiest way to gain entry in a room or a building is through a doorway, which is levelled and flush with floor and designed primarily for the purpose of routine entry and exit of people. Mostly, a door is a panel secured on two sides by fixings, that is, hinges and locks, attached to a frame set in a wall for opening and closing it. We can gain entry through a closed and locked door by removing doorframe from wall or by removing hinges and locks from frame or by cutting door vertically to



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free a larger part of panel from a narrow strip attached to locks or hinges or cutting an aperture in the panel of door. Dislodging fixings from their positions or cutting door panel free from fixings are easier methods than the other options of door breaching while breaching a door and entering through it is easier, faster, and safer than explosively breaching a wall or a window, brickwork or concrete for forced entry. Although there could possibly be many types of doors inside a building, such a wooden door as described above is what we are going to find and deal with most of the time in a terrorist stronghold and this is what we should be most proficient in breaching serially. Explosive door breaching not only opens an entryway but it also neutralises by sympathetic detonation an explosive device or a bobby trap rigged by terrorists on the other side of door to harm rescuers or stop them from entering. Breaching of a reinforced cement concrete wall requires a greater time on target due to secondary intervention for cutting reinforcing bars after explosively dismantling cement concrete structure. It is a complex and time-consuming method of entry, therefore. It is much more dangerous too due to a large amount of explosive used. For a rapid disposal of an explosive device or a booby trap deployed by terrorists to deny or delay the approach of rescuers, we need an omnidirectional general-purpose user filled disruptor which can be deployed rapidly to clear our approach path; an example of such disruptor is Bottler Lite made by Alford Technologies, UK. A lightweight open-top energy channelising—not energy absorbing which will make it an extremely heavy equipment—blast container can also be rapidly deployed to contain small improvised explosive devices and duds lying on floor, including unexploded hand grenades lobbed by terrorists; an example of such blast inhibitor is Ground Bomb Killer manufactured by SAS Sema, France, which is a ballistic sleeve with two handles to lift and both ends open to place around an explosive device for quick containment. XI We have discussed about weapons. In this section I will discuss a couple of electronic support devices required for operations. In chapter ten on tactics, we have discussed the importance of rapid virtual search of rooms from outside in a complex terrorist stronghold. Each striking squad should have one through-wall imaging radar for locating people hiding or locked inside rooms without breaching. Xaver 400 is an example of such

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radar which is manufactured by Camero Tech, Israel. As advancement in electronics happens quite rapidly, such devices will only become more flawless and useful with the passage of time. Use of smart hearing protection and communication system by rescuers is recommended in the high-noise environment of combat, particularly when they themselves rely on a liberal use of hand grenades and explosive breaching. Rescuers need a good hearing protection as they train and operate in highnoise environment amidst firing guns, blasting grenades, and exploding charges. On the other hand, they cannot seal their ears completely as they cannot operate effectively without being aware of ongoing situation around them and communicating with each other for coordinating and synchronising their actions in real time. In a high-noise operational environment, their hearing would be attenuated naturally and, hence, they might even need an accentuated hearing to compensate for a hearing loss during operations. These are the opposing demands of operation on hearing which can only be met by a sophisticated technology. On top of it, their headsets should provide hands-free communication but should not come off while acting vigorously and violently. Their radio sets should be compact and able to mesh with each other to build a communications network anywhere without having to rely on a backbone infrastructure to repeat and relay signals. And, more importantly, these radios should be able to relay messages clearly inside a multistorey building full of concrete barriers. Communications technology that is available today comes with an in-ear headset having foam ear tips designed for sealing both ear canals fully; to ascertain if proper ear sealing has been achieved, its intelligent electronic control unit automatically runs a leak test; it blocks high-decibel signals generated by explosions and muzzle blasts but enables normal and even enhanced hearing by digitally amplifying the signals of normal or muffed sounds, thus providing bionic hearing, should rescuers need it. Current communications technology offers a wide array of mission specific network programming; it can also provide a priority break-in for command intervention. We really do not need a secure communications channel but radio sets fit for our purpose would usually come with encryption technology built for military communication. In that case, choose a cryptographic algorithm or cypher which is publicly accessible and published, not proprietary. While the technological sophistication of current generation of communications equipment is quite impressive, it will only get better with time. For ascertaining the quality of equipment as mentioned earlier, we can demand data from manufacturer on mean time between failures or defects



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per million opportunities with corresponding z-score on Six Sigma scale or a similar statistical value determined by any other tool used for the purpose of quality control. XII My views on personal protection are unconventional and could be controversial but I must say it as I see it. Helmet is handed down to us by the generations of contact warfare and trench warfare. So-called ballistic helmet that we have today protects us from nothing other than pistol calibres and grenade shrapnel. However, against grenades it would do pretty much nothing if we are standing on our feet unless, of course, it somehow explodes over our heads or we are attacked by an airburst munition exploding above us; in lying position, it would protect only when a grenade detonates right opposite to it. A big cut in current ‘tactical’ designs around ears for communications headset reduces its total coverage area still further, leaving it to protect what is already best protected by nature. I find a ballistic helmet most useful not as a protective equipment but as a load bearing equipment providing a mount for a night vision device. If not for night vision, I would prefer to go without a helmet in a close quarters combat, light and agile. That a soldier wearing a helmet looks mean and businesslike is beyond doubt but warfare is not about cosmetics. Similarly, other than armour plate, nothing, I mean soft armour, stops a high-velocity rifle bullet; your so-called bullet resistant vest without its plate insert will not protect you against anything but pistol calibres. But it would surely add burden and place restrictions on you; fancy neck and limb protection are even more cumbersome and a ballistic visor on helmet will restrain you still further. I would, therefore, choose a plate carrier vest with load bearing webbing grid without soft armour inserts for wearing an armour plate that stops more than one 7.62 × 39 mm bullet to protect my chest in order to remain quick and agile in close combat. These facts should be known and must be considered before we choose our personal protection equipments. For those who would derive psychological dividends from it, a ballistic helmet and a soft ballistic vest are useful, I must say, but even for them I would not recommend face, neck, and limb protection. Eye protection is useful but it often fogs up and obscures vision. All told, personal protection is a zero-sum game; minimum protection is good for human performance; maximum protection is good for human safety. A force must first decide how it balances out these contradictions and if it allocates more priority to saving the lives of its operators or of hostages and then make its choices accordingly. Do not always do what others do without taking a critical and adversarial look at things done to understand

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reasons why it must be done by us too; we are not in fashion business; we should not ape and imitate. XIII On tactical clothing, I would only say that the type, colour, and print of fabric are not very important and it could be any reasonable thing. What is more important is the design, construction, and fit of garments which should be such that allows maximal body movement in all three planes of motion or, to paraphrase it, that facilitates free body movement in threedimensional space with minimal encumbrances and restraints placed on body joints; your garments should also facilitate a clear and rapid passage through congested and confined spaces without entanglement. On boots, I would say that ankle boots attach less securely to feet and the odds of a shoe slipping off your foot are high. Military or tactical boots are always better for operations, even though they limit the gliding manoeuvres of your ankle joint, thus degrading your agility and speed; their height should be six or eight inches, whatever is preferred by individuals or organisation. Boots should be breathable and waterproof at the same time and waterproof membrane should also be blood borne pathogen resistant, which it generally is. They should have a reliable closure system; shoelaces should be knot-friendly, in that they could be tied and secured positively so that they do not unravel and closure does not fail while operating inside stronghold; not all users are always at fault for their untimely unravelled laces. It is possible that a pair of boots is indeed good but laces supplied with it are not as good and reassuring. In that case, you can replace your laces with another type which would tie a knot better and stronger and have appropriate length for your purpose of fail-safe closure. Their outsoles should be made of a reliable and proven skid resistant rubber compound that minimises slip hazard and facilitates treading on spilled floors; outsoles should also offer underfoot electrical hazard protection. For the evacuation of incapacitated and disabled hostages by evacuation force, we need compact lightweight foldable stretchers, one stretcher each between two evacuators that makes an evacuation team. Like all other equipments, stretchers should be reliable, manoeuvrable, and rapidly deployable. Some area lighting equipments should also be available for illuminating operation’s base as well as stronghold from outside and inside when required. These devices should be self-contained, portable, powerful, and rapidly deployable.



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Tourniquets and haemostatic bandages which clot blood rapidly and stop bleeding could be useful when shot and then trapped in a temporary shelter after stronghold catches fire and the lines of operation are cut off and become unavailable for evacuation. Each squad may, therefore, carry some of these life sustaining supplies for such a rare and unforeseen event and each rescuer ought to know how to apply them correctly, particularly the use of tourniquet to stop arterial bleeding which may need enormous compression. XIV This is pretty much all that we need for a mass hostage rescue operation. But here is my last recommendation on arming and equipping. Neither we do long-range target interdiction nor do we need ropes to work with in resolving a complex terrorist crisis by seek and fix strategy but I recommend long-range sniping and rope work all the same. It is for breaking the monotony of never-ending training and the routine of doing the same things on end. It is recommended for taking a break from regular practice for unwinding while still remaining engaged operationally. Monotony breaking sustains interest and facilitates learning; taking a tactical or technical break is even more productive and useful. For long-distance sniping, I recommend standard 8.6 × 70 mm or .338 Lapua Magnum and 12.7 × 99 mm or .50 Browning weapon systems. Between these two generic cartridges, there are certain proprietary cartridges with superior drag and ballistic coefficients and overall performance such as .408 CheyTac and .416 Barrett but they might be more difficult to source from a seller’s market and a continuity of ammunition supply could be a permanent problem. I, therefore, go with generic calibres. Large-calibre long-distance sniping is suggested as an engagement not only for routine busting and monotony breaking with educational spin-offs for operations; it is suggested also for its psychological dividends because it will bring a tremendous increase in the confidence of snipers in their routine short-distance sniping within a range of a couple of hundred metres. Rope work is quite thrilling and adventurous and it is also very useful in life in general and might come in handy in operations too. Practice of various knots for different purposes, mainly for rigging anchors and rope lines for practicing abseiling, ascending, descending, hauling, lifting, lowering, transferring and more on natural rock formations as well as man-made structures would require a range of professional and interesting equipments used in mountaineering, rock climbing, disaster rescue, and industrial safety.

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For with ropes we work at heights, the best equipments made by established and reputed manufacturers should be sourced and used with fail-safe procedures for assured fall protection. That is all there is to arming and equipping a hostage rescue force for operations. But the problem of training rescuers remains that I will address in the next chapter.

Chapter 14 Training and Learning

I A complex terrorist crisis is a game of superlatives. It is seemingly impossible to rescue hostages from a complex terrorist stronghold without sustaining heavy innocent casualties. Or, to put it differently, a swift and clean hostage rescue operation seems as imponderable as it could possibly be. To plunge State into a bind by making things impossible for its leaders and forces is exactly what terrorists aim and work for before setting out to precipitate a complex terrorist crisis. Training and learning in a hostage rescue organisation, then, must be aimed at developing the best hostage rescue expertise that there could possibly be, for expertise in mass hostage rescue is the only glimmer of hope and only expert rescuers can hopefully win by controlling the outcomes of complex hostage rescue operation in a manner desired by State. Although we have discussed expertise with its acquisition and advantages in chapter four, expertise as a notion is so much pivotal and crucial to complex hostage rescue operations that I will once again briefly go over it before discussing the underlying processes of learning and training for making expert rescuers. We agree that the acquisition of expertise in conducting complex hostage rescue operations is the sole purpose and ultimate goal of our training and learning. But who is an expert that we want to become and what is expertise that we want to acquire? American philosopher Barbara Montero gives a very broad but simplified definition of experts and expertise: “Experts are individuals who have engaged in around ten or more years of deliberate practice, which means close to daily, extended practice with the specific aim of improving, and are still intent on improving. . . . Expert actions are the domain-related actions of such individuals; and expertise is the ability experts have to perform such actions.” 561

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Experts are not born; people work regularly and methodically for years on end to become experts. They become experts by rebuilding and reshaping their bodies and brains to superior levels that lie beyond the reach of laypersons and novices. They are able to do so because human body and brain can be desirably modified to a great extent. Muscular hypertrophy gained from strength or resistance training is quite well known to common people but the plasticity of human body is not limited to human musculature. In fact, all systems of human body are modifiable and they do adapt to loads put on them if body is overloaded in a sustained and progressive manner. Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson writes, “When the human body is put under exceptional strain, a whole range of extraordinary physiological processes are activated. . . . When we include all the evidence for training-related changes in the size of hearts, thickness of bones, and allocation of cortical areas in the brain, we see that virtually all aspects of humans’ bodies and nervous systems are modifiable, with the exception of height and body size.” And, among all systems, “the function and structure of the brain is far more adaptable to experience, especially early and extended experience.” Jennifer Eberhardt similarly argues, “The brain is not a hardwired machine. It’s a malleable organ that responds to the environments we are placed in and the challenges we face. . . . The brain can be altered by experience. . . . Basic practice and repetition can retrain our brains to function differently.” Such adaptive property of brain is called neuroplasticity or synaptic plasticity. If it is acquired only after a period of ten years of continuous engagement and improvement, we can say that expertise is an outcome of enormous accumulated experience. To quote Ericsson, “The most compelling evidence for the role of vast experience in expertise is that even the most ‘talented’ individuals require around ten years of intense involvement before they reach an international level, and for most individuals it takes considerably longer.” An expert’s ability, arguably, lies in looking ahead and preparing for future actions while still executing an action. Only those practitioners who, by relying on their massive experience base, are able to anticipate successfully and ‘see’ events happening before they actually happen become experts and deliver exceptional performance at the end of their journey. Those who fail to cross over this barrier beyond which is found that expert foresight are forced to react to events as they develop and trail behind situations they are in; such aspirants cannot become experts, however hard and long they may try. In other words, while extended experience is essential, experience in itself does not really matter; it must make a man increasingly better if it is to be of any consequence in the world. Ericsson asserts, “During the first phase of



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learning, novices try to understand the activity and concentrate on avoiding mistakes. . . . As individuals adapt to a domain and their performance skills become automated, they may lose conscious control over execution of those skills and it may become difficult to intentionally modify the skills. Once the automated phase of learning has been attained, further experience will not markedly improve performance. Consequently, the correlation between amount of experience and performance will be low. . . . However, these stable levels of attained performance do not reflect a firm upper bound and when individuals are motivated to improve their current level of performance by training they are able to do so, and their performance can gradually be improved, often in a consistent manner.” To reiterate, experience without improvement counts for nothing in the realm of building expertise and experience does not mean merely a passage of time associated with a domain in one’s life. Only useful experience matters in the life of an expert and such experience is gained only when an aspiring expert improves further after each stage of improvement for a great deal of time. We know that as a result of repeated practice, routine actions are proceduralised, in that they are done without conscious direction. While the beauty of expert actions lies in their finesse and fluidity caused by automaticity, in the journey of becoming an expert, one has to actually fight against achieving premature automaticity. This seems like a trap and it indeed is a very difficult challenge to overcome. Perhaps, that is why there are not many experts among the billions of living human beings. This raises an obvious question: How does one recursively break through the bounds of automaticity and continue on the trajectory of improvement to become an expert? Ericsson has an answer for it which he discovered in his extended research on expertise. He says, “Performance of future experts continues to improve with more experience for years and decades. . . . The key challenge for aspiring expert performers is to avoid the arrested development associated with automaticity . . . and instead acquire cognitive skills to support continued learning and improvement. The future expert performer actively counteracts the tendency toward automating performance by engaging in training activities. These training activities are specifically designed, typically with the help of teachers and coaches, to go just beyond the future experts’ current reliable level of performance.” Such a training programme is what he calls deliberate practice—one that sets the bar slightly higher each time for new achievable targets causing a practitioner to make mistakes and fail, thus forcing him to slog and concentrate on the processes of training and reflecting for improvement. This is how deliberate practice works: “These discrepancies between their actual and desired performance force the future

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expert performers to exert full concentration during practice, and ‘stretch’ their performance by repeated attempts at higher performance levels. In addition, the rai sed performance standards cause experts to make mistakes. These failures force future expert performers to continuously refine their task representations so they continue regenerating the initial cognitive phase. . . . Experts continue to acquire and refine cognitive mechanisms that mediate continued learning and improvement. These mechanisms are designed to increase the experts’ ability to monitor and control these processes. Most significantly, improvement in individuals’ reproducible performance requires continued, often increased, levels of deliberate practice to change the mediating mechanisms. Without deliberate practice, the performer is likely to stagnate and prematurely automate his or her performance.” In short, deliberate practice is designed to accomplish slightly more difficult goals and only those aspiring experts who are able to successfully develop strategies for engaging conscious mind in deliberate practice for monitoring, evaluating, analysing, and correcting their actions are able to avert the clutches of automaticity and the saturation of learning. It is important to know that beyond a point, the speed of action is brought about not so much by superior physiological capabilities but by improved cognitive faculties. Research studies indicate that the efficiency of exceptional performance or the ability of an expert to generate rapid reactions is resulted from a favourable reorganisation and superior utilisation of mental resources for a better anticipation of events yet to occur, thus gaining more time to decide and act, which in the outside world seems a rapid reaction. Primary purpose of deliberate practice after achieving typical performance level, then, is a favourable restructuring of cognitive resources and mechanisms for superior anticipation. In order for it to alter our mental models and schemas, deliberate practice must be reflective, not just physical, and it must be a fully conscious effort and done with full concentration. It cannot be an extended activity repeated mechanically; it must be done in full awareness and must be thoughtfully monitored at each step. Practice sessions are kept short so that practitioners do not lose concentration and frequent breaks are taken for resting body and refreshing mind, for reflective review and joint deliberations. Ericsson elaborates, “The acquisition of expert performance extends over years and even decades, but improvement of performance is not an automatic consequence of additional experience. Merely performing the same activities repeatedly on a regular daily schedule will not lead to further change once a physiological and cognitive adaptation to the current demands has been achieved. The principal challenge for attaining expert performance is



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that further improvements require continuously increased challenges that raise the performance beyond its current level. The engagement in these selected activities designed to improve one’s current performance is referred to as deliberate practice. Given that these practice activities are designed to be outside the aspiring experts’ current performance, these activities create mistakes and failures in spite of the performers’ full concentration and effort – at least when practice on a new training task is initiated. Failing in spite of full concentration is not viewed as enjoyable and creates a motivational challenge.” A very high degree of intrinsic motivation is a prerequisite for making a practitioner an expert, therefore. “Once we conceive of expert performance as mediated by complex integrated systems of representations for the execution, monitoring, planning, and analyses of performance, it becomes clear that its acquisition requires an orderly and deliberate approach. Different forms of deliberate practice focus on improving specific aspects of performance while assuring that attained changes can be successfully integrated into representative performance. Hence, practice aimed at improving integrated performance cannot be performed mindlessly nor independent of the representative context for the target performance.” It is also useful to understand the mechanism of continuous improvement or the mechanics of deliberate practice. Ericsson explains, “Experts were shown to avoid the path taken by most novices where initial representations for performing the tasks were rapidly automated. Instead, experts were shown to keep building and refining their representations and the supporting working memory (LTWM) that supports anticipation, planning, and decision making.” LTWM stands for long-term working memory found in experts which is a memory skill acquired through deliberate practice. This cognitive mechanism facilitates a rapid retrieval and recall of information stored in long-term memory as if it is stored in short-term memory, also called working memory. That is why it is said that experts have an expanded working memory and it is this cognitive resource that they draw upon and which mediates their exceptional performance. For clarity, reader may replace ‘representation’ used in the above quotes by schema and mental model, for these are standard terms that I have used in this book and explained earlier. To refresh our memories, mental models are reliable predictive tools residing in our brains and dependent on their specific schemas—the pathways and interconnections of billions of neurons forged over the years of experience and containing information for specific problem-solving purposes—which mediate planning, monitoring, evaluation, analysis, anticipation, action, reaction, and course correction while acting in a situation to control it and achieve a certain end state.

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Is expert action truly automatic? It cannot be entirely if we agree that expert action is mediated by anticipation. Correct anticipation is not possible without an ongoing multifactorial assessment of entire situation at current moment and what it was before this moment—of all agents, their intents and states, their past and present actions, and the interaction of human actions with other humans as well as with the surrounding physical world and consequences thereof, which together cause a situation to occur. Anticipation, therefore, is a result of an intense, complex, and continuous cognitive processing, which is done in both the conscious and unconscious realms of brain through modelling. Expert anticipation and action, then, is neither automatic nor effortless as it seems to others; expert performance is a result seen in the world of an effortful but unseen mental activity. In a complex hostage rescue operation, rescuers come face to face with intelligent hostiles and terrified victims; they compete against them and their actions to control the outcomes of rescue operation. Based on the uniqueness of our context and recent research findings, for rescuers to acquire the expert and exceptional levels of performance, I recommend against the finding of Ericsson: Rescuers should no longer rely on teachers and trainers for guidance after they have acquired the advanced levels of knowledge and skills with their assistance. Instead, they should now strive to master still higher levels of difficulties through deliberate practice by relying on collective experience sharing and brainstorming by team members for problem-solving. When all team members work together and pool their resources at this stage for setting and achieving increasingly more difficult goals, team replaces teachers and trainers and every team member becomes a student and an instructor—both at the same time—and team becomes a self-modifying entity by continuously improving the performance levels of its members individually and collectively. It does not undermine the importance of solitary training for increasing the level of individual performance; it merely places greater resources at the disposal of a practitioner for his performance enhancement; deliberate practice in the form of personal training still remains the main mechanism of training. As a spin-off, teamwork creates strong personal bonding among team members and helps in building a shared view of the world and evolving joint mental models which are immensely useful in team training and joint action in operations. With this discussion on expertise, we have sufficiently revised what is expertise and what goes into making an expert. Acquisition of expertise, however, is a higher-order phenomenon of learning which is required and acquired much later in the career of an aspiring expert. We can become experts only if we



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can learn, so let us discuss what lies beneath it, at the base of learning, that is, the science and theory of learning. II We know that it takes over ten years of continuous domain specific learning for a man to become an expert, that after a point an aspiring expert has to rely on higher-order learning strategies for breakthrough learning that occurs by successfully and repeatedly defeating the stages of saturation, automaticity, and plateau achieved over time which block further learning, and that these obstacles and bottlenecks on one’s path to expert learning arrive only after a few years of basic and advanced learning. All told, the journey of an aspiring expert and also of an expert after achieving expertlevel knowledge and skills truly remains a journey of learning throughout. It is imperative, then, that rescuers embark on this arduous and long path with a clear conception and knowledge of learning itself. In this section, we will discuss the theory of learning and use scientific knowledge derived from various studies discussed here to structure and programme the enterprise of hostage rescue training in subsequent sections. Our discussion here is not about training as such but about gaining insights for designing the effective organisation and administration of training. We perceive the world through our senses—eyes, ears, skin, nose, and tongue. In other words, our perception is based on what we see, hear, feel, smell, or taste. But this process is not simply of an input producing an output in our consciousness; it instead is mediated by the experience and knowledge of a man already accumulated in his life and stored in his brain. Actual output that a man would get from an input, then, would depend on a variable—his bank of information and experience—so much so that the same object and event may be perceived differently and have different meanings for different individuals. German-American psychologist Ulric Neisser calls these pre-existing structures of knowledge and information in brain schemata, “which direct perceptual activity and are modified as it occurs.” Perceiving, he writes, “is an activity in which both the immediate past and the remote past are brought to bear upon the present.” Perception, therefore, “depends on the skill and experience of the perceiver—on what he knows in advance.” Or, to put it simply, “we can see only what we know how to look for.” Learning is an outcome of perception. We learn by perceiving, interpreting, and predicting the world by means of our schemas and mental models which are built by our experiences and modified as we experience and learn more. Implications of this theoretical understanding are quite crucial for training

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and learning. If we want our men to draw the correct meaning of objects and events, we must strive for creating the elaborate schemas and appropriate mental models of the world which are employed to make sense of objects and events in a novel situation. If we want our men to draw the same meaning of objects and events, we must strive for them to have similar and shared schemas and mental models that are used for interpreting operational and social artefacts, human behaviours, and unfolding events. And, to achieve this is one of the fundamental objectives of training and post-training activities of organisation. Much research has been conducted since Neisser laid the foundation of cognitive psychology but his theoretical insights still remain on firm ground and the importance of modelling in perceiving and interpreting the world has since been only validated and underlined by different researchers repeatedly. For example, a contemporary French cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene gives a broad definition of learning based on the idea of mental model and the whole body of research that exists to support it. “To learn,” he says, “is to form an internal model of the external world.” Further, he highlights the absolute role of mental models in making sense of the world—so much so that “in the absence of an internal model, raw sensory inputs would remain meaningless.” Learning, he asserts, is an outcome of synaptic reorganisation in brain, a consequence of synaptic plasticity. “Millions of synapses undergo plastic changes every time we acquire new knowledge.” Such recursive and corrective reorganisation of neuronal pathways brought about by the new and disconfirming pieces of information provide us our refined and reliable schemas and mental models acquired after the years and decades of experience. These neuronal structures are our tools for understanding and predicting the world with confidence and the purpose of organised learning or structured training is to rapidly and systematically build domain specific mental structures, that is, schemas and models for handling and solving real-life problems. Learning is possible only if new information is available for processing and assimilation. If we are exposed to the same information which we already have in our brains, no learning can occur. Without new information, learning is neither possible nor purposeful. In other words, the novelty of experience is a necessary precondition for learning. Dutch psychologist Addie Johnson and American psychologist Robert Proctor write, “Technically, information is available whenever there is some uncertainty about what will occur. . . . If no reduction of uncertainty has taken place, no information has been transmitted.” Availability of information, however, is only a necessary condition



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for learning; it is possible that learning does not take place despite information. If information available is partially processed or wrongly represented in brain, there will be incomplete or incorrect learning. According to Dehaene, learning is an outcome of four different processes, all of which must come together for successful learning. He writes, “Attention, active engagement, error feedback, and consolidation are the secret ingredients of successful learning. . . . Each of us should therefore learn to master them.” Let us begin with attention which is fundamental and paramount to learning. Human sensory systems are autonomous and human brain keeps receiving information transmitted by sensory organs all the time. Such gargantuan magnitude of information processing is far beyond the handling capacity of human brain—so much so that if processed, information overload would crash a man’s cognitive system in no time and render him miserably dysfunctional in the busy world. But humans have survived, and thrived too, not because we have an unparalleled brain but because we also have limited attentional resource for making brain a functional and productive cognitive system. And, humans are not alone in possessing this ability; other animal species also process information selectively as we do. This ability of living beings is a function of selective attention. Johnson and Proctor also make this point. They write, “To produce coherent behavior in the face of competing and distracting sources of stimulation in the environment, some things must be selected and others ignored. If we were able to attend to everything going on around us, we would be constantly distracted and unable to carry out any action at all. In this sense, it is a useful adaptation that we are aware of only a small portion of our surroundings at a given moment, and that only a limited range of objects can be attended to and acted upon at any one time.” While attention cannot be defined easily, it can be described easily. There are various forms of attention such as cognitive and sensory, focal and peripheral, and endogenous and exogenous. There is also something called cross-modal attention in which different sensory modalities such as visual and auditory modalities are attended together and multisensory information is processed and integrated for a decision. For learning, however, we are more concerned with cognitive attention directed to or attracted by environment. Attention can be endogenously or consciously directed by an individual to a particular object, space, or event existing or occurring in environment or an individual’s attention can be exogenously attracted or captured by objects present or events happening in environment.

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Attention is difficult to define but easy to understand. Johnson and Proctor explain the mechanics of attention, “A popular metaphor of attention is that it is like a spotlight, highlighting selected information and leaving information outside the focus in the dark. Like a spotlight, attention can be moved to different regions of space in order to ‘illuminate’ anything that might be present there. . . . Many studies have shown that the spotlight of attention can be adjusted to focus on a relatively small region or on a larger region of space.” Spotlight analogy makes it easier to grasp the way attention works but it does not convincingly explain its workings. They explain, “The implication of the spotlight metaphor—that everything within the focus of the attentional spotlight is attended—may not be correct. For instance, regions of space that contain objects may be processed differently than empty regions of space” or “objects in space might be attended to differently than the regions of space that they occupy. . . . It has been suggested that a better metaphor of selective visual attention is that of a gradient of resources that is allocated to a region in space rather than a spotlight that can be moved from place to place. Such a gradient may vary in size, and resources are assumed to fall off from the centre of the gradient to the edges. A more substantial difference between a spotlight and a gradient metaphor is that the gradient may reflect not only the current focus of attention, but also the results of previous attentional allocation. That is, activation in the gradient can build up (and decay) over time and across more than one attentional fixation.” A critical and complementary aspect of attention is its inhibition. Attention inhibition is the phenomenon of suppression of information. We have read about inattentional blindness—our inability to ‘see’ a part of the reality for want of attention—in chapter seven where we discussed its negative effect or dysfunctional side and price that we pay in the form of making errors. While it causes errors in decision-making in real life, in learning it is desirable and essential for its positive role in filtering out unwanted and irrelevant information. Inattention, then, is the other side of selective attention which facilitates learning and both are required at the same time for deploying maximal attentional resource on useful information, the effect of which we see in a man immersed in learning and ignoring the whole wide world around. Johnson and Proctor agree, “In most cases, attention is used to select information. When we ‘pay attention’ to what we are doing, we actively attempt to attend to task-relevant information and to monitor our actions to be sure that appropriate responses are made. Equally important for successful task performance, however, is the shutting out of irrelevant information and the exclusion of inappropriate actions.” Dehaene comments similarly, “Paying attention also involves choosing what to ignore.



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For an object to come into the spotlight, thousands of others must remain in the shadows. To direct attention is to choose, filter, and select: this is why cognitive scientists speak of selective attention. This form of attention amplifies the signal which is selected, but it also dramatically reduces those that are deemed irrelevant. The technical term for this mechanism is ‘biased competition’: at any given moment, many sensory inputs compete for our brain’s resources, and attention biases this competition by strengthening the representation of the selected item while squashing the others.” Attention is a primary resource for learning. “Attention plays a prominent role in determining what, and how well, information is learned,” write Johnson, Proctor, and Dutch psychologist Mark Nieuwenstein. But in reality, the workings of brain are indeed mysterious and there is always more to it than meets the eye. Unbeknownst to you, your brain works and much more happens in it than what you are aware of through attention, for a large part of brain lies beyond the reach of your consciousness. Various experimental studies suggest “that inattention does not always prevent the acquisition of information, and that the failure to recall information at will does not necessarily imply that the information has not been stored in memory,” they write. We often use and confuse ‘memory’ with what we can remember and recall when required, which is not how it is understood in sciences. Although memory resides in brain, not everything that is stored in memory is accessible for recall, in that it can be necessarily retrieved and brought to awareness at will. In the scientific world, they clarify, memory “refers to various kinds of representations of information that are retained in different formats and processed in different stores.” Dehaene imparts a neurological perspective to attention and learning. We learn because of “the extraordinary amplification that occurs in our brain whenever we pay attention to an object and become aware of it. With conscious attention, the discharges of the sensory and conceptual neurons that code for an object are massively amplified and prolonged, and their messages propagate into the prefrontal cortex, where whole populations of neurons ignite and fire for a long time, well beyond the original duration of the image. Such a strong surge of neural firing is exactly what synapses need in order to change their strength—what neuroscientists call ‘long-term potentiation.’” He further explains, “The orienting of attention amplifies whatever lies in its spotlight. The neurons that encode the attended information increase their firing, while the noisy chattering of other neurons is squashed. The impact is twofold: attention makes the attended neurons more sensitive to the information that we consider relevant, but, above all, it increases their

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influence on the rest of the brain. Downstream neural circuits echo the stimulus to which we lend our eyes, ears, or mind. Ultimately, vast expanses of cortex reorient to encode whatever information lies at the centre of our attention. Attention acts as an amplifier and a selective filter. . . . This is why every student should learn to pay attention—and also why teachers should pay more attention to attention!” An efficient teacher is one who “pays close attention to his pupils’ mental states.” Active engagement, a second driver of learning, means continuing association with and repetitive exposure to the subject matter of learning, which is planned with foresight and pursued with interest as against occasional, casual, and disinterested pursuit. Active engagement is effortful, directed, and organised. It is characterised by the routine and regularity of practice, of recurrent reflection and imagination, of enquiry and exploration, of scrutiny and doubt, of a burning desire to know and learn more. It is a constructive, fruitful, and fulfilling activity for its pursuer. Its origin is intrinsic and it is driven by self. Dehaene explains the mechanics of active engagement and how it promotes learning. He writes, “To learn, our brain must first form a hypothetical mental model of the outside world, which it then projects onto its environment and puts to a test by comparing its predictions to what it receives from the senses. This algorithm implies an active, engaged, and attentive posture. Motivation is essential: we learn well only if we have a clear goal and we fully commit to reaching it. . . . The brain learns efficiently only if it is attentive, focussed, and active in generating mental models. To better digest new concepts, active students constantly rephrase them into words or thoughts of their own. Passive or, worse, distracted students will not benefit from any lesson, because their brains do not update their mental models of the world. . . . Efficient learning means refusing passivity, engaging, exploring, and actively generating hypotheses and testing them on the outside world.” Interest, curiosity, passion, and motivation are the hallmarks of active engagement and they are most effective when they are intrinsic and internal to a person. More than a quarter and a century ago, American psychologist William James wrote, “Millions of items of the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind—without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos. Interest alone gives accent and emphasis, light and shade, background and foreground—intelligible perspective, in a word.” Dehaene communicates this fact in the language of neuroscience: “By allowing



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cortical maps to massively reshape themselves, passion breeds talent.” Given the crucial role of enquiry and inquisitiveness in learning, he repeatedly underlines it: “To be curious is to want to know, and that implies knowing what you don’t already know. . . . Memory and curiosity are linked—the more curious you are about something, the more likely you are to remember it. . . . Curiosity guides us to what we think we can learn. Its opposite, boredom, turns us away from what we already know, or from areas that, according to our past experience, are unlikely to have anything left to teach us.” We learn only when it comes or brought to our attention that we do not know about something in the world or what we know about something is not correct. In other words, for learning it is a prerequisite that you realise yourself or made to realise by others that the world is not what you know it to be and there is a gap between your knowledge of the world and the world as it is. Only, then, information is generated and made available for you to process and assimilate in your brain that reorganises your mental model or representation of the world to match with the reality. Error feedback is a mechanism that makes you aware of your knowledge gap and opens you up for learning. Error feedback can be provided internally or externally. Internal error feedback is provided by self as a result of self-monitoring of practice and post-practice reflection. It is delivered both in real time and also afterwards, sometimes even at night or over the course of next few days after a practice session. External error feedback, on the other hand, is provided by others, mainly teachers or team mates who observe and monitor your practice. It is typically given in real time or soon after a practice session and only occasionally after a significant time has elapsed since practice session. That the errors of action and prediction facilitate learning has been widely studied and firmly established. We are invariably surprised when the actual world does not turn out to be what we had expected it to be, which leads to a mental remodelling of the reality through new experience, followup reflection, forced research, and more practice. Errors and mistakes, therefore, are necessary setbacks for learning. Dehaene argues, “It would be practically impossible to progress if we did not start off by failing. Errors always recede as long as we receive feedback that tells us how to improve. . . . The quality and accuracy of the feedback we receive determines how quickly we learn.” He asserts that no surprise, no learning is a basic rule that has been validated for all organisms and explains, “The brain tries to predict the inputs it receives and adjusts these predictions according to the degree of surprise, improbability, or error. To learn is to curtail the unpredictable.”

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Teachers should give a precise and timely error feedback which not only describes an error but also prescribes ways to overcome it. Its communication should be done dispassionately and matter-of-factly, without generating anxiety and fear, shame or guilt in a learner for failing. In behavioural and emotional terms, then, the approach of teachers should be objective and composed, encouraging and motivating. And, in temporal terms, error feedback should be supplied quickly after its occurrence; delayed feedback is low in its productivity. Dehaene writes, “Learning is faster and easier when students receive detailed error feedback that tells them precisely where they stumbled and what they should have done instead. By providing rapid and precise feedback on errors, teachers can considerably enrich the information available to their students to correct themselves. . . . Setting a clear goal for learning and allowing students to approach it gradually, without dramatizing their inevitable mistakes, are the keys to success.” He enumerates the qualities of good teachers and their way of approaching errors and addressing mistakes made by their students: “Good teachers are already well aware of these ideas. Every day, they witness the Roman dictum errare humanum est: to err is human. With a compassionate eye, they look kindly upon their students’ mistakes, because they realize that no one learns without making errors. They know that they should diagnose, as dispassionately as possible, the exact areas of difficulty for their students and help them find the best solutions. With experience, these teachers build up a catalog of errors, because all students repeatedly fall into the same old traps. These teachers find the right words to console, reassure, and restore the self-confidence of their students, all the while allowing them to amend their erroneous mental representations. They are here to tell the truth, not to judge.” Bad teachers, in contrast, discourage and demotivate their students and impede and inhibit learning by their judgemental and temperamental approach which generates a sense of incompetence in their students. “Numerous studies, both in humans and animals, confirm that stress and anxiety can dramatically hinder the ability to learn. . . . Conversely, being immersed in a fear-free, stimulating environment can reopen synaptic plasticity, thus freeing the neurons and returning their synaptic contacts to their childlike motility—a fountain of youth,” notes Dehaene. Frequent testing is another powerful means of receiving error feedback. Tests can be given by self or by others, both teachers and team mates, using different formats. On the efficacy of testing in learning, Dehaene writes, “Dozens of scientific publications demonstrate its effectiveness. . . . Regular testing maximizes long-term learning. The mere act of putting your memory to



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the test makes it stronger. It is a direct reflection of the principle of active engagement and error feedback. Taking a test forces you to face reality headon, to strengthen what you know, and to realize what you don’t know.” Learning has a purpose: To be able to respond to the world and achieve a desired outcome. Learning, then, is not enough if we are not able to retrieve our knowledge timely and act appropriately when required in the future; it must be consolidated for long-term retention. Consolidation of information is what makes learning durable and knowledge available for use in times of need. It makes the rapid recall of target information and the correct execution of required action possible by a successful activation of memory. It also makes it possible to activate mental models stored in brain for projecting, predicting, and applying our knowledge to the real world in order to prepare us to deal with it successfully. While the durability of memory and its use in the real world is the final objective of training, usually trainers are more concerned with near-term performance for qualification and validation at the end of training course. An elaborate body of research done over many decades in various fields of knowledge and skills suggests that processes and methods employed in training for quick learning, good memory, and superior performance in acquisition phase may just be good for short-term gains made at the expense of long-term retention of knowledge and skill and its effective transfer and application in the altered situations of real life. Goal of training is not to maximise learning during training period and its application in controlled environment but to maximise the retention of knowledge and skills and its maximal transfer to real life. This problem was first highlighted over three decades ago by American psychologists Richard Schmidt and Robert Bjork in a very influential analytical paper on the paradigms of training and prevailing misconceptions on learning. They wrote, “We argue herein that typical training procedures are far from optimal. The goal of training in real-world settings is, or should be, to support two aspects of posttraining performance: (a) the level of performance in the long term and (b) the capability to transfer that training to related tasks and altered contexts. The implicit or explicit assumption of those persons responsible for training is that the procedures that enhance performance and speed improvement during training will necessarily achieve these two goals. However, a variety of experiments on motor and verbal learning indicate that this assumption is often incorrect. Manipulations that maximize performance during training can be detrimental in the long term; conversely, manipulations that degrade the speed of acquisition can support the long-term goals of training. The fact that there are parallel findings in the

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motor and verbal domains suggests that principles of considerable generality can be deduced to upgrade training procedures.” They further clarified, “We have repeatedly encountered research findings that seem to violate some basic assumptions about how to optimize learning in real-world settings. For example, increasing the frequency of information presented to learners about performance errors during practice improves performance during training, yet can degrade performance on a test of long-term retention or transfer. Increasing the amount of task variability required during practice, in contrast, depresses performance during training, yet facilitates performance on later tests of the ability to generalize training to altered conditions. . . . Taken together, however, these findings suggest that certain conceptualizations about how and when to practice are at best incomplete, and at worst incorrect.” Schmidt and Bjork, however, exonerated trainers for behaving the way they do by stating that “trainers might easily assume that maximizing performance during training is their major goal; trainers may themselves even be evaluated in terms of their trainees’ performance during training.” It, then, becomes the responsibility of training administration and organisational leadership to fix training system by bringing desirable structural and policy changes to facilitate long-lasting learning. Much research has been conducted since Schmidt and Bjork flagged the problem of learning in training and many doubts on the scheduling of practice and the effects of spacing on learning have since been answered by experimental research. American psychologists Nicholas Cepeda, Harold Pashler, Edward Vul, John Wixted, and Doug Rohrer did a meta-analysis by reviewing “839 assessments of distributed practice in 317 experiments located in 184 articles.” They concluded, “More than 100 years of distributed practice research have demonstrated that learning is powerfully affected by the temporal distribution of study time. More specifically, spaced (vs. massed) learning of items consistently shows benefits, regardless of retention interval, and learning benefits increase with increased time lags between learning presentations. . . . Distributing learning across different days (instead of grouping learning episodes within a single day) greatly improves the amount of material retained for sizable periods of time.” Cepeda, Rohrer, Wixted, and Pashler conducted experiments with fellow psychologists Michael Mozer and Noriko Coburn on optimising distributed practice for practical purposes. They concluded, “To efficiently promote truly long-lasting memory, the data presented here suggest that very substantial temporal gaps between learning sessions should be introduced – gaps on the order of months, rather than days or weeks.” American psychologists Sean Kang, Robert Lindsey, Michael Mozer, and Harold Pashler concluded after conducting an experiment over



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an extended time scale, “Spaced retrieval practice has been shown to benefit long-term retention, but the best way to schedule or distribute the retrieval attempts when there are multiple opportunities to practice retrieval has been subject to long-running debate. Two contenders have emerged: In an expanding schedule, retrieval is attempted soon after initial study, followed by subsequent retrieval attempts that occur after progressively longer delays; in an equal-interval schedule, the first retrieval attempt occurs only after some delay, and the interval between successive retrieval attempts is uniform. . . . Our findings suggest that when retrieval practice is spread out over days or weeks, scheduling the review sessions in an expanding fashion produces better average performance than does equal-interval spacing over the training period. Expanding practice not only produces faster acquisition and greater access to the material over the training period, it was even observed to slightly retard forgetting over the long term, too.” In all, it has been found that spaced and mixed practice that we may call distributed shuffled practice is superior to massed and block-wise practice that we may call crammed continuous practice. Empirical evidence suggests that not only the same lesson and concept of a subject should be spaced or distributed instead of massed or concentrated for better learning but various lessons and concepts of a subject could also be introduced in parallel instead of just one lesson or concept of that subject until it is finished, which is a standard practice. Dividing the whole syllabus of a subject into various blocks and finishing one block before starting the next for a logical progression of learning based on a predetermined rank-ordering of blocks and lessons, then, may not be as effective for actual learning and long-term retention as attractive it intuitively seems to us. Sleep is another crucial factor in the consolidation of learning and memory. Dehaene writes, “Every night, our brain consolidates what it has learned during the day. . . . While we sleep, our brain remains active; it runs a specific algorithm that replays the important events it recorded during the previous day and gradually transfers them into a more efficient compartment of our memory. . . . Brain imaging shows that during sleep, the neural circuits that we used during the preceding day get reactivated. . . . Experiment after experiment gives convergent results: after sleeping, brain activity shifts around, and a portion of the knowledge acquired during the day is strengthened and transferred to more automatic and specialized circuits.” While sleep as such helps the consolidation of memory, the quality of sleep determines how good consolidation actually occurs. Israeli neuroscientists

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Avi Karni, David Tanne, Barton Rubenstein, Jean Askenasy, and Dov Sagi conducted experimental research on the consolidation of memory during sleep. They reported, “These results indicate that a process of human memory consolidation, active during sleep, is strongly dependent on REM sleep.” Their findings also suggest that memory consolidation is not as much dependent on non-rapid eye movement slow-wave sleep as it is on rapid eye movement sleep. Many scientists found corroborating results and brought new facts to light; Dehaene sums them up, “Sleep and learning are strongly linked. Numerous experiments show that spontaneous variations in the depth of sleep correlate with variations in performance on the next day. . . . Both the duration and the depth of sleep predict a person’s performance improvement upon waking.” Good sleep is required for more than this reason, though, and we will discuss more about it in another chapter. III Durable and dependable learning is a continuing process and an engaging exercise which has no short cuts. Such learning is a primary objective of training and education of members in a hostage rescue force. Rescuers need to learn new lessons, relearn them by revision after certain time intervals, overlearn them by practicing continuously even after achieving mastery, and frequently test what they have actually learned. Learning in this sense is an unending undertaking that requires unwavering commitment; it does not end with any structured training course or fixed-term programme. Training and learning in a hostage rescue force is an ongoing project for all members, old and fresh, which never ends; it is slow and silent as a way of life, an ever-present attribute of culture, spinning like a perpetual motion machine which runs non-stop, always. Such long view of training must be formed in the foundational stage of training of new members in which teachers and trainers play a predominant role. Learning from others by paying attention to what someone is saying or doing, that is, teaching, is just one facet; another critical facet of learning is unassisted learning by exploiting personal resources. Self-learning by becoming aware of your state of knowledge and skills, by monitoring your own practice and progress, and by reflecting on it to resolve various problems and issues, bottlenecks and plateaus is a very effective mechanism of learning. Selflearning is possible only when we carefully and critically attend to what we do and think. Indeed, self-learning is the generator of expertise and, therefore, it must be cultivated effortfully and relied on heavily in a hostage rescue organisation right from the very beginning.



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Learning is a complex phenomenon and it is not limited to or predicated on explicit instructions given by others in formal settings. While structured instructional learning is crucial, beyond formal learning too learning occurs, silently and tacitly, unnoticed and unobserved, often without the explicit knowledge of learner and teacher. Social learning happens by observing others and learning from their behaviours. It is a very powerful mechanism of unstructured learning that occurs tacitly without teaching. Ideal and flawless conduct of each member in each setting and situation, then, is absolutely essential, for social learning is what makes new members the ideal members of organisation, even more than the structured processes of formal learning. A crucial mechanism of learning is failure. We are surprised when the actual world does not turn out to be what we had expected it to be, which leads to mental remodelling through new experience, follow-up reflection, fertile imagination, forced research, creative solution, and more practice. Errors and mistakes, therefore, are necessary setbacks for learning and improving and it has been studied and established that the errors of action and prediction facilitate learning. Training should be designed and imparted keeping this fact in mind. Learners should not be afraid of errors and mistakes occurring in practice and their recurring failures should be tolerated by teachers and supervisors. Only those who do not do anything do not make mistakes; those who do invariably err. Only by making mistakes, reflecting on them, learning lessons from mistakes, finding new solutions, and practicing again and again do we learn how not to fail. However hard you may try not to make mistakes and not to be surprised, mistakes will happen nonetheless and you will face surprises frequently. We must, of course, strive hard to act flawlessly and anticipate correctly but we should strive still harder to prepare for fast error recovery, rapid reaction, and quick adaptation, which is a superior strategy to gain control in the complex world. In other words, the more you want to do your job flawlessly, the more you should be prepared for managing errors and correcting course as you go, that is, taking decisions continuously and quickly without losing your cool or heart. Adaptive strategy and reactive approach to problem-solving empowers agents to decide and keeps them flexible to operate successfully in unstructured and ambiguous situations and in controlling unexpected events. Contrarily, a strict rule-based strategy makes agents rigid or dependent on others and limits their success to defined, known, and expected problems only. System of learning should, therefore, be structured strategically for problem comprehension and problem-solving, not by following prescribed rules and routines only but also by rapidly reacting and flexibly adapting to

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unexpected developments in order to realise the goal and purpose of task or operation. For this, learning should be conceptual, not rote; it should be slow, not fast. Teachers should know what their students do not know and present information to impart knowledge and to fill gaps in their knowledge. But information should not be given in bulk; it becomes difficult to keep everything in mind. Information should be supplied in small packets followed by time for ingesting and internalising it by means of revision, reflection, and discussion. Once sufficiently consolidated, another packet of information should be released. It might take more teaching time and efforts by teachers but it is a superior strategy for effective and durable learning by students. Also, too many subjects should not be crammed together and taught in parallel the same day; not more than two classroom lectures be given in a day. It might seem inefficient from the standpoint of conventional pedagogy and educational system but it is an effective teaching strategy for successful learning which I strongly recommend for hostage rescue training. Unlike other students, our rescuers take the exam of life and death in the real unforgiving world and they must learn and understand everything absolutely clearly without leaving any gaps in their knowledge to save lives. There is no need to rush in order to cover a defined syllabus in a stipulated period. Time is on our side while training, for our students could remain under training for a much greater length of time than other professions. There is no need or compulsion to finish their training in just a few weeks or months; training could go on for a few years instead and learning continues for the whole time. Also, learning experience should be exciting and inspiring, joyous and wondrous, and above all, fulfilling. Let us now translate theoretical insights into practical instructions. We have discussed and understood the learning benefits of spacing strategy over cramming strategy and we know that distributed learning by means of several short lessons spaced out in time is more effective than concentrated learning in a single long lesson. Teaching and learning of a concept or lesson, then, should be spaced out or distributed into several smaller learning sessions instead of massed or crammed into one long session. A lesson should be small, in that the duration of a lecture should not be too long such as fortyfive minutes; it should be finished between twenty to twenty-five minutes instead. Next lesson of the same topic is given no sooner than the next day, which begins with a review or summary of previous lessons to connect it to the previous ones; a longer gap between two such sessions is also acceptable. Next lesson that is planned in succession on the same day should teach



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another subject or another lesson of the same subject and this lecture should commence after a break but break should be longer, let us say for twenty minutes or more. Two different lessons planned for the same day could also be interspersed with practical field training or they could be scheduled in forenoon and afternoon. While questioning is good and must be encouraged, questions should not be allowed to derail the context and purpose of communication. Questions should preferably be asked and answered only at the end of a lecture. All students and speaker should have paper and pencil to note questions and observations for raising them at an appropriate time without having to remember all through that divides attention or makes people impatient and provokes them to jump in untimely that breaks the flow of speaker. Flow of thoughts and speech should not be disrupted because it influences the quality of information and its delivery. Also, in a short lecture period, teacher should not digress at all and utilise full teaching time for providing information to students. A fixed time slot of five to ten minutes for asking questions is kept at the end of lecture. If there are no questions, time saved from question slot is credited to revision and reflection slot. A lecture ends formally at the end of question slot. Although learning happens during the transmission and reception of information and, then, again during the clarification of doubts by asking questions after a lecture, its consolidation happens only during revision and repetition—so much so that durable learning is an outcome of revision and repetition. Need for and the benefits of revision and repetition in learning and mastering are known to human beings for ages and it is practiced everywhere but it should be systematically promoted and scientifically planned for durable learning in a hostage rescue force. There are many activities that can be used for revision such as reading, reflecting, discussing, testing, and practicing and we should use all of them. A revision slot of fifteen minutes follows a lecture which is utilised for reading and reflecting personally; the saved time of question slot is added to it. Printed material is supplied to each student for this purpose in this slot and collected after revision. Teacher informs students which portions of printed lesson are relevant at this stage and only that much should be revised. There should be complete silence during this period; no one speaks. A printed lesson should begin with its objectives followed by an introduction and it should end with a summary; subject matter in a lesson should be documented and discussed elaborately in order to make it self-

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explanatory; reference books and their relevant chapters should also be cited and recommended for further reading. After personal revision slot is given a short ten-minute break followed by a group discussion for twenty minutes; if a class is big, it is divided into small breakout groups distributed in separate rooms for group discussion. All speak and all are heard; no one dominates and no one disengages. A teaching session ends with the completion of group discussion, in all taking about seventy to eighty minutes. A formal revision and repetition of a lesson is done in classroom after a period of about two months and again after about six months. Frequent testing of knowledge is a powerful means of revising and receiving error feedback and it is essential for learning. Tests could be given by others or by self. Other-administered tests are generally paper-pencil tests while self-administered tests are computer tests or flash card tests. Self-test bank must be rich and elaborate, covering the full depth of knowledge and all subjects taught. Questions should be framed to promote both conceptual and factual learning. All questions and answers must be error-free. Self-test batteries are available and accessible in library. Each subject is arranged, indexed, and catalogued separately; all lessons are available for testing. Computer test is a multiple-choice test; each test paper has a separate answer file stored in a separate folder. All test files are named and numbered logically. All test files are portable document format files which cannot be edited; they are accessed from a physically distant server and their content and cataloguing cannot be altered or erased, removed or replaced from user terminals. It requires no special applications and programming; system remains simple and it runs on local area network. Answers are written on paper and compared with digital answer sheet for self-checking after the completion of test. Flash card test is a conventional question-answer test; each card has a question on one side and its answer on back side. Cards could be handwritten, typewritten, or printed. Cards are indexed, numbered, and stacked carefully and separately in cardboard boxes and segments. Multiple sets of flash cards are available for many users. Flash card is also known as index card and it is available in various sizes and thicknesses. For durability, a heavy paper should be used; 350 gsm is good for flash cards and the life of card increases if it is laminated too. A test is given to students by teachers after three to four days of learning a lesson to assess what they have actually learned. Self-test is taken by students



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each week in a scheduled self-test slot which could be of any duration as required by the number of lessons planned to be covered. Of their own volition, however, students can walk into library any time for taking selftest. A classroom revision of a lesson is done after a period of about two months and again after about six months; these revisions are followed by tests given by teacher in coming days. An annual review of knowledge by other-administered tests is done throughout. Test results are not tabulated and announced by scores or grades but answer sheets are given to individuals to know about personal knowledge gaps; answers are also discussed by teachers for the purpose of clarity and commonality. Teacher is also the time keeper of class who has a manual push-and-press steel call bell on his desk for signalling the end of a slot. An electric alarm system can also be deployed if required but for small group training, a traditional call bell sounding a gentle ping is good enough. A lecture need not continue for a fixed duration of time. In training, we work for purpose, not against time. Hence, while the idea of punctuality is as such good, it should not be allowed to assume primacy and derail the purpose of training. A training session can be concluded five to ten minutes before or after a scheduled time instead of stretching unnecessarily or rushing speedily to keep up with clock. Trainers should not resort to haranguing and repeating the same things on end, thereby extending a session just for personal gratification without a genuine need or wasting time in unnecessary and unproductive discussions and activities instead of calling it a day. Time is important and it should be managed wisely but it should neither become an obsession nor disregarded as inconsequential. A prominently displayed electronic clock for time keeping and time signalling to teacher and trainer is required wherever training is imparted. It should be digital, visible, and accurate and all such clocks in classrooms and training facilities and elsewhere should display the same time. I will discuss more about synchronised time system later. Only one person speaks at a time and the next one gets to speak only when the previous speaker has finished; rest all listen and wait for their turn; no one jumps in out of turn. Teacher should speak slowly, clearly, and loudly so that all students can follow him; students should also speak likewise. Teacher should maintain eye contact with all students broadly and his gaze should not be fixed at a particular person, place, or direction. Similarly, students should keep eye contact with teacher and also orient to and look at anyone who is speaking. Revolving chairs help in this. To facilitate eye

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contact and interaction with all, a semicircular or an open rectangular or square seating or line-up of students is recommended but it depends on task and audience size too. Presentation of information should be clear and simple, lucid and interesting, forceful and impactful. I do not recommend the use of slides for the presentation of information in classroom. Only those things which cannot be described verbally such as pictures, graphs, diagrams, tables, and films should be projected on screen. Cue slides could be used by teacher but they should be visible only to him, not to students; index cards are better than computer slides for such a limited purpose. I discourage it because projected information inexorably attracts and divides attention and instead of paying undivided attention to what is being told, students often start to reading and writing what is being shown. Johnson and Proctor explain, “The relationship between processing in the visual and auditory modalities is asymmetric: Auditory and visual stimuli do not, in general, have an equal influence on each other. In many cases, the visual information gets the upper hand and a phenomenon called visual dominance is observed. Visual dominance refers to situations in which, given competing visual and other (e.g., auditory or proprioceptive) stimulation, the visual information captures, as it were, perception. . . . Visual dominance is not universal, and it should be noted that auditory stimuli have a stronger natural tendency to ‘draw attention to themselves’ than do visual stimuli. However, when visual stimuli have equal importance and provide at least as much information as other stimuli present at the time, a bias toward the visual information is likely.” That is why slide presentations in classroom cause visual dominance and impair learning by drawing attention to limited visual information provided on screen at the expense of detailed verbal information provided by teacher. Also, taking notes in real time in classroom should be best avoided and must be minimised, if necessary. By diverting attention, it creates unhealthy and avoidable gaps between information transmission and reception. Printed material for revision should be supplied after a lecture, not prior to it because pre-reading might generate a misplaced sense of understanding of lesson and diminish attention paid to what is being told; it might kill curiosity too. Printed lessons and summaries should not be given permanently to students and should be collected after revision slot. It is expected that information is stored internally, not externally, as much as possible, for only what is in your head, not what is in your hand, helps you in need. Students should be told this and that they can access printed material in library. While printed material archived in library can be accessed at will for revision anytime, lessons should not be copied, not due to security and trust issues but due



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to internalising needs. Also, students should be clearly told not to refer to printed material available in library before it is introduced and instructed by teacher which is absolutely essential for long-term learning. Personal notebooks are issued officially from library, deposited back in library every day after training is over, remain in library permanently, and can be accessed inside library at any time for revision. These cultural measures are designed for realising the larger goal of learning and retaining information for a long duration. For this purpose, library should have pigeonhole racks or drawer cabinets with numbers and name slots for keeping personal study material such as notebooks and printouts. If lockers are used, they should be either without locks or with keys always left inserted in keyholes. There is a ‘no lock no camera’ culture in a hostage rescue organisation; security and surveillance needs are extraneous here much as they are impertinent in a family. Only official areas where access is restricted are locked and perimeter is surveilled electronically for unauthorised breaches and external threats. A good library is indispensable for good learning everywhere but in a hostage rescue organisation, library is the hub of indoor learning. A well stocked library having a wide variety of audio, visual, and printed material on all relevant and related subjects is essential. Multiple copies of reference books should be available so that many people can read the same book at the same time. It should continuously source new publications and productions. Library should be designed creatively and aesthetically to provide pleasing and peaceful environment, relaxed and restful seating, and beautiful scenic view outside; it should powerfully attract and irresistibly inspire people to spend their spare time there. It should be adjacent to a self-serviced canteen and connected with it for bringing in food and beverage during reading. Professional books and films are meant for reading and viewing in library only and they are not lent to individuals because a healthy and vibrant social life is actively practiced in a hostage rescue organisation when people are not working. Principle of professional exclusion and social inclusion in personal life is actively pursued and systematically promoted. People are encouraged to leave all professional matters, concerns, and worries at workplace; they are discouraged to carry them to personal space. After working hours and on holidays, all members socialise through trekking, birding, reading, cinema, music, dance, food, picnic, excursion, travel, and other leisurely activities and pursuits organised for sharing life and experience with each other. Activities are planned methodically and democratically; events are organised in ways that everyone meets and mixes with everyone else; family members are invited too; cliques and cohorts are not allowed to form.

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Collective organisational ownership is reinforced by a shared cleaning and maintenance of compound carried out jointly by all members every month. There is no time and need for reading professional books and notes in home and this lifestyle is inculcated in new members from the very beginning. It might seem a good way of life but it raises an obvious question: Why such a culture is indispensable? Hypervigilance is an aroused state of body with heightened situation awareness to anticipate and detect harmful events and readiness to take action to avert and mitigate their consequences. Hypervigilance is an occupational need of rescuers; they are trained and expected to become hypervigilant. While on work, hypervigilant individuals are full of life and vigour, showing continuous alertness, energy, interest, involvement, enthusiasm, dynamism, initiative, and agency in life and its problems. They invest so much in work all day long that their inner resources are depleted by the time they reach home where they become withdrawn and detached from personal life and social needs and show the opposite signs of tiredness, disinterestedness, indifference, apathy, irritation, and isolation. When such a cyclic pattern of engagement and disengagement, overinvestment and underinvestment between professional and personal obligations caused by overcommitment and ego depletion sets in and becomes a way of life, hypervigilance takes its toll on one’s relationships with family and society in general and tends to limit one’s relations to a small circle of fellow professionals talking profession all the time as often observed in the community of police officers. Social imbalance and emotional disruption thus caused by hypervigilance must be handled systematically and addressed effectively in a hostage rescue force. In addition to an awareness of dark side of routine hypervigilance and need for openness and balance in life, a vibrant and engaging social life is a powerful way of forestalling its negative effects on the personal lives of rescuers, which, then, becomes a social imperative. IV Field training is also organised and carried out similarly, in the same fashion as we plan and carry out indoor classroom training. Focus here remains on mastering new challenges and not on crossing the milestones of processes and outcomes. Flexibility, not routine, is what works better and should be valued. Field training often needs more than one trainer. Lead trainer is main teacher and primary instructor. Support trainer assists lead trainer in imparting training. Lead trainer speaks, controls, and commands. He regularly invites suggestions,



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ideas, and observations from support trainer in a training session and on the invitation of lead trainer, support trainer shares his views. Lead trainer also gives specific tasks and responsibilities to support trainer as required. Support trainer assumes lead role and becomes a lead trainer when a class is divided into two groups by lead trainer for practicing and drilling. All additional trainers when invited to a training session also provide support to lead trainer and their role, therefore, is similar to support trainer. Lead and support roles are determined by competence and necessitated by purpose; there has to be someone in charge for organising activities in an orderly fashion. However, these roles are interchangeable, not fixed, and trainers often switch their roles in a planned manner. Trainers assemble at a designated place about thirty minutes before training session to collect and transport training equipments and prepare training infrastructure, facility, or site for training. They plan, discuss, and practice drills for training session beforehand. All trainers should be in position and ready five minutes before a training session commences. After a lecture and demonstration by trainers, trainees get a short five-minute break after which their questions are answered in five minutes and twenty minutes are given to practice and self-train under the supervision of trainers. After a tenminute break, they mentally revise and visualise for ten minutes followed by a practice session of twenty minutes. Before a session ends, all trainers and trainees assemble for collective experience sharing for ten minutes; everyone gets to speak and all speak briefly and to the point. Next day, training begins with a brief review of activities done on the previous day, which is presented by lead trainer. Next training session slotted in succession on the same day after a long break imparts training in a different subject or in a different lesson of the same subject which is not necessarily introduced in a defined order of syllabus blocks. Trainees are encouraged to carefully attend to what they do and to find their errors and faults on their own. They self-reflect on these problems in visualisation slot and self-monitor their actions in practice slot. Trainers give a precise and timely error feedback which not only describes an error but also prescribes ways to overcome it. In behavioural and emotional terms, the approach of trainers is objective and matter-of-fact, encouraging and motivating. In temporal terms, error feedback is given quickly after its occurrence; delayed feedback has a lower productivity. Video is a good self-education tool that helps in a transparent self-assessment of behaviour and performance. A man never sees himself through his own eyes and a film gives him an opportunity precisely to do that. Video recording of training

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sessions is done regularly for self-examination and also for the joint analysis of performance and problems. Hardware and equipment training mostly takes place in field setting. It begins with a general and specific safety briefing followed by a briefing on the safe handling procedure of equipment. General introduction covers its purpose and application and precedes system description which introduces it as a whole and in parts with information on design, construction, function, operation, stripping, assembling, manufacturing, and pricing. System description is followed by a practical demonstration. Information on dos and don’ts, storage and maintenance, packing and unpacking, and transportation is presented after demonstration. A short break is given at this stage. After break, students are allowed to ask questions followed by a handling session and a long break. A self-review and mental revision of information is scheduled after break followed by a long practice session and collective experience sharing. Training is terminated at this juncture although maintenance jobs and logistic work may go on. Practice continues thereafter for several days before a test is given. Practice is done regularly and never stops; tests are also given and taken in between. Duration and frequency of training and testing is guided by the general principles of learning discussed above. Skill development is the main objective of field training. In the first stage of skill development, it is necessary to understand the architecture and structure of a skill. Comprehension and learning of a skill requires breaking it down into parts and understanding how these parts come together as a whole for a correct, complete, and fluid execution of skill. In the early stage of learning, skill execution is controlled by a set of non-integrated sequential constituents that are held in working memory and attended to one by one in a step-by-step manner. Attention is crucial for skill execution at this point since working memory is controlled and processes are steered by attention. In practice, then, we employ task analysis method to break down an action into various serial steps or mechanical constituents that are required to perform it and train these steps sequentially to train for action. Due to the critical role and importance of attention in the early phases of learning when a skill has not been proceduralised, focus and concentration must be maintained for the entire duration of training. Any distraction would distort and impair skill execution considerably and have adverse impact on learning. A serious training environment without any room for digression and humour is an imperative for learning, therefore. Motor Learning and Performance by Richard Schmidt and Timothy Lee is a good reference for scientifically understanding skilled performance and skill development. Motor



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Control and Learning by Richard Schmidt, Timothy Lee, Carolee Winstein, Gabriele Wulf, and Howard Zelaznik and Motor Learning and Control by Richard Magill can also be referred to for greater clarity. V We know that experts rely on deliberate practice, that the purpose of and desire behind deliberate practice is to improve steadily and continuously, that deliberate practice is planned, structured, and monitored, and that many thousands of hours of deliberate practice is required for an aspiring practitioner to become an expert. All this is possible only if goals are set for achieving, such goals are set which are realistic and achievable, and incremental progress is made on end for superior performance through optimally challenging and progressively difficult goals. Goal setting, therefore, assumes a primary importance in the acquisition of expertise. We are concerned here with hostage rescue and expertise in operating effectively in complex terrorist strongholds. For aspiring rescuers to become expert rescuers, goals need to be set in various areas of domain knowledge, physical performance, technical skills, communication skills, tactical skills, teamwork, decision-making abilities, and operations abilities concerning combat and rescue in addition to behavioural standards as regards moral values, affect control, emotional intelligence, and social interaction. Goal setting is what must be done but even more important is how it is done, that is, how goals are set and who gets to set them. In order to answer it definitively, we need to go back to the theory of self-determination and intrinsic motivation that we discussed in chapter six. To quote Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, “Self-determination is a quality of human functioning that involves the experience of choice, in other words, the experience of an internal perceived locus of causality. It is integral to intrinsically motivated behavior and is also in evidence in some extrinsically motivated behaviors. . . . The psychological hallmark of self-determination is flexibility in managing the interaction of oneself and the environment. When self-determined, one acts out of choice rather than obligation or coercion, and those choices are based on an awareness of one’s organismic needs and a flexible interpretation of external events. Self-determination often involves controlling one’s environment or one’s outcomes, but it may also involve choosing to give up control.” They write, “Research has substantiated that extrinsic rewards and controls can affect people’s experience of self-determination. In such cases, the events will induce a shift in the perceived locus of causality from internal to external, a decrement in intrinsic motivation for the target behavior, less persistence at

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the activity in the absence of external contingencies, and less interest in and enjoyment of the activity.” In contrast, “when people are self-determining, they make choices and have the opportunity to become more fully involved with the activity itself. At such times, the perceived locus of causality is internal; people understand the activity to be something they want to do for its own sake. A greater opportunity for self-determination frees people to be more intrinsically motivated and should strengthen their perceptions of internal causality.” They explain the perceived locus of causality which is a crucial notion here, “The perceived locus of causality is theorized to be a cognitive construct representing the degree to which one is self-determining with respect to one’s behavior. Events that lead to an external perceived locus of causality and undermine intrinsic motivation are those that deny one self-determination, whereas events that lead to an internal perceived locus of causality and enhance intrinsic motivation are those that facilitate self-determination. We often say that the former events control behavior, whereas that the latter events support autonomy.” In sum, “self-determination is the experience of choice or freedom from pressure.” If we go by self-determination theory which we must in a hostage rescue organisation, then, in each target area, aspiring experts should be allowed to set their own goals individually. Since novices do not know much about their areas of pursuit and challenges thereof, they should be guided and assisted by veterans in setting their immediate and intermediate goals. When done in this fashion, goal setting becomes a deliberative and collaborative exercise instead of a directed and commanded operation. Team-level goals are similarly set after deliberations and discussions with all members and other concerned individuals and groups. Only certain overall standards and terminal goals are defined by organisation; all approach and intermediate goals are set by individuals and teams which are flexible and variable to suit individual needs and personal abilities, not fixed and prescribed for one and all. Goal setting for expertise acquisition in a hostage rescue force is a collective exercise done continuously. It signifies self-determination through the self-control and self-management of targets and goals. It reinforces personal responsibility, strengthens personal resolve, fights ego depletion, and perpetuates intrinsic motivation. Individual goals are pursued personally, not competitively. Competition puts people under pressure, compares and rank-orders them, and it is detrimental to intrinsic motivation. As a result, competition is consciously kept at bay from the beginning, strictly prohibited in all activities and forms, and not allowed to creep in at all. This idea is realised when a man trains solo,



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remains focussed on his own performance and goals instead of those of others, and competes against self, not others. When he trains with team, he fully cooperates with other members instead of competing with them in any sense and always strives for achieving shared goals. While work for achieving goals beings after they are set, in order to know about progress made over time and to determine if goals are achieved, we need to assess performance regularly both in terms of efforts and outcomes. How do we do it? Appraisal is a sensitive undertaking when we rely on self-determination and intrinsic motivation for achieving excellence and expertise. Of course, without appraisal we cannot track progress and make useful interventions but appraisal should not be such that undermines and subverts the whole process of improvement. Reward and punishment, positive and negative reinforcement, monitoring and surveillance, assessment and evaluation, competition and pressure do not always work as commonly believed when applied to a group of intrinsically motivated persons working cooperatively to achieve excellence and expertise. Extrinsic rewards and avoidance behaviours to avert punishment reduce intrinsic motivation and decrease self-determination. Goal imposition, external evaluation, surveillance, and competition are also detrimental to intrinsic motivation and lower selfdetermination. It is so because all these techniques of controlling people’s behaviours change the perceived locus of causality from internal to external. How do we assess and communicate the progress of aspirants in various fields of learning, then? First of all, the purpose of appraisal should be understood clearly and practiced honestly. If the purpose of assessment, evaluation, and testing is not judging, comparing, rewarding, punishing, or rank-ordering but letting one know one’s gaps in knowledge and performance for bridging and filling them, it would not weaken self-determination. But appraisal is not the only problem; its communication in the form of feedback is also a problem. Feedback is important and it must be communicated but we need to know how and how much, for feedback is also a kind of reward or punishment, in that it amounts to recognising or reprimanding one’s efforts and performance. Positive feedback or verbal reinforcement by others helps in improving and sustaining intrinsic motivation but it should be realistic and should not be overdone and overused. Constant negative feedback, on the other hand, strongly correlates to undermining intrinsic motivation. A modest amount of negative feedback in a challenging activity does not undermine intrinsic motivation for that activity in situations where

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the locus of causality is perceived to be internal. But if the locus of causality is perceived to be external, a small amount of negative feedback might decrease intrinsic motivation. Therefore, negative feedback should be realistic and carefully worded and it should be communicated intermittently, not frequently; it should not communicate and create a sense of incompetence. Trust them, tolerate them, guide them, and give time to aspirants to improve, for expertise is achieved only after a very long journey. Appraisal could be immediate and intuitive or belated and reflective and, hence, feedback could be provided in real time or later on. For appraisal could be done by instructors and peers, by seniors and supervisors, feedback could be provided by all. In the minds of aspiring experts, correct feedback given constructively by others would reinforce their self-perception of competence and progress, which, in turn, would sustain their intrinsic motivation. Even more important and effective than external appraisal and other-administered positive feedback is self-appraisal and self-administered feedback and reinforcement. Self-reinforcement should be done constantly and habitually by self-monitoring and self-talk in real time and also by selfreflection and constructive visualisation later on. Use of instrumentation for performance measurement is desirable and suggested, wherever possible. Collection and analysis of data using mathematical techniques and statistical tools is also recommended for progress assessment, for it is a scientific method for determining if there is a reliable improvement. In areas where we can quantify and measure performance, we must do it in order to collect and analyse data for the validation of our beliefs, assumptions, and perceptions and to stop our reliance on intuitive and anecdotal or folklore approaches for performance assessment. Where it is not possible, however, assessment should be done subjectively and collectively by a combination of observational, critical, and adversarial approaches employed with reason and rigour. Measuring and quantifying performance is a good thing but we should refrain from developing an obsession for numbers because too much of it may be a waste of efforts and resources at best and may disconnect and remove us from the reality at worst. On the fetish of metric fixation, a contagion spread globally by management practitioners, American historian Jerry Muller cautions, “Not everything that is important is measurable, and much that is measurable is unimportant.” In his harsh words, “metric fixation, which aspires to imitate science, too often resembles faith.” Its causes what he calls metric dysfunction characterised by “measuring the most easily measurable,



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. . . measuring the simple when the desired outcome is complex,” and “measuring inputs rather than outcomes,” among others. We should, of course, measure what is measurable and at the same time also useful for our purpose. But we should not forget that “not all problems are soluble, and even fewer are soluble by metrics. It’s not true that everything can be improved by measurement, or that everything that can be measured can be improved.” He tries to bring sense to all decision-makers by concluding that “there is no silver bullet, no substitute for actually knowing one’s subject and one’s organization, which is partly a matter of experience and partly a matter of unquantifiable skill. . . . Ultimately, the issue is not one of metrics versus judgement, but metrics as informing judgement, which includes knowing how much weight to give to metrics, recognizing their characteristic distortions, and appreciating what can’t be measured.” If carried out with rigour and honesty, descriptive assessment done subjectively without assigning numbers could actually be much more lively, meaningful, and useful than now fashionable metric assessment which often does not convey much practical sense. I am tempted to cite here a remarkable document purportedly authored by American General Dwight Eisenhower on the performance of his subordinate officer Lieutenant General George Patton in 1944, even though I cannot vouch for its authenticity; see image 14.1. Whether it is original or counterfeit, it very convincingly drives my point home that descriptive assessment still remains a great tool of assessment if used correctly and, in my view, this report and its style of writing is a testimony to the fact that this format is much simpler and superior to how performance assessment reports are commonly formatted and written these days with lots of numbers. It is clear from the above discussion that goals must be set for achieving excellence and expertise but there is yet another reason why goals are set distinctly and continually in the context of hostage rescue. Unlike in the sporting world and other competitive domains, in combat we do not know our individual opponents and their performance statistics. Our goal setting, therefore, has to be open-ended with ever-shifting goalpost and the targets of deliberate practice should be set incrementally against one’s own reproducible performance in order to increase difficulty level in a step-by-step fashion for attainability. Need for improvement in the life of a rescuer never ends, so he must have an undying desire and enduring determination to excel by outcompeting himself and he must make ceaseless efforts for a gradual but continuous improvement throughout his professional life, even though his gains diminish and time-to-gain increases progressively as he advances on the path of excellence.

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Image 14.1



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VI I will now discuss the specifics of hostage rescue training but before that, a cautionary comment on military training culture is in order. In training matters, we must be as objective, scientific, methodical, and analytical as we can possibly be. But everywhere in the world, military training is full of unproductive, unscientific, and unproven beliefs, exercises, schedules, routines, techniques, procedures, and methodologies inherited from the past. We have generally stuck to our proud and ‘tested’ traditions and our arrogance and obscurantism have prevented us from learning from other open disciplines and domains which have meanwhile advanced tremendously. We can rationalise our training system only if we believe that there is a need for change and then employ adversarial approach, critical method, and scientific knowledge for a rational critique followed by a systemic restructuring and rebuilding to bring about a holistic change. We, however, would do better if we avoid piecemeal and incremental changes often introduced by individuals in select fields with a narrow field of view. A quick and convenient patchwork approach followed at the expense of a comprehensive scientific approach to bring about change might just disrupt an old established order which works, without delivering a new scientific system in its place which would work still better. Such distributed and disjointed interventions could be even more counterproductive and disastrous and should be better avoided, therefore. For I insist that all aspects of training must be methodical, I must tell what is method. Method is an organised way of doing which rationalises and standardises both comprehension and action. It makes problems simpler, solutions easier, learning more efficient, and goals attainable. It tends to eliminate scope for human errors too. A way of doing that does not do all these things cannot be called methodical. VII A general training programme for the behaviour modification of aspiring rescuers is necessary before their occupational training commences. Since we recruit young men directly from colleges and universities, we have to prepare them in an all-round manner first in order to break with the past and make a shared beginning of disciplined, responsible, and methodical organisational life. No aspect of personal and social life is left out and left to individuals, for people come from different families and they are raised in different traditions and cultures; they must be trained and educated in the standards of behaviours expected of them by organisation. Even little

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things, for example, how to tie shoelaces and secure their ends properly matter and should be taught. First, they should be told to display speed and agility in walking and moving; posture should be erect and appearance attentive when standing or sitting; slouch and inertia should not be reflected in daily life or routine works or training sessions—anywhere. Principles, procedures, and drills of greeting, meeting, assembly, reporting, and dispersal should be taught next. General principles and procedures for a safe handling of things and damage prevention should be taught too in this stage. For example: Organise yourself and plan quickly before loading, unloading, and storing; things should not be dumped onto each other mindlessly; gain situation awareness quickly; look before you put, you may damage if something is already there; do not drop things from heights or throw them in air to catch; hold things tightly and move them carefully to prevent their fall and crash; speed is good but not at the cost of damage or disorganisation; be sincere and focussed; be careful and do things carefully. They should be given lessons in displaying sincerity in workplace and their behaviour should be closely observed. For example: Do your work attentively and honestly and do not observe, distract, or interrupt each other unless unavoidable; help only when someone asks but do intervene immediately if safety is at risk without waiting for any demand or command. Rescuers should be trained to develop a mindset of emergency responder from the very beginning, which is: My duty has no fixed time; for I could be called anytime, I have to be on call always; it is emergency that determines when I am called to work, not time or day as in most occupations; in emergency, I have to forego my personal commitments and give priority to my professional responsibilities. Basic principles and requirements of teamwork should also be taught in the very beginning. In the interest of everyone, driving should be taught and tested; even those who can drive might not drive responsibly and safely. All rescuers should know the basics of vehicle dynamics, correct seating and smooth and fast steering wheel manoeuvring, engaging anti-lock braking system by sufficient and constant pedal force, speed cornering, stopping or braking distance, and accident avoidance by braking, avoiding, and braking and avoiding techniques. I found Driving Techniques by Anthony Scotti and The Driving Book by Karen Gravelle and Helen Flook simple and interesting sources on driving which may be consulted along with the other sources of technical knowledge and skills. Purpose and procedures of a whole range of personal and social hygiene habits should be explained, taught, and practiced. For example: For a clean and charming appearance, change underwear, socks, and apparels daily; use



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deodorant; take bath daily; wash clothes routinely. Groom yourself nicely; shave daily; trim hairs in nose, ears, and face routinely. Wear clean and appropriate clothes; have a good dress sense. Wash your hands systematically and keep your fingernails trimmed for good hand hygiene. Brushing teeth systematically in morning and evening, flossing in evening, and rinsing mouth thoroughly with water after eating and drinking maintains good dental and oral hygiene. For good foot hygiene, change socks daily and do not stuff worn socks into your shoes; let your socks and shoes dry in air instead; dry footwear in sun regularly, soak and file your feet regularly to remove dead skin from soles where bacteria proliferate, and, of course, take shower daily and wash your feet thoroughly when you bathe. A whole range of social etiquettes and manners should be explained, taught, and practiced too. For example: Be polite and express politeness by saying sir, madam, please, thank you, sorry, excuse me, pardon me, and more besides. Meet and greet people with a smile; handshake and hug warmly and firmly; others should feel welcomed. Treat everyone respectfully, children carefully, women delicately, and old, sick, and differently abled persons compassionately. Respect privacy in general and especially one’s private space and personal things; do not touch things without asking and obtaining permission; do not visit people unannounced; do not enter a room without knocking. Do not jump a queue; let others pass first; hold a door open for others if they are following you. Do not block passageway; make way for others. Do not force your way through in a congested place like animals; tell first and ask people to give way. Avoid sounding horn unless it is absolutely necessary for road safety; do not stop or park vehicle where you might obstruct others; do not drive at speed that scares others around; drive over a puddle of water slowly and carefully so that water is not splashed onto others. Do not splash water at others after washing hands or cleaning things when you shake them dry. Do not photograph others without their knowledge and permission, tacit or explicit. Dry your clothes in ways that do not make your house or terrace an eyesore. Do not spit around. Do not litter. Do not talk while eating. Sneeze, cough, yawn, and fart without inconveniencing others. Maintain distance from others and inform them when you are carrying an infection such as conjunctivitis, cough, flu, and more besides; do not shake hands in that case. Use water closet in a manner that lets others use it too after you; do not urinate with seat down; flush with seat cover down and check after flushing if toilet bowl is clean; use toilet brush to clean it, if necessary, which is kept in a holder in each toilet; use and dispose toilet paper properly; wipe seat and tap dry for others; understand how to operate bathroom fittings first—by pull, push, turn, lift, touch, or proximity

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and in which direction; do not use much force without understanding its mechanism; turn a tap on slowly as water might gush out and splash all over you. Save water; use only what you need; do not let it flow in basin or elsewhere when you do not actually use it. Save electricity. Save fuel. Save paper. Save environment. Save life. Do not shout and make noise. Speak slowly, clearly, and audibly; when spelling your name or a word, punctuate, be gradual and clear; maintain eye contact with all and have patience in social conversations; wait for your turn to talk; do not ignore others; do not use mobile when in a conversation or company of someone; if you must answer a call or call someone, break out to talk after excusing yourself. Do not play music or games loudly in your mobile; it may be a disturbing noise for others present around. And, so on. General and special hydration and nutrition needs and their science should also be taught before occupational training commences. However, dietary suggestions based on nutrition science should be grounded in the culinary culture of people to be of any consequence. In healthy cooking and eating sessions, wives and mothers should be involved if they are there or else it will have little effect. Table manners are taught too. Wastage of food and overeating must be actively discouraged. Insist that controlled eating is a good habit. Your eyes should not be bigger than your stomach. Overeating can be avoided consciously. You should ask two questions before eating. First: Do I need it? If you get an affirmative, again ask: Do I really need it? Only after second affirmation you eat or else do not. Wasting food by overloading your plate first and then throwing leftover food in garbage is a very bad habit that must be avoided. Take small portions first and get them again if you need more. Self-ration food which is popular and limited; take less and sacrifice your greed for the satisfaction of others. Moderation and parsimony is good in every walk of life. Training facilities and administrative areas should be kept neat and organised because social learning happens here without anyone teaching anything. Liquid soap, hand sanitisers, and paper towels or hand driers should be available everywhere in toilets and also carried along when an activity is planned outdoors. Drinking water, tea, coffee, and writing material are also available everywhere; a self-serviced canteen for refreshment should be nearby; nothing is required to be brought from home. VIII In this section, I will provide a useful toolkit for practitioners, trainers, planners, and supervisors. These tools can be shared and used at various



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stages of training. All practical tips discussed here are based on common sense, available information, and personal experience and you can modify them to suit your requirements better. These are simple tools which can give you a remarkable control over the world and self, provided they are used habitually. For knowing each other well, use this: Knowing a man is necessary for trusting him. A good way to know others is by learning about their lives and stories, their past and present, their dreams and desires, their likes and dislikes, their friends and families, and more besides. We get to know a man when he shares his life honestly and truthfully with us without having to worry about how we would judge him. Sharing life with others is a first step taken in the direction of trusting them. It is necessary because trust begets trust. For this, I suggest a module called know each other. It should be clarified to all that the purpose of this exercise is not to know how spectacular and extraordinary your life has been but to know the uniqueness of your life experiences in order to know you better as a person. We are here not to judge anyone but only to know each other. Each one of us would answer one question per day for the next thirty days. Question would be shared two days before to ponder and prepare. You would narrate about your life lucidly in a storytelling style in an informal environment; not in a dull and reticent fashion or in a measured manner people speak in formal settings. Narratives would be recorded for sharing with those members of organisation who are not present here. Videos would be edited to combine all answers in a single file for each member, which will become a part of organisational database called personal information bank that is accessible to all members in library. By accessing it, you can know others in the same way as they can know you without having to meet physically and work in the same physical space. It is absolutely imperative for all of us to know all others who work in our organisation. By the end of training, each one of you ought to be able to know each other in your batch as well as all other members of organisation much better than most of others known to you outside this community. After the completion of this module for your batch, you would be shown videos from our bank to introduce you to the other members of organisation in this time slot until the objective of exercise is systematically achieved. Questions are given below which should be given and discussed serially, only one in a day. 1. Personal introduction with educational qualifications and special achievements, if any.

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2. Family introduction including pets and native language, native place, how it looks and feels there, main festival and how you celebrate it. Show pictures. 3. Your favourite food and drink, which could be more than one; describe taste, smell, appearance, and recipe, if known. Share the best culinary and cooking experience that you cherish. Show pictures, if you have. 4. Your hobbies. How do you spend free time routinely. Your knowledge and skills that could be useful to others. 5. Activities and things that you wanted to do but could not. 6. Activities and things that you would want to do in your life. 7. Worst experiences you had in your childhood and adulthood. Maximum two. 8. Best experiences you have had until now. Maximum two. 9. Most favourite movies and books with their gist. Not more than five titles each in both categories. 10. Most favourite pictures in your collection and why are they special. Display. Not more than five. 11. Most favourite songs; any two, any language. Play or sing one stanza of each. 12. Most favourite country or place that you have already visited or want to visit and why. 13. Your most favourite animal and what you love most about this species. Any experience or story to share. Show pictures. Not more than five. 14. Best thing you have done in your life that inspires you most. 15. Worst thing you have done in your life that you regret most. 16. Your most adventurous experience in life so far and adventure that you would want to do in the future. 17. Your brush with accidents in life. Two incidents.



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18. What disturbs and upsets you most emotionally. What distracts and diverts you most mentally. 19. Your strengths, weaknesses, and fears. 20. How do you spend your holidays and weekends and how would you want to spend your vacations if you can choose what you want. 21. What do you do for your physical fitness and emotional health. 22. In what kind of place and which type of house you would like to live if you can choose. Show pictures, if there. 23. Seasons in a year which you like and which you do not like and why. 24. Your favourite short story and poem. Narrate and recite one each, abridge if long. 25. Which incident in your life except the loss of family members made you cry and filled with sorrow. 26. Which incident in your life except concerning your family members made you extremely angry and possibly violent and how did you deal with it, then and afterwards. 27. Which machine, device, or technology amazes you most and why. Show pictures and explain how it works, if you can. 28. Which subject or field of study interests you most and if you can explain why. 29. What has impressed you most in this organisation. 30. What has disappointed you or put you off here and why. For self-regulation, self-control, self-reinforcement, and self-assertion, use this: Selftalk in the form of short and simple cues and phrases for self-interventions for action, correction, and motivation; for reassurance, resolve, and reminder. It is especially useful in the early stages of learning before the formation of procedural memory and also when learned behavioural patterns are disrupted and errors committed in high-pressure situations due to stress and anxiety or otherwise. Some examples are: Go. Now. Q uick. Faster. Brake. Full power. Lock. Hold tight. Contract. Absorb. Steady. Jump. Body position.

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Stay low. Reorganise. No motion. Sit tight. Control muzzle. Check slide. Check magazine. Don’t hold. Breathe. Keep breathing. Focus. Relax. No problem. I will solve it. Don’t give up. Save. For reassuring self, regaining hope, and deflating pressure when challenged, cornered, or in a crisis, use this: Tell yourself: “I shall not lose cool. I shall not give in to emotions. I must stay calm and use reason. It is a problem and I am a problem solver. I can and will solve this problem too as I have done countless times before. It is a transient turbulence in my life that will pass. To control it, I must plan and act, not worry, now.” For resolving interpersonal conflicts and promoting personal well-being by avoiding resultant stress and anxiety, use this: Take on-the-edge-of-roof test. It is a two-part self-test; first take negative test, then, take positive test. Test one: Will this person push me down from behind if I am on the edge of roof? Answer: Yes or No. Test two: Will this person pull me back up if I have slipped down and hanging on the edge of roof? Answer: Yes or No. If your first answer is negative and second affirmative, this person cannot be your enemy; if known, has to be a friend. On-the-edge-of-roof test can be given in a formal session without asking people about persons they are applying it on. For physical organisation, arrangement, and layout, use this: Start from left to right; close from right to left. First one left; last one right; others inbetween from left to right. All equidistant from each other; all in a straight baseline; each in itself straight. Right goes first back in and left goes last, others from right to left. Do not jumble; do not clutter; do not litter. Keep place and things clear, neat, and clean. Assign a place for everything and put everything in its place. Do not start doing before thinking and planning. Plan before you do and do as you planned. For not losing anything and leaving nothing behind, use this: Designate a group member as Last Man by rotation to ensure that nothing is left behind that must be carried back after an activity is over. He is the last man to leave a place who sweeps visually and methodically the whole area before leaving; he has no responsibility to carry a particular thing. For skill and schema retention, use this: Follow use it or lose it rule. Systematically practice and reflect, revise and repeat everything you have learned. Do not leave out anything, basic or advanced, indoor or outdoor, grand or petty, for you will surely lose it if you do not use it. Mastery does not last if practice is abandoned.



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For a clear comprehension of how problems are solved, use this: When we face a situation, we know three things: Present state we are in, end state that we want, and visible obstacles in-between. We begin by tackling observable obstacles and present problems and only after crossing over an obstacle and solving a problem do we face some new obstacles and problems that were unseen and invisible or even non-existent until then. It is a process with a pattern that repeats itself throughout until we reach some end state. We should not be surprised, then, if we are suddenly confronted with new problems in problem-solving and crisis response. It will always happen and we should be prepared to deal with the problem of unseen. I call this the invisible obstacle model of problem-solving. For preventing things from going wrong in the first place, use this: Every time you set out to do something, ask how things can go wrong; think how we can prevent things from going wrong; plan how to control the consequences of things still gone wrong. I invariably lament the failure of my foresight in hindsight when I look like a fool, confounded and reeling, seething silently as there is no one to blame but self, asking why I did not think of it. Perhaps, most of us react similarly in such a situation. While it is correct that human foresight can never be complete, we often fail not as much because of the complexity of the world but largely because of failing to plan for preventing things from going wrong. Foresight surely cannot be perfect but it can be improved greatly by our timely initiative and earnest anticipation. We normally do things without seriously deliberating on the possibilities of failure and go about doing things in a flow and automaticity. Because we succeed mostly, we nearly forget that we can fail easily. To get out of routine success trap, we have to be sceptical of success and wary of failure, which is possible only when we develop a mindset and habit of doubting and questioning before doing. We have to habitually pause for a moment before acting to look for lurking failures all around us in the world and raise defences against them in time, which would often not take much effort other than our timely attention and some simple interventions. If we do that, we might still be surprised in strange ways but rarely in obvious ways. It is not a knowledge problem, in that it is known to all; real problem is in the habitual application of this knowledge. IX Training for superior physical performance is a highly evolved discipline of scientific research and professional practice and a detailed discussion on it would take a book-length space. So, I would comment on it very briefly and

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suggest practitioners to study relevant books published by Human Kinetics, a publisher which is the best and most extensive source of scientific knowledge known to me in the field of physical performance and training. I do not, however, recommend that you follow any particular system given in books and videos. Instead, I strongly recommend that you develop your own well researched training regimes and routines that will best prepare you for mass hostage rescue, which requires combating and confronting terrorists in a complex stronghold. Your physical training programme should be such that is in agreement with seek and fix strategy. At the base of physical fitness lie three components of fitness, which are endurance, strength, and flexibility. After acquiring, consolidating, and stabilising these properties of physical performance to an acceptable level, we begin to work on developing the higher-order components of physical performance required in close combat, which are quickness and agility. At the same time, we go on to developing the higher degrees of endurance and also train for a superior explosive power performance. An additional component of fitness that is introduced at this stage for a break from routine is balance, both static and dynamic. In the next phase, we begin work on job specific endurance, quickness, agility, as well as isometric strength, stability, and balance; in this advanced phase we overly employ stimulus-response reaction training for hostage rescue work. Let us consider some definitions for clarity. Endurance is an ability to endure and sustain physical action or work for a longer duration without breaking for rest and recovery. It is a factor of an efficient production and expenditure of energy by body that delays the onset of exhaustion and helps recover early from exhaustion. Quickness is an ability to choose and start the execution of a response to a stimulus early; the sooner one starts, the quicker one is. It is all about fast reaction time. Agility is an ability to change the direction or orientation of body in movement with a minimal retardation of speed; the faster one manoeuvres, the more agile one is. Balance is an ability to maintain an erect posture or a desired position of body assumed for a purpose against destabilising forces experienced by body internally and externally. Power is an ability to produce maximal force in minimal time; it is a combined product of strength and speed produced explosively. For endurance training, we need only a ground and later the stairs of highrise buildings. For flexibility training, we need pretty much nothing but a suspension trainer such as TRX made by Fitness Anywhere, USA can be



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used for a good integrated functional stretch for muscular relaxation. For developing strength and power, we need weights and machines which would consume a major portion of investment on physical training infrastructure. Unless safety and performance are not sacrificed notably, for dynamic resistance training workouts, I prefer independent mechanical arms over the joined arms of machines, cables over tubular arms, free weights over weight machines, dumbbells over barbells, and standing over sitting position for a balanced, compound, and functional training that is more useful in performing physical actions in the real world. Two machines that I especially recommend for resistance training are functional trainer and jammer; cable-based selectorised functional trainer made by Freemotion Fitness, USA and tubular plate-loaded jammer made by Hammer Strength, USA are excellent equipments. Reaction training for quickness needs no bulky equipments while agility and balance training equipments are inexpensive and available in plenty. A group training facility should be designed differently; it should have multiple units of each machine and equipment, not just one or two units as in commercial facilities which are configured for personal training; the number of machines and equipments required is calculated on the basis of group size and subgroup rotation from one station or activity to another. For flexibility training to increase the elasticity of muscles and connective tissues, I recommend what I call incrementally normalised progressive stretching. It is a self-stretching technique, an alternative to proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation technique which itself is a superior technique to ballistic stretching or basic stretch-and-hold technique. No external assistance for force application is recommended and required in this system. Given its self-guided nature, it can be argued that incrementally normalised progressive stretching is safer than proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation in which force is applied externally by another person. Also, it goes without saying that it is more user-friendly and convenient as it does not need any training partner or equipment. While it does not need any equipment, it can be used with stretching equipments too. Interestingly, it can be applied to all kinds of joint movements of human body, that is, extension, flexion, abduction, adduction, circumduction, rotation, supination, pronation, dorsiflexion, planter flexion, inversion, eversion, protraction, retraction, depression, elevation, and excursion for realising a full range of motion. Its procedure is given below with safety precaution. 1. Manipulate the range of motion of a joint to the point of maximal movement and hold it there.

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2. Hold and let this stretch normalise. Normalisation is defined as a state of muscular tension when pain experienced initially due to stretch has either subsided fully or reduced considerably. 3. Now stretch a bit more beyond the normalised point of stretch and hold it there to let muscular tension normalise at the new point of stretch yet again. 4. Repeat the process of incremental stretching and normalisation of muscular tension progressively without retracting from the most advanced position of joint motion at any time until the completion of stretch. Point of completion is achieved when you have worked a joint either through its full range of motion or to a point much beyond the available range of motion at first manipulation. 5. Release force and relax until you feel painless. 6. Work another joint. Caution: Release force immediately if pain becomes unbearable or muscles start to cramp. After a sudden disengagement and termination of stretch, use your judgement to resume or suspend stretching programme for an affected joint only or altogether. I want to caution against overemphasising training and neglecting rest, which we often do in military settings and take a great pride in doing that. Living organisms are adept in adapting to variable recurrent physical experiences; it is essential for their survival in a dynamic world. We scientifically exploit this natural ability for realising superior abilities by regular efforts made in accord with various planned training programmes. In these training sessions, we load our physical and mental performance systems. Actual gains in our capacity to perform, however, do not take place while training. Instead, they occur while resting when body gets to repair, rebuild, and consolidate itself to adapt to stresses and strains it has been subjected to in training. Rest, therefore, is as important as training for our purpose; in my view, even more crucial than training, so long as you train scientifically and regularly. While rest in itself does nothing and sufficient training for progressively loading and stimulating targeted performance systems must precede it, continuous training without sufficient rest would limit your gains at best and injure you at worst besides causing ego depletion. A good rule of thumb is that rescuers do not feel sluggish, sleepy, tired, and exhausted for a prolonged period after training sessions; they should quickly recover and feel vigorous, energetic,



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high-spirited, and confident instead after resting, eating, and drinking. We must strive to achieve this state especially in the advanced stages of training when base reserves have been built and consolidated. It is possible only when we creatively, properly, and individually regulate the intensity, frequency, and variety of workouts and have sufficient rest, good sleep, good nutrition, and good relations. In all, I recommend less duration and less frequency and more rest and more variety in physical training than what is practiced in various fitness circles and recommended by most fitness experts; we can be similarly effective by doing much less especially after building a dependable capacity, for beyond a point the law of diminishing returns becomes ever more powerful. After a strenuous functional training session or any continuous activity involving physical exertion, it is possible that your back especially thoracic region becomes stiff due to accumulated muscular stress in thorax. The best way to release tension and relax your back and other stiff muscles is not stretching, foam roller massage, high-frequency vibrations, body inversion, or spinal decompression by other means. These and other tension release methods surely help but nothing relaxes you as easily and completely as a simple act of lying down on a flat surface in supine position, elbows flexed to rest your hands on pelvis or thighs where it is most comfortable for you with something soft underneath head to support neck in a relaxed position and staying in this position for about fifteen to twenty minutes. You would experience your entire stiffness and tension vanished miraculously and automatically when you get up, your body refreshed as before. Given its usefulness in readying a man physically for work, I recommend that this natural method of relaxation that I call automuscular relaxation technique is made a part of training programme and not treated as something which is left to one’s personal time and choice. For the same reason, I would advise rescuers to rest in this position when they want and can after exhaustion instead of just sitting on a chair or something or lying on a recliner. Nothing is better than lying in a fully relaxed supine position on a flat ground if a bed is not available, which is, of course, better, for relaxing thoroughly and rejuvenating physically. I am recommending certain useful books which I had access to in my training and practice days for the benefit of readers who may not be well acquainted with these subjects. They are: Human Biology by Cecie Starr and Beverley McMillan, The Biophysical Foundations of Human Movement by Bruce Abernethy, Stephanie Hanrahan, Vaughan Kippers, Laurel Mackinnon, and Marcus Pandy, Biomechanics of Sport and Exercise by Peter McGinnis, Kinetic

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Anatomy by Robert Behnke, Structure and Function of the Musculoskeletal System by James Watkins, ACSM’s Advanced Exercise Physiology edited by Charles Tipton, Overtraining in Sport edited by Richard Kreider, Andrew Fry, and Mary O’Toole, Musculoskeletal Trauma by Gary Delforge, The Bare Essentials Guide for Martial Arts Injury Prevention and Care by Trish Grounds, Clinical Guide to Sports Injuries edited by Ronald Bahr and Sverre Mæhlum, Supertraining by Mel Siff, Training for Speed, Agility, and Quickness edited by Lee Brown and Vance Ferrigno, Developing Agility and Quickness edited by Jay Dawes, Sport Speed and Agility Training by John Cissik and Michael Barnes, Functional Training for Sports by Michael Boyle, Jumping into Plyometrics by Donald Chu, Stretching by Bob Anderson, and Light on Yoga by B. K. S. Iyengar. Except classic works which are rare such as Iyengar’s, books invariably become obsolete and information outdated as time passes; new and even better books are published regularly and new editions with revised and updated information of the same books are released to keep them relevant. Discretion is advised, therefore, although these books will still provide useful information as not much time has elapsed since. X Firearms training of rescuers is intended and imparted to execute seek and fix strategy. Their shooting techniques and skills, then, should match and merge organically with fighting tactics employed to rescue hostages from a complex stronghold that we have discussed in chapter ten. Here, I would only outline certain critical needs and share a few creative ideas for training and will neither discuss techniques and procedures nor provide a detailed structure and syllabus of training programme, for this book is not a training manual. I would also exclude sniping which would be discussed separately. All rescuers must be trained as assaulters and only trained assaulters should go on to become snipers and breachers. In due course, all rescuers are trained as snipers and breachers too and embedded with these specialists routinely for cross-familiarisation. Their interoperability, then, is not predicated on some joint training experience but on a comprehensive knowledge and clear understanding of strengths and limitations, needs and requirements of each other in operations. Multi-skilling of men and cross-familiarity with each other’s jobs build redundancies across the board, allow rescuers to readily switch and substitute and play interchangeable roles as required by operations, and multiply the operational capacity of organisation. Assaulters fight with subcompact assault rifles or submachine guns and use reflex optics for sighting. For subcompact assault rifle or submachine gun is



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the main weapon of assaulters, their firearms training should begin with it and not with pistol which is a backup or reserve weapon. Pistol training is introduced later. Muzzle and trigger discipline is enforced strictly all along for safety. In safety matters, anyone and everyone is authorised and encouraged to instantly intervene, point out, and correct a mistake made by anyone, irrespective of ranks and roles in all settings and activities. Rescuers should be taught to shoot both firearms with both eyes open from the very beginning. They should not be trained to shoot by count at all but only trained to shoot for effect from the start. In other words, they are not trained to fire certain predetermined number of bullets rapidly on target. Instead, they are trained to continue shooting speedily as long as target is erect and standing, stopping only when it drops down to break perceptual fixation on it and regain situation awareness. Shoulder fired gun is held tightly with both arms drawn close to torso, not with an elbow extending further out from shoulder; it is a stronger hold, keeps your shoulder muscles relaxed, and helps manoeuvring in tight spaces. Pistol is similarly gripped tightly. While single-handed reflex point shooting with pistol works very well when a disguised adversary suddenly reveals himself in close proximity, for hostage rescue work, I recommend double-handed rapid sighted shooting from crouched isosceles stance. Rescuers should be primarily trained to shoot shoulder fired weapon with reflex optics but also trained enough to shoot without it, just by pointing instinctively and deploying iron sights rapidly depending on the distance of target, pointing and iron sights skills being redundancies. They should develop pointing instinct with both weapons by means of repetitious dry practice and its validation by fire. Proper cleaning and maintenance procedures coupled with regular technical inspections keep guns from developing malfunctions especially if good quality ammunition is also used. When they occasionally do malfunction nonetheless, firers should be able to proficiently execute immediate remedial actions or stoppage clearing drills. It would usually not require more than a simple action taking an instant to fix and bring your gun back to function if practiced sufficiently and executed correctly when suddenly needed in the middle of gunfight. In order to do it successfully, drills should be practiced repeatedly and tactically in stressful conditions, preferably by falling back and out of the line of fire first or kneeling down at least if you cannot manoeuvre. Also, rescuers should be trained to stay with main gun, even if it is jammed and get it back to work quickly than to instantly go for backup pistol in

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such an event. When you time it, in most cases you can clear a stoppage faster than you can deploy a holstered pistol and also retain the advantages of shoulder fired gun in combat. Pattern recognition by viewing the state of gun and linking its snap picture with its remedial drill is a superior strategy for quick action than its mechanical interpretation for mediating action. Rescuers should not only be able to shoot fast and accurate with their firearms but they should also be able to handle and operate all kinds of firearms which are typically used by terrorists. Firearms range should have pop-up and moving targets for basic training and practice. If the layout of firearms range is designed to form an arc, it could be employed for comprehensive target engagement training by permitting shooters to execute the next phase of head shooting after target drops down; it is safer with live ammunition since shooters will diverge when they move in towards their targets. On a standard range, marker rounds should be used for this purpose. Target spacing is another method of solving the problem of safety in this action. Ear muffs and protective eyewear must be used during firearms and explosives training by all those who are present there. Basic training is primarily range training; advanced training is predominantly shoot house training. If the science of ballistics is known well then any ordinary or old building can be repurposed by retrofitting and converted into a live ammunition training facility. Terrorist stronghold is a treacherous terrain and shoot house should be prepared as such for training by reasonably erecting obstructions and creating tripping and slip hazards; exaggeration is neither good nor realistic, however. For understanding the implications of human dynamics in deadly confrontation, marker rounds should be used besides visualisation. Advanced training should always be done in full operational gear; it will offer hearing protection too. Repetitive dry practice and dry runs precede and follow all kinds of firing in all stages but mainly in learning phase; practice runs are not done before testing and validating performance. Live fire is employed for validation; dry fire remains the mainstay of training especially in learning phase. After acquiring basic operations skills and knowledge, train by night as much as you train by day; you should be able to do in night what you can in day. Safety is never neglected in training; all risks taken in training must be reasonable, reasonably calculated, and known. Rotate individual positions in all settings, disciplines, and routines in training and practice, for all should have a clear perspective of problem from each position; it is a general principle which is applied everywhere, not only in firearms range or shoot house.



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For forced entry, train with explosives, shotgun, and other breaching tools similarly to cover the full range of tactical requirements, available options, and contingency actions. Safety is always ensured and strictly enforced. Certain advanced countries impart training in explosive breaching commercially, which you can avail, if possible; they are useful especially in understanding the nature of explosives and their behaviours against structures and materials and inside confined spaces and enclosed areas. However, no one will ever reveal and share the full extent of knowledge especially if you look different and come from a distant world and different culture. Also, their research and development programmes and specifications derived from them may not be entirely valid in your world since the standards, materials, designs, and methods of building construction may vary considerably. A great deal of research and experimentation is required to develop and create a reliable understanding and solid database for explosive breaching. Such knowledge cannot be acquired by employing mathematical formulas and virtual simulations alone. These tools can only provide a good starting point for refining data by actual experiments conducted on physical structures. Follow the principle of minimum force and work out the minimum net quantity of explosive you would need to use for each type of structure you would want to defeat. Also, work out the closest safe stand-off distance from breaching charge on approach side with and without ballistic shield. For collecting empirical data from the other side of breaching target for a net quantity of explosive thus calculated for breaching, use sensors and simulants to gauge pressure and measure penetration at various heights and distances; interior space should be similar for your values to be reliable since pressure waves would behave differently in different conditions. An aluminium sheet of 2 mm thickness is also a reasonably good indicator for assessing fragmentation hazard and splinter dispersion in three-dimensional space; perforations suggest a high probability of splinters penetrating deep inside soft tissues and harming vital organs. Measure precisely and record correctly all values each time you conduct a test. Repeat experimentation with higher or lower quantities as required and increase or decrease the quantity of explosive incrementally. Validate your findings repeatedly and gain access to as many buildings and structures you can which have been abandoned and are due for demolition for experimentation and training. Eventually, by means of trial and error, work out your own value for your own explosive on your own target which is the minimum quantity of explosive required for breaching it definitively. Even this amount can injure or kill hostages but you cannot breach explosively below it and organisation must decide

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if such risk is acceptable. Do not try explosives on something that you are not sure about; it may defeat the whole purpose of your intervention. XI Certain additional points that I want to make are discussed here. First thing that students should be taught in any field or subject of study is the language and lexicon of subject matter through a glossary of terms for standardising vocabulary and creating a shared view of the world. Purpose of this exercise is to prepare the ground for achieving a state of ideal communication and comprehension, in that when someone speaks or writes something, listeners or readers get and draw the same sense and meaning from words spoken or written which their speaker or writer intended. This method of training would lay a solid foundation on which the whole edifice of operational communication and comprehension would stand later. In a hostage rescue organisation, a cultivated style of conversation is imperative and indispensable and rescuers must learn, master, and employ it in social life. A decent and controlled dialogue and a friendly but candid way of communication facilitates a free and frank exchange of ideas without disrespecting and disregarding, irritating and annoying, inhibiting or limiting others. We have discussed it in chapter six were I had made certain recommendations too. Here, I recommend 1993 French movie The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque for incorporation in syllabus to demonstrate how we can argue, disagree, and criticise each other amicably without causing hurt and injury. Other films of Éric Rohmer, a French film director who characteristically assigns primacy to thoughts over events and creates captivating conversational cinema, may also be selected and shown in full or in part after administrative screening for the approval of content. Video and audio files should be suitably edited for educational purpose wherever it is felt necessary. Before playing any educational film or sound recording, its background, plot, and purpose should be explained to audience for clarity. I have cautioned against the idea of multitasking earlier in our discussions and I reiterate that it should not be attempted in training either because multitasking distracts us and divides our attention. Dehaene clarifies, “The only reason we believe that we can multitask is that we are unaware of the huge delay it causes. . . . In any multitask situation, whenever we have to perform multiple cognitive operations under the control of attention, at least one of the operations is slowed down or forgotten altogether.” We must know that a team, not a man, is the only solution to the problem of concurrent



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task demands and should avoid the misadventure of multitasking which could be disastrous in crisis management, if practiced habitually. Although written in the context of aviation operations, The Multitasking Myth by Loukia Loukopoulos, Robert Key Dismukes, and Immanuel Barshi could be read for greater clarity. Survival instinct can be replaced by sacrificial instinct. However primeval they might be but instincts too are trainable. Robin Dunbar, Louise Barrett, and John Lycett agree that instincts are “behaviours that appear to be fully formed and genetically ‘hard wired’.” But they contend that “like any other form of behaviour, instincts are produced by the interaction of genes and environment. They involve learning and can be modified by experience in the same way as any other kind of behaviour.” For even instincts are modifiable, by repetitive efforts we can alter our instinctive avoid-and-escape behaviour in fearful situations and replace it with desired approach-and-engage behaviour. Physiological changes brought about by fear are caused by hormonal secretion. They are the consequences of psychological mechanisms which are different from exercise-induced physiological changes caused by physical exertion. Nonetheless, the cardiorespiratory response of body expressed most noticeably in increased heart rate to meet a higher demand for oxygen is the meeting ground of both psychological and physical stress mechanisms and this is what we can leverage to prepare for combat better. Heart rate training is recommended, hence. For stress habituation, practice all complex decisions, complicated tasks, and actions that involve fine motor coordination at the heart rates of 120-170. It is a better way to train, assess, and condition your responses against stress hormones released autonomously in combat and operations. On the other hand, we also have to learn to regulate heart beats and master breathing techniques and exercises for stress and anxiety control in order to be effective in combat and operations. Pranayama, an ancient Indian technical breathing system, is recommended for this purpose. Various deep inhalation, exhalation, and breath retention techniques coupled with reassuring self-talk are known to control stress and anxiety effectively. Light on Pranayama by B. K. S. Iyengar is a reliable source of knowledge and practice of pranayama. You can also refer to breathing methods given in the appendix of Breath by James Nestor. Quick and correct target identification is amongst the greatest challenges and goals of training and a great deal of time, research, and resources should be employed and invested in it. It requires a phenomenal amount of reaction training to improve the quickness and correctness of response both at the

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same time, for they act in opposition to each other. Johnson and Proctor write, “It has been known since at least the end of the 19th century that the speed and accuracy of responding are closely linked, such that either speed or accuracy can be emphasized to the detriment of the other.” Reaction training is difficult and offers many challenges. Reaction time is defined by American psychologist Richard Schmidt and kinesiologist Timothy Lee as “the interval of time that elapses following a suddenly presented, often unanticipated stimulus until the beginning of the response.” It is measured from the onset of target presentation to the commencement of response, which should be recorded accurately and requires electronic instrumentation. Training should be realistic. Johnson and Proctor caution that “a high state of preparedness” might result in “the execution of a response before the actual stimulus is presented.” Also, “reactions that are too fast to be logically possible (e.g., faster than 100 ms) are considered to be anticipations, rather than deliberate responses” and such lightning responses should be excluded from evaluation. Gaze control training is helpful in the correct identification and accurate engagement of threat done speedily. For threat identification, gaze should be on hands, not on face where it naturally is, which necessitates learning a new tactical behaviour and unlearning old evolutionary behaviour. Interestingly, some animals are known to track human hands for anticipating food and detecting threat. After threat identification, gaze remains there while taking decision to engage and executing action to shoot instead of shuffling it from target to firearm and back to target again; mechanical action is executed proprioceptively, unsupported by eyes; gaze shifting only at the last moment for reflex sighting. Uncoupling eyes and hands which are evolutionarily coupled for coordination and executing an action successfully just by moving hands with proprioceptive guidance takes a good deal of time and deliberate practice. Proprioception is the internal information of body—collected and relayed by sensory neurons called proprioceptors located in muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints—that conveys body and limb position in space and changes in position caused by movement. It is different from sensory information received by body from outside called exteroception. Proprioception is not dependent on visual sense. Control of hostages is also an important aspect of operational work. Rescuers should practice and rehearse regularly, individually, and jointly all drills, techniques, and procedures designed scientifically to control and dominate hostages by using demonstrable firmness, controlled aggression, and minimal force to securing their compliance and preventing them from behaving irrationally or panicking, thereby ensuring their safety. Hostages might panic, freeze, or behave irrationally because people are known to behave as



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such in extreme life-threatening situations. To quote John Leach, “Irrational behaviour refers to those activities which people carry out in times of stress which are inappropriate. They may simply be ineffective and the person performs useless activities, or the actions may be irrational to the point of self-destruction. . . . Panic is a form of behaviour in which judgement and reasoning deteriorate so far as to often result in self-destructive behaviour. People in a state of panic lose all judgement and discretion. They are unable to attend to or understand any communication or direction and will ‘lock-on’ to one particular escape route which they have identified, surging towards this while remaining oblivious to other exits or escape routes. . . . There are occasions when anxiety in a life threatening situation becomes so overwhelming that it induces a form of paralysis. This condition of being ‘frozen to the spot’ can be considered as a form of panic. Certainly a freezing action or paralysis is grossly ineffective and will often lead to self-destruction.” Leach identifies two basic forms of freezing behaviour which he terms deadlock and livelock. “Deadlock refers to the first type of behaviour in which the victim’s muscles show intense rigour (even violent assault may not move them), and an apparent cessation of mental processing. Livelock produces in the victim a muscular tension which is within normal range and although mental processing is occurring it is not being converted into action. This seems to be because the thinking process is engaged in a decision dilemma.” Psychological casualties need a different handling from medical casualties and differently disabled victims also require different treatments. Leach writes, “Naturally, different types of abnormal behaviour will require different approaches. Panic, for example, must be stamped out immediately because it carries the real risk of contagion. Here you may need assistance. The person who is in a panic or on the verge of panic should be restrained and controlled but avoid violence or assault. Sharp physical actions may disrupt the person’s behaviour temporarily but, unfortunately, they can also stimulate it further. After all, a frightened person has enough to cope with, without finding himself suddenly being assaulted by a stranger. There is also the danger that such actions may ignite panic in others who are just bordering on self-control.” Psychologically disabled hostages cannot be brought to their senses by rational or repeated exhortations; they need to be given psychological first aid which in a crisis situation is not an easy thing to do. Leach writes, “Psychological first-aid, like medical first-aid, is in essence a series of simple actions and procedures. In many cases it is common sense. Unfortunately, common sense is frequently the first casualty of disaster.” A lot of practice is required to effectively handle psychological casualties in a mass hostage crisis; also, the methods of restraint and control techniques

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should be learned and practiced repeatedly. I recommend Survival Psychology by John Leach to be taught as a part of syllabus; it is a short and easy book containing a wealth of information. XII Carl von Clausewitz, who had formally introduced the concept of friction of war in military literature, wrote, “Activity in war is movement in a resistant medium. Just as a man in water is unable to perform with ease and regularity the most natural and simplest movement, that of walking, so in war, with ordinary powers, one cannot keep even the line of mediocrity.” He had also pondered over the question of reducing friction in combat. He wrote, “Now is there, then, no kind of oil which is capable of diminishing this friction? Only one. . . . It is the habituation of an army to war. . . . Habit gives strength to the body in great exertion, to the mind in great danger, to the judgement against first impressions.” He suggested, “Regulate the exercises in peace time as to include some of these causes of friction. . . . It is of immense importance that the soldier, high or low, whatever rank he has, should not have to encounter for the first time in war those things which, when seen for the first time, set him in astonishment and perplexity; if he has only met with them one single time before, even by that he is half acquainted with them. This relates even to bodily fatigues. They should be practised less to accustom the body than the mind to them.” Clausewitz was inspired by Napoleon Bonaparte and called him “the God of War.” Napoleon, with his immense experience of warfare, wrote, “If I always seemed ready to react to anything, to face anything, it is because before undertaking anything I thought about it for a long time; I foresaw what might occur. It is not some genie that reveals to me all at once, in secret, what I must do or say in a situation unanticipated by others: it is my reflection, it is meditation.” He confessed, “No man is more pusillanimous than I am when I make a military plan; I inflate all the possible dangers and woes attendant upon the circumstances.” He seemed to have always prepared for the worst, thus securing an unsurpassed place in the history of human warfare. Helmuth von Moltke considered himself a disciple of Clausewitz. But he warned, “Peacetime maneuvers, even those on the largest scale, allow only a very incomplete picture of actual war. . . . In peacetime maneuvers the decision of arms lacks the realistic effect of the moral element, and decisions (Entschlüsse) are not made under the pressure of the heavy responsibility of real war.” Read ‘moral’ as ‘psychological’ here. What is it that these great thinkers, practitioners, and planners of war are telling us?



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A man does not fear anything more than unfamiliarity with a harmful situation; not even the ambiguity of situation and the uncertainty of outcome as such, for he feels much less anxious and insecure when he faces an ongoing ambiguity and a future uncertainty with a past familiarity. All three great military thinkers are essentially telling this and suggesting that our men should be exposed to the realities of combat in some ways before they are sent to battlefield to confront them in the real world. For we cannot create real battles when there are none, it is possible only through a realistic training programme. Human imagination, thought experimentation, mental simulation, and realistic scenario building are some of the tools of realistic training that can make men familiar with what is unknown and mitigate the fear of unknown and unfamiliar in their minds. Such training, then, must form a predominant and larger part of advanced and continuing training of rescuers. Rescuers, on their part, should become imaginative writers and accomplished actors of sorts who can script crisis plays and inscribe the scripts of operations in the depths of their minds and enact them faithfully too in the real world. Why we need to overly rely on realistic training can also be emphasised differently. When they come under the pressures of time, work, performance, outcomes, stakes, and consequences, people begin to lose patience and become unstable and volatile, nervous and shaky. In crisis response, all these factors come and act together and put people under tremendous stress. Through realistic simulations and visualisations which make them act and think under pressure and stress, rescuers are taught and trained to keep cool, remain composed, and use intellect instead of giving in to affect and emotions, thus creatively preparing them for a controlled response in a real-life crisis. Stress habituation is an important objective of realistic training. Simulation exercises carried out in the physical world with multiple role players should be as realistic as possible and for that they must be largely unscripted in order to be uncertain and unpredictable in the first place. It does not mean an absence of planning but independent and distributed planning and rehearsing by different interest groups to further their own goals in action. Also, in addition to the known and confirmed sources of threat and dangers that cause fear, the stimuli of sudden, intense, and novel also cause fear innately. So, build these factors into realistic simulations for hardening brains and controlling fear responses. However, we should always be wary of drawing definitive conclusions from simulated scenario training due to the fact that the best simulations are the worst imitations of the reality and the

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reality would be much worse indeed. Its ersatz character notwithstanding, simulation still remains a very powerful method of imparting realistic training if implemented carefully, backed by thorough research, elaborate planning, and sincere role playing by all concerned to imitate the reality as much as possible. Real gains from a simulated exercise, however, occur not in the heat of action but after the tide of action is over, during the joint analysis and self-reflection of action. Different types of buildings and compounds should be accessed for realistic training and simulation exercises; if there is an electronic surveillance system there, it should either be turned off or data erased permanently after training exercise; this system may also be used deliberately and before deleting files, recordings are copied for later analysis. Carry out deliberative classroom simulation for places where you can visit but cannot train after a joint site survey and site mapping. Visualisation is a mental run-through of events that might occur and, more importantly, of events that might go wrong and fail us. It is a means of developing powerful foresight. Visualisation is an exercise of imagining all the details of action and rehearsing all the actions, reactions, and counteractions of all agents in mind. We can visualise what we cannot simulate but we cannot visualise what we cannot imagine and human imagination draws upon the knowledge and information of a subject matter stored in brain. In other words, crisis visualisation is as good as human imagination and our imagination is as good as our knowledge and information of crises. Reading and reconstructing, visualising and simulating past crises, operations, and events personally and jointly and their critical analysis by employing a contemplative, interrogational, and adversarial approach is essential to learn from history and it must be an important and major part of intellectual deliberations and collective brainstorming done by rescuers. By means of films and presentations, a case study is introduced and known facts are placed before rescuers and they are tasked to do further research and reflection for a week. They reassemble, prepared for critical analysis, to noting errors and gaining insights from this exercise, to learning from the mistakes of others, and also from imaginary ‘what-if’ questions. Also, immense is the role of imagination in dealing with new and novel problems that cannot be solved by real-life experience alone. As accomplished experts, rescuers should acquire such imaginary experience that is unavailable in real life by constructing and solving imaginary problems in their visualisations, thereby preparing themselves to deal with unknown situations and unexperienced events. In visualisation, contravening and conflicting emotions, thoughts, and acts have to be effortfully brought in awareness and analysed dispassionately thereafter,



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for it is quite unsettling to question and challenge your self-concept and it is quite easy to win all wars and battles in the biased cerebral world that you totally control. It is absolutely imperative that you question your skills and doubt your abilities when you visualise to imagine how you can fail in visualisation only to win in real life. Courage too is an outcome of the process of honest self-reflection, for it follows a crisis and conflict visualisation. Visualisation is helpful in yet another way. When we work our bodies repeatedly in a particular way, we do it proficiently and effortlessly due to the creation and consolidation of neuronal pathways in our brains which efficiently control and accurately guide its mechanics. It is possible, I hypothesise, to reach a goal early or retain a skill longer by working in reverse manner. While there is no substitute to working your body for skill acquisition, refinement, and retention as a skill is executed by body, if mechanical movements involved in skill execution are imagined and visualised with maximum details and completeness after they have been understood correctly, relevant neuronal pathways and networks representing the mechanics of a skill could be significantly organised, stimulated, and consolidated without actual physical movement. These specific neural structures, when activated, facilitate the execution of physical action by communicating clearer, quicker, and fuller messages to the neuromotor units of target muscles which are involved in actual movement. In other words, passive visualisation in the mental world improves active manipulation in the physical world. For a directed neural preparation can increase the speed and accuracy of specific motor function by firing relevant neuronal pathways, I strongly recommend visualisation to cover the full gamut of training and operational activities both basic and advanced. An overview of mental simulation is available in Imagery in Sport by Tony Morris, Michael Spittle, and Anthony Walt. If practiced sufficiently and meditated seriously, visualisation can produce intense reality experience akin to dreaming. In addition to physical and mental simulations, virtual simulations are also helpful and I have recommended them already in chapter seven for learning about the behaviour of complex systems. Fixed-scenario virtual simulations are good but even better are simulations which self-evolve and also interact with and react to your decisions and actions, as complex systems do. Advanced virtual simulators are expensive but investment on them is fruitful. Dietrich Dörner strongly argues in favour of computer simulations. He asserts that we cannot learn much while dealing with complex problems in the real world “where expanses of time and space hide our mistakes from us”—hence computer simulations. “Time passes quickly in a computer, and distance doesn’t

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exist. A simulation can make apparent the consequences of our decisions and plans. And in this way we can develop a greater sensitivity to reality.” He argues, “Mistakes are essential to cognition. But when we are dealing with real complex systems, it is hard to pinpoint our errors. In the real world, crises are (fortunately!) uncommon; there is rarely occasion for an individual to bring experience gained in one crisis to another of the same kind. As a result, mistakes made in handling demanding situations tend to teach us little of value. Simulations, by contrast, can place people in the same kind of crisis again and again to hone their sensibilities to the specific features of such situations.” While simulations are useful, they have to be used prudently and methodically. Dörner advises, “Simulated scenarios are an excellent teaching device. But it probably profits no one if we simply turn our pupils loose on these scenarios. Action alone is of little value. What makes more sense is to assemble a battery of different scenarios that expose our participants to a ‘symphony of demands’ posed by various systems. We should also have experts observe participants as they plan and act. These observers could pinpoint cognitive errors, and identify their psychological determinants. In carefully prepared follow-up sessions, the participants could be shown the kinds of mistakes they made and the probable causes.” We will discuss more about the analysis of action in the next chapter. XIII Certain limitations of training will always remain as some problems are unsolvable and irresolvable. There are many useful but tacit rules in each field of activity which cannot be expressed in words or written in books in a way that makes others learn them readily and entirely. These unstructured rules are self-discovered and self-learned by a practitioner in the course of doing things repetitiously and reflecting on them for a long period of time. In fact, such informal knowledge is the forte of experts and it is what makes them enigmatic. Every expert, then, is unique, possessing an exclusive knowledge base, in that not entire expert knowledge acquired and applied is or can be shared; certain part of it which is self-acquired and self-taught largely defies description and instruction and cannot be transmitted in its entirety. However hard we may try to make it realistic, our training experience shall always remain grossly incomplete and unreal, for the will of enemy cannot be brought to bear on the world in training and the fear of death consequently remains absent, which makes a combat totally different from



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an exercise; the closest we can get to an actual combat experience is in the depths of our minds by means of dispassionate reflection and impartial visualisation. There is nothing much we can do about it other than being fully aware that our training performance might be highly misleading when employed to forecasting the course and outcome of an actual combat. An actual combat mostly lies somewhere between practice runs and recurring nightmares. Occasionally, it could be as easy, smooth, and serendipitous as a practice run or as overwhelming, deadly, and catastrophic as a nightmare; much depends on chance, then. Some of our men might choke and freeze or become functionally degraded and morally depleted in combat due to a sudden onrush of debilitating fear and disabling anxiety in them. Such happenings are not uncommon in battlefield. Actual combat experience might help but it is also no guarantee against unanticipated infirmity that might occur at any moment, for we know it well how experienced performers in other fields abruptly and unexpectedly choke and fumble—even in settings where they are not risking life and limb. No one actually knows why it happens all of a sudden. All that I can suggest, therefore, is to train more, visualise more, and expose more to realistic and real combat situations. And, also to refer such person later to a qualified psychologist for counselling; this event will smash his self-concept to smithereens and may destroy him completely as a person if he survives that battle; post-traumatic stress syndrome or disorder is very likely to occur after his psychological and physiological collapse in battlefield. Of course, it goes without saying that after that moment he will become unreliable and unfit for combat operations. Training cannot guarantee or ensure or predict if someone will enter a fight. It can only indicate how one would react if one chooses to fight. XIV In this book, I have discussed the whole gamut of subjects relevant to hostage rescue and made several recommendations throughout for including diverse educational material in training syllabus, all of which should be used for education and instruction. None of what I have discussed and recommended in this book, however, could be brought to bear upon the world unless all of it is internalised and practiced by all members of organisation. Everything, then, must be elaborately taught in training and thereafter continuously discussed by all in formal and informal settings and also repeatedly insisted, reminded, and monitored by leadership.

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We know that learning is not possible without attention and interest and expertise is not possible without passion and perseverance. Also, the problem of attention and motivation is actually not the problem of their absence in absolute terms but their absence in the targeted field of activity; they might be available elsewhere at the same time where they may not be desirable in a specific setting. Obvious question, then, is that where these internal drivers actually come from? We have discussed its answer in chapter five; suffice it to say here that focus and attention, interest and passion, motivation and dedication, perseverance and persistence, all emerge from the beliefs and values of man. If a man believes, thinks, and feels strongly and internally that something is very important to him and in his life, he is able to successfully generate and mobilise personal energies and internal resources for that thing. Focus, attention, interest, passion, motivation, dedication, perseverance, persistence, and much else besides are only the outcomes of his view of the world, for a man is what his beliefs are. For rescuers, then, nothing in the journey of becoming experts is more crucial and decisive than acquiring and practicing underlying moral values, for everything begins right there. A system of responsibility defining the roles and participation of all in planning, equipping, practicing, acting, and appraising for learning and operating must be thoughtfully structured, respected, and followed by all members of organisation in order to create a culture of trust and responsibility. Functional side of this system of responsibility defines and regulates the areas of collaboration and independence, the boundaries of decision-making, and the limits of command and control and it is imbibed by newcomers from the very beginning. Such is the power of self-determination when undergirded by personal morality and scaffolded by a culture of respect and responsibility that subversive behaviours, secret rebellion, and silent defiance, so pervasive in military training and regimented life and manifested in cheating, deceiving, bluffing, lying, reluctance, grudging, short-circuiting, cutting corners, and more besides find no place in and become entirely alien to a hostage rescue force. Solid groundwork for such organisational culture must be done at the time of training. If its training system fails to lay strong cultural and attitudinal foundations, hostage rescue organisation might as well fail to live up to its purpose when called out to resolve a complex terrorist crisis one day.

Chapter 15 What Actually Happened?

I In the previous chapter, we discussed the critical role of realistic training in building expertise. But realistic training is useful insofar as lessons from it are learned well. For this, we must review and reconstruct events in sequence and detail after each simulation exercise in order to find out as to what actually happened. Without properly reconstructing events, true lessons cannot be learned. Easy as it may seem intuitively, the reconstruction of past events is indeed an extremely challenging task which must be done methodically. If it is not done meticulously, everyone would go on believing a different story of what happened without anyone knowing the true story of what actually happened. To know what actually happened is the primary objective of review and reconstruction of events, its ultimate objective being learning correct and shared lessons from practical experience. In this chapter, we will examine why a careful review must be done and how a methodical review is properly done. II Information is the building block of knowledge. By revealing the world, information reduces uncertainty about it. To put it differently, we learn when there is information and information is generated when there is uncertainty and its reduction. If the world turns out to be as we have known and predicted it, there is evidently certainty about the world and our knowledge of it. There is, then, no new or disconfirming information available and there is nothing to learn and there is no need to learn. Conversely, if the world is not as we thought it to be and there is uncertainty about its nature, we can learn from it by gathering information to reduce uncertainty and such learning improves the chances of our survival and success in the world. 623

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Our information about the world builds our mental models and schemas and modifies them constantly as we face uncertainty and gather more information from our experiences for uncertainty reduction. Our mental models built by incomplete and incorrect information cannot be reliable tools for controlling the world, for they would invariably fail to make correct predictions about it when employed. Checking facts after the fact is essential to ascertain if the computational algorithms of mental models, which were formed by inputs from the previous readings of the reality, are right or wrong and where they need to be fixed. In other words, knowing the reality and comparing it with predictions made about it is a must for corrective mental processes that adjust and fine tune mental models in the light of new information. Mental models are the predictive tools of experts—the sources of expert insights and foresights—that help them realise and visualise things yet to occur much ahead and far better than laypeople. Experts cannot be right if their mental models are wrong and models cannot be right if information that builds them is wrong. Continuous correction of mental models and schemas by a follow-up review and reconstruction of events and a threadbare analysis of each incident handled by experts—simulated or real and irrespective of outcomes, which could be serendipitous—is a matter of life and death for building and refining expertise. III Recollection of past events for the purpose of review and analysis of exercise and operation is dependent on the memories of participants and observers. We have discussed the merits and limitations of human mind and memory in chapters seven and fourteen. Here, I will discuss the vulnerabilities of human perception, memory, and recollection in brief, which we must bear in mind while reviewing and reconstructing events. Other than when it does not fail utterly, in that things cannot be recalled entirely or substantially, people are quite confident about their memories and strongly believe in the fidelity of information they recollect without ever realising that their memories might in fact be fabricated and inconsistent with the truth. Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons call it the illusion of memory. They write, “The illusion of memory reflects a basic contrast between what we think we remember and what we actually remember. . . . The illusion of memory happens when what we remember is different from what we think we remember.” Our memories are vulnerable and not entirely reliable because the process of memory formation is quite constructive and creative. Chabris and Simons



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assert, “Memory depends both on what actually happened and on how we made sense of what happened.” And, “what is stored in memory is not an exact replica of reality, but a re-creation of it.” Mechanism of memory formation is quite intriguing and most of us are blissfully unaware of it. They explain, “Memory doesn’t store everything we perceive, but instead takes what we have seen or heard and associates it with what we already know. These associations help us to discern what is important and to recall details about what we’ve seen. They provide ‘retrieval cues’ that make our memories more fluent. In most cases, such cues are helpful. But these associations can also lead us astray, precisely because they lead to an inflated sense of the precision of memory. We cannot easily distinguish between what we recall verbatim and what we construct based on associations and knowledge.” As a result, “we mistakenly believe that our memories are accurate and precise.” However, the fact is that “we cannot readily separate those aspects of our memory that accurately reflect what happened from those that were introduced later. . . . What we retrieve often is filled in based on gist, inference, and other influences.” These contaminations notwithstanding, the illusion of memory persists and remains strong. “Although we believe that our memories contain precise accounts of what we see and hear, in reality these records can be remarkably scanty. . . . Those rich details you remember are quite often wrong—but they feel right. . . . A memory can be so strong that even documentary evidence that it never happened doesn’t change what we remember,” assert Chabris and Simons. There are different ways in which our memories can be corrupted and distorted and form an illusory or imagined reality in our minds. Let us discuss these contaminating and corrupting mechanisms one by one. In order to review and reconstruct past events, you have to recall them in the first place. When too many things happen too fast as they always do in emergencies and crises, your attention remains divided and transient due to your efforts to make sense of fast evolving situation. If you cannot attend to things sufficiently and collect and relate information elaborately in your brain, you cannot remember and recall them correctly. In the absence of detailed information and appropriate relation with existing information, gaps remain and correct memory binding and building does not occur. But it does not stop at that; in our quest for a coherent experience of the reality, we might unconsciously borrow certain pieces of matching information from elsewhere already stored in brain to fill in these gaps and fabricate an imaginary reality instead, which was not the reality. It results in a memory failure due to errors caused by what psychologists call misattribution.

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To quote American psychologist Daniel Schacter, misattribution is “assigning a memory to the wrong source: mistaking fantasy for reality. . . . Misattribution is far more common than most people realize.” Ironically, it is not limited to fast paced situations alone; misattribution is a general phenomenon which occurs all the time in everyday memory formation. Also, we are more vulnerable to the errors of misattribution in areas and activities that we know and do well because “a strong sense of general familiarity, together with an absence of specific recollections, adds up to a lethal recipe for misattribution,” says Schacter. We often review what happened in our minds and visualise important events or the whole sequence of events after the fact which may also cause misattribution errors. While it helps in recalling events and learning lessons, visualisation is not a faithful replay but a constructive and suggestive procedure that can distort memories and subsequent recollections. It is not uncommon that suggestions given by one man in a conversation get inside the head of another man and surreptitiously distort his memory. Psychologists call this problem suggestibility, which causes many an erroneous memory. If the source of misattribution is internal, the source of suggestibility is external. According to Schacter, “Suggestibility in memory refers to an individual’s tendency to incorporate misleading information from external sources — other people, written materials or pictures, even the media — into personal recollections.” Normally, such memories “are implanted as a result of leading questions, comments, or suggestions when a person is trying to call up a past experience.” Suggestibility is a subtle social problem—so much so that a man could be right and a majority could be wrong; a close-knit group in which members might unintentionally influence each other’s memories by a cultural proclivity for sharing and suggesting could be wrong all the more. Bias or prejudice is another phenomenon that causes memory errors and distortions in a big way. Chabris and Simons write, “People often remember what they expect to remember. They make sense of a scene, and that interpretation colors—or even determines—what they remember about it.” But beliefs and experiences not only influence what people see and remember, they also make sure that certain things remain unseen and go unnoticed. Cognitive dissonance is psychological discomfort resulting from contravening and conflicting experiences, thoughts, and feelings. Biases are called upon in these situations to do the job of dissonance reduction by reworking and recasting memories.



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According to Schacter, bias “refers to distorting influences of our present knowledge, beliefs, and feelings on new experiences or our later memories of them.” It “reflects the powerful influences of our current knowledge and beliefs on how we remember our pasts. We often edit or entirely rewrite our previous experiences — unknowingly and unconsciously — in light of what we now know or believe. The result can be a skewed rendering of a specific incident, . . . which says more about how we feel now than about what happened then.” Schacter identifies five types of biases which distort our memories. He writes, “Five major types of biases illustrate the ways in which memory serves its masters. Consistency and change biases show how our theories about ourselves can lead us to reconstruct the past as overly similar to, or different from, the present. Hindsight biases reveal that recollections of past events are filtered by current knowledge. Egocentric biases illustrate the powerful role of the self in orchestrating perceptions and memories of reality. And stereotypical biases demonstrate how generic memories shape interpretation of the world, even when we are unaware of their existence or influence.” “Hindsight bias is especially pronounced,” writes Schacter, “when people come up with after-the-fact explanations that specify a deterministic cause of the outcome.” He cautions, “Hindsight biases are worrisome insofar as they can reduce or even prevent learning from experience: if we feel that we knew all along what would happen, then we may be less inclined to profit from the lessons a particular event or incident can teach us.” An understanding of egocentric bias is essential, for it reveals the dark side of much venerated self. Schacter comments, “Egocentric biases in memory reflect the important role that ‘the self’ plays in organizing and regulating mental life. . . . But the self is hardly a neutral observer of the world. Individuals in our society are motivated to think highly of themselves and often hold unrealistically flattering opinions of their abilities and achievements. . . . The self’s preeminent role in encoding and retrieval, combined with a powerful tendency for people to view themselves positively, creates fertile ground for memory biases that allow people to remember past experiences in a self-enhancing light. . . . Self-enhancing biases are pervasive features of attempts to reconstruct the personal past.” Stereotyping the world is quite common and it is extremely difficult to remain unaffected and aloof from our stereotypes. Schacter writes, “Stereotypes are generic descriptions of past experiences that we use to categorize people and

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objects.” He points out, “Activated stereotypes bias not only how we think and behave; they can also influence what we remember. . . . When events unfold in a way that contradicts our expectations based on stereotypes and related knowledge of the world, we may be biased to fabricate incidents that never happened in order to bring our memories in line with our expectations.” The moral here is that it is possible that a man is not lying, even when he is not telling the truth. As Chabris and Simons inform, “When people are subject to the illusion of memory, they impugn the intentions and motivations of those who are innocently misremembering.” We should, therefore, refrain from judging people and attributing motives, for wrong information might just be due to unconscious distortion than deliberate deception. Chabris and Simons point out another presumptive folly of human beings concerning recollections. They assert, “The tendency to assume that confidently recalled memories are accurate ones illustrates another cognitive illusion: the illusion of confidence.” A coherent and complete story narrated convincingly by an apparently confident man, then, may not be more reliable than a fragmented and inconsistent tale told in bits and pieces by a seemingly flummoxed man. Now that we know why it must be done and what are the challenges and limitations of doing it, we will discuss how a review and reconstruction of simulation and operation should be done. IV First of all, a review and reconstruction exercise is not done to judge people. Its purpose is to learn collectively and not to blame individually, so no one judges anyone. For correct and shared learning, it is absolutely imperative to first establish the truth, in that what actually happened and who did what—hence this exercise. We gather facts and make a coherent and complete story known to us based on these facts to understand problems and find solutions, to detect errors and learn lessons. Everyone’s experience is unique and everyone has a personal point of view and perspective on events, so we understand decisions from the standpoints and perspectives of all those who were in action and understand what made them do certain things, even if in hindsight they seem erroneous. Our perception is severely limited, in that we cannot perceive everything happening around us. Our perception is also non-negligibly distorted. There are also memory distortions which occur inside brain later during



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the consolidation of perceptual experience. We, therefore, cannot and do not remember everything in exact detail and the more time elapses since an incident, the more difficult it becomes to remember what had actually happened. On recall, some events that occurred appear vivid, some hazy, some erroneous, and some nonexistent. Recollections of no man are ever total, accurate, and reliable. Instead, they are mostly fragmented and inconsistent, imagined and fallacious, even if they may not seem so prima facie. Given these immutable constraints, we can never know what actually happened after the fact and the only way to stitch a near complete picture of the reality is by corroborating and combining the recollections of many men after a critical and methodical enquiry and a cross-examination of their memories and correcting them with the aid of electronic recordings that are available. Our memories are transient which fade as the past recedes. Hence, a review and reconstruction of events occurred in simulations and operations should be done at the earliest possible opportunity. In training, it must be done the very next day if not the same day, even if it is a holiday. Exercises should be planned comprehensively and plan should include review and analysis sessions scheduled after action for learning correct lessons from practical experience. Operators and observers are expected not to discuss and share their experience with others for preserving the integrity and fidelity of information until they assemble to unravel the truth of story. Until then, it is better if they relax and entertain themselves or remain occupied with some other occupational activities instead of thinking and rethinking about events that happened, although it would be nearly impossible for them not to recall and reflect on what they just went through. After action, immediate focus remains on logistic, cleaning, and maintenance tasks. A long break is given when these post-exercise tasks are finished; if it has taken too much time and energy, we can also call it a day. Observers, trainers, and supervisors who later interview operators reassemble as early as possible for reviewing documentary information. No discussions are held; only electronic recordings are watched and notes are taken and compared with notes taken during exercise on what was observed and with what is remembered now. After documentary review, interviewers prepare their questions individually for interview session. For collecting documentary evidence, simulation site should be covered by fixed closed-circuit television system or portable wireless network camera system or both for wide area coverage. And, video recordings should be done by designated individuals too without obstructing operators or role players and risking safety. People break again after film review and interview preparation session. In the next session,

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personal information is collected from operators by interviewing each person privately. Interviews are conducted by individuals or by the small groups of two or three interviewers; efforts should be made to interview several operators simultaneously in different rooms. After a break, interviewers assemble to jointly collate information and stitch events to put together a unitary picture of what happened. Discussions are held and notes are compared at this stage by interviewers, trainers, observers, supervisors, and seniors involved in and responsible for action, training, and administration; documentary records can also be reviewed and edited for subsequent presentations. After a break, the last session of review and reconstruction exercise is held. It is dedicated to the presentation and analysis of evidence. It is a deliberative session in which all points are discussed threadbare. An adversarial approach reflected in antagonistic questions and explanations without intimidation and disapproval is acceptable and desirable in this session. All are present. Everyone speaks. Lessons are collated after building consensus. Exercise concludes at this point but documentary job continues. Problem of institutional memory is solved by turning lessons learned into the rules of thumb wherever possible and recording lessons in the form of case studies. Material thus prepared is shared with all, archived in library, and used in training and briefing sessions held in future. V Facts and opinions are collected from agents and operators by interviewing them. While we all think we know what is interview and how to interview, most of us do not know the art of interview. A structured interview has three phases. Interview starts after both questioner and respondent become familiar and comfortable. It commences with narration phase in which the whole story is told by interviewee and listened by interviewer. Important points made in narration phase are elaborated in greater depth and detail by follow-up questions asked in cross-examination phase to gather more information and develop an accurate picture by eliminating contradictory and inconsistent information, by filling gaps and plugging loopholes, by removing incongruence and incoherence from the big picture. Interview is concluded with resolution phase in which a consensus is built on a coherent and congruent picture derived from conversations. Enquiry is conducted by means of personal face-to-face interview which is a polite fact-finding conversation done in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere without anyone feeling pressure. American investigation expert and author Art Buckwalter gives this definition of interview: “Interviews are planned and



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controlled conversations. They also have a clearly defined purpose. Interviews differ from ordinary conversation in that they are focused on the subject under investigation and the interviewee does most of the talking.” Because an interview is a conversation, my recommendations concerning social conversations made in chapters six and fourteen are as much applicable here. In general, tone is normal, conversation is controlled, and experience is pleasant, such that causes no interview fright. Interview is conducted, guided, and controlled by questions asked by questioner. Questions should be short, precise, and pinpointed. Formulate questions after documentary review, before interview is scheduled. Ask appropriate questions in the order of events, not randomly. First follow the timeline and sequence of events and then ask about most noticeable, significant, challenging, bewildering, impossible, and eye-opening moments, events, and experiences. To probe thoroughly, follow a lead and ask follow-up questions. Ask a follow-up question at a right time, which is immediately when a lead is given but you can also note it and ask later if in your judgement, interruption might affect the flow of information. Use both open-ended and closed questions; in general, ask more open questions than closed questions. Open-ended or long answer questions are good for information gathering. Closed or short answer questions are good for finding specific facts and ascertain their accuracy. Buckwalter says, “The open-end question opens the door to the flow of information. It allows the interviewee to tell all he knows about a matter or to say what is on his mind. . . . Closed-end questions, on the other hand, are specific, and seek precise answers.” Do not ask leading questions containing suggestions of some sort. Do not give your opinion or suggestion to prompt an answer. Do not use your information unless required to clarify certain facts and viewpoints and use it without asserting it as the truth. If you do not understand something, wait for interviewee to finish or pause and then ask question. Question should not suggest anything that might influence interviewee’s recollection; it should be asked matter-of-factly to clarify your doubt. Do not have too many doubts, do not concentrate on unimportant details, and do not see the wood for the trees. Our endeavour here is to elicit most complete and least contaminated information, for we can never know the fullest details of events. Show your sincerity throughout and treat all questions and answers with equal importance.

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Buckwalter delineates twelve rules of direct questioning. 1. Ask only one question at a time. 2. Word each question so that only one answer is required. 3. Keep your questions short and simple. 4. Ask straightforward, frank questions. 5. Make sure all questions are clear and easily understood. 6. Clear each answer before asking another question. 7. Do not rush the subject’s answers. 8. Ask important questions in the same manner you would ask unimportant ones. 9. Always give the subject an opportunity to qualify his answers. 10. Ask open-end questions when soliciting expanded replies. 11. Ask precise questions when you want precise answers. 12. When an answer calls for another question, ask it at once. Speak clearly and distinctly. You may use these words to open a question: Hi, Hello, Yeah, Yes, Right, True, Alright, Fine, Well, Indeed, Good, Sure, Hmmm, Uh, Okay, Ah, Oh, Oh sure, I see, I know, I understand, Now, So, and more besides. Seek detailed information by clarifying and confirming numbers and facts; understand why certain things made sense to respondents while certain others did not. In this context, you may open your questions with these words: Really, Why, What, Where, When, How, Who, Which, Why so, How come, Tell me more, Such as, All of those, And, And you said, and much else besides. Where necessary, repeat in your words what is told by subject and what you have understood from what has been told to aligning your understanding with source and eliminating differences in understanding. For this, you may use these phrases: Do you mean . . .? Are you saying . . .? Have I understood you correctly that . . .? Will it be correct if I say . . .?



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For more on the polite manner of asking questions, I reiterate my recommendations made in chapter six especially The Art of Socratic Questioning by Richard Paul and Linda Elder. VI These interviews are thorough in which individuals are probed gently but surely to find facts and elicit opinions. Facts are found to establish the truth of events that happened. Viewpoints and perspectives are collected to understand people who were there to face them and why they did what they did in those moments. For finding facts and collecting opinions, we need a listening interviewer who exhibits a questioning mind, reflecting natural curiosity and tremendous self-control; one who listens and learns, not talks and teaches; who talks only to get others to talk in order to ascertain facts and gather opinions. “For an investigative interview to be successful,” writes Buckwalter, “an interviewee must feel free to talk. It is the interviewee who possesses the information to be disclosed. . . . A successful interview needs a talking interviewee and a listening interviewer.” He says that the role of interviewer is to “(1) get the subject to talk, (2) let the subject talk, and (3) keep the subject talking until you have obtained all the information he has to give.” So, seek information, not share it; listen patiently and primarily; talk infrequently and briefly. Listening is the outcome of attention and control. On the art of listening, Buckwalter writes, “Perceptive listening is not easy. It is hard work, calling for real concentration. . . . Listening has to overcome the invasion of distractive thoughts. Listening is not passive. To stop talking does not mean one is listening. Listening is deliberate. The mind focuses just as intently on listening as it does on speaking, if the listener is actually absorbing what is being said.” He underscores, “Everyone has ears. Very few people, however, are experts in the art of listening. . . . He listens well who listens attentively and perceptively.” Only if an interviewer is an active listener can he discern the meaning of words spoken by subject and timely receive leads provided to him and exploit them to extract information. Buckwalter makes this point too. “Active listening is responsive and communicative. The interviewer must be an active listener to respond to the information disclosed by the interviewee. . . . Inactive listening fails to follow up with questions that pinpoint specific information that is of value to the investigation.”

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An active listener does not interrupt frequently. Frequent interruptions are as much unproductive and detrimental in an interview as they are in a lecture because they invariably disrupt the integrity of thoughts and the fidelity of mental imagery of speaker, thereby obstructing and curtailing the flow of information. An interviewer, notes Buckwalter, “must not interrupt except when absolutely necessary. He must not change the direction of a thought until the subject has said all he has to say about it.” Attention of an active listener is not divided; his concentration is maintained all through conversation. Take notes without dividing attention. Notes should be clear, concise, and legible. Interview should also be recorded electronically— only audio or audio visual—for review. I prefer audio recording as it is low profile and less intimidating. Do not take copious notes which surely will divide your attention; note only important things; recordings can be referred to if necessary to review any point. Come prepared with what is important and what is not but do not show your disinterest to subject in what you think is unimportant. Social and emotional intelligence of interviewer significantly influences the quality of information received from respondent and determines the success of his quest for the truth. Non-verbal communication done by eye contact, nodding, and other facial expressions should convey that interviewer is attentive, interested, listening, and understanding. Body language should be sincere and businesslike; avoid smiling as that might be misleading, in that it might convey approval or disapproval by a positive sense of appreciation or a negative sense of derision to subject where you intended none. Interviewer should also be sensitive to and aware of the body language of interviewees and adjust his question and posture as required by emotional intelligence. On this, American interview and interrogation researcher Stan Walters suggests, “The interviewer should monitor his own behaviors in order to avoid contamination of the subject’s behavior. The subjects are watching us while we are watching them.” Buckwalter explains, “The three aspects of a question are its content, the manner in which it is asked, and the attitude with which it is asked. All three have an effect on the content, manner, and attitude of the answer. In other words, a question communicates by its content, what is asked; by its manner, how it is asked; and by its attitude, the spirit in which it is asked. . . . The effectiveness of the interaction between interviewer and interviewee depends on these three aspects of the conversation.” A man cannot hide his attitude easily. “The attitude of the interviewer may be more quickly discerned than the content of the



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question. Interviewees sense an interviewer’s attitude and feeling – or lack of feeling – almost immediately. What they read in the interviewer’s attitude will be reflected in their answers and in the attitude in which they reply. The atmosphere in which the question is asked can stimulate the flow of information or curtail it,” says Buckwalter. Interviewing is a skill and like all skills, it is easier said than done. Therefore, interviewers need to internalise these suggestions and modify their behaviours by repeated practice and reflection; merely reading about it and nodding in agreement is not enough. VII Interviewers should prepare for interview and understand the context of questioning fully. In our case, questioners are trainers, seniors, supervisors, and peers who are associated with an exercise and act as observers. To refresh and correct their memories, they also refer to documentary evidence available and understand the sequence of events in its entirety before interview. Besides seeking factual information in interview, they seek new ideas, fresh insights, different perspectives, and multiple viewpoints on events and problems, challenges and solutions. We review and reconstruct for a purpose—the most important objective of review and reconstruction exercise is to learn correct lessons collectively. These lessons are best learned when we have a useful analytical framework to study events and actions. For this, I suggest we employ tree thinking, a conceptual term borrowed from phylogenetics, and propose the identification of bifurcation junctions or branching points in the tree of evolving events where decisions are made which might alter the course of events. Map event tree, identify crucial nodes in it which are the points of departure and divergence, and interpret decisions and actions taken at these points by employing a typological scheme which is given below or something else that works better for you. Action and inaction both are a consequence of decision. It is also possible that a correct decision is not executed correctly. Critical junctures are those points in the sequence of events where human actions and interactions can alter the course of events and might influence their outcomes. Critical junctures can be divided into three operational categories for strategic analysis. Decision points are those moments in the timeline of developing events where decisions are taken individually or cooperatively to control the course of events. Turning points are those moments in the timeline of ongoing events where decisions

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and actions of individuals and groups can decisively and significantly influence the outcomes of events. Tipping points are those moments in the timeline of evolving events where decisions and actions of individuals and groups can radically and rapidly influence the outcomes of events. We can classify tactical decisions taken during an operation on the basis of their strategic leverage and final impact. Decisions taken at a decision point are first order decisions; decisions taken at a turning point are second order decisions; decisions taken at a tipping point are third order decisions. Be aware that this typification is merely conceptual and good only for post-mortem analytical purposes, for we cannot do the a priori and permanent classification of decisions taken in complex terrorist crisis as they do not have fixed cause-consequence relationships and predictable effects; the same decision taken at different critical junctures of the same situation or in different situations might have different consequences, much depends on how all variables actually interact with each other at that moment. Collectively identify critical junctures in the sequence of events and get operators’ viewpoints as to how they had viewed, understood, decided, and acted at each juncture during an exercise or operation. Everyone participates and speaks equitably; no one does more talking than others; no one remains silent or reticent either. Such analysis is extremely important for learning lessons from both catastrophic failures as well as serendipitous successes, for in a success too we can find critical junctures leading to failures if we had failed to exploit the moments much the same way as after a failure we find critical junctures for success which were lost or could not be exploited in time, leading the whole sequence of events inevitably and inexorably to failure. It is important for learning correct lessons as much it is important for shared learning, which is one of the main objectives of training. VIII Correct information can be collected only if it is disclosed fully and faithfully. Information can be received accurately only if what is told is listened to attentively and entirely. Complete and correct information can be retrieved only if information received is recorded elaborately and richly. Only when both parties—interviewer and interviewee—behave responsibly, these requirements of ideal communication are fulfilled. It takes sincerity and time. Buckwalter advises, “Never rush a fact-finding interview. To do so is to hinder the free flow of information. . . . The time that is necessary to get all the facts and to get them clearly and accurately is the time required for the interview.”



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I will end by saying three things: Grill, not just drill. Grill after drill. Grill more than drill. Grill we must but we must grill gently and inquisitively because our purpose is to reconstruct events for learning lessons collectively; not to establish the errors of individuals and fix their responsibility. Interview is not interrogation, for operators are not hostile, uncooperative, or reluctant; they share information voluntarily and readily. Interview is conducted with inquisitorial approach for information gathering. It is not done with accusatorial approach to finding errors and establishing guilt for fixing responsibility. Assume that all rescuers are truthful. Do not judge. It is possible, we know, that a man may not be lying, even when he is not telling the truth. It goes without saying that the moral values of rescuers, namely, courage, respect, responsibility, humility, integrity, and a whole panoply of supporting values in conjunction with valued notions derived from morality, namely, doubting, questioning, tolerance, transparency, learning from mistakes, announcement of anomaly, personal autonomy and independence, excellence, and confession, which define the organisational culture of a hostage rescue force, will prepare people perfectly and create perfect conditions for a free flow of information necessary for a truthful review and reconstruction of events.

Chapter 16 Readiness

I If the sole purpose of a hostage rescue force is to save hostages, then, its primary job is to conduct rescue operations. It is the centrality of operations that defines a rescue organisation and around operations all organisational activities revolve—remote or proximate, before or after. Ease of operations demands a self-contained base with separate residential zone, operations zone, and training zone, all covered by an effective and fail-safe warning system for emergency call out. It should be designed and built for organised, safe, comfortable, and motivational living. Offices, warehouses, workshops, and control room are located inside operations zone. Uninterruptible power supply unaffected by power outages and continuous stabilised current not affected by surges and fluctuations is recommended for warning system and operations and training zones at a minimum. Safety and security, cleaning and maintenance, beauty and simplicity together inspire the layout of compound and the design and construction of buildings. A seethrough perimeter fence such as welded wire fence with anti-climb features is better than a wall for compound security; trees and bushes are not planted near perimeter fence; area on both sides of fence is kept clear to visually detect any suspicious activity or object. Residential zone has marketplace, community facilities, sporting complex, hospital, school, bank, community laundry, and much else besides. There is access control between residential zone and operations and training zones to keep families in their zone only. For operating efficiently, a rescue organisation is divided into four major branches having distinct roles and responsibilities to manage organisational affairs in a methodical fashion. They are administration, training, logistics, and operations; administration branch has three internal divisions—general, 639

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financial, and health, education, and welfare; engineering division is a part of logistics branch. Training branch builds and maintains the capacity of operations branch in advance and administration branch recruits men and keeps all other branches up and running for operations always by routinely and immediately taking various decisions and actions besides managing the affairs of residential zone and facilities located therein. While all these branches exist to serve the purpose of organisation, the mainstay of a rescue organisation, needless to say, is its operations branch and the main companion and support of operations branch in carrying out an operation is logistics branch which supplies energy and momentum for operations by mobilising men and materiel. It is also in order to mention here that compound security is planned and provided by operations branch by integrating all elements— structural, mechanical, electronic, and human—and compound maintenance is carried out by logistics branch. Task division and work distribution between branches, however, is only limited to organising various activities efficiently. Their various branch-wise roles and responsibilities notwithstanding, other than a few career clerks, professional housekeepers, and certified technicians and mechanics of administration and logistics branches, all members of organisation are combatants—multi-skilled and multi-functional—fully trained to carry out operations, which is their main role, and to back up each other and double-man each role in an operation as necessitated by ongoing events and circumstances. For mobilising total organisational resources and unleashing its fullest might into a complex terrorist crisis, operations branch is placed under the direct control of force commander and logistics branch under deputy force commander. This arrangement is useful, in that during a crisis when there is a severe paucity of time and a huge demand on attentional resource, two most important functions are confidently planned and competently executed in parallel by two topmost commanders of force without having to depend on anyone above for decisions. II As a rule, rescue operation should commence soon after main force arrives at operation’s base, even if terrorists do not take any hostile action against hostages. This in and of itself delivers surprise and if somehow we manage to do it early, might even deprive terrorists of time to carefully and extensively booby-trap stronghold, even if they have supplies and skills for rigging it besides denying them time to rework and refine their plans for building



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defences and blocking pathways, fighting forces and killing hostages. This is what we call seizing the initiative in a complex terrorist crisis. It is usually quite difficult but not always impossible. But it could be made possible only when no time is wasted after forces have assembled at staging area, political ambivalence besides. It must be done, for charging immediately after arrival is a part of offensive strategy. In contrast, delay is desired by terrorists. Indecision of State to authorise military force and a delay in despatching rescuers from base or in translocating them to the place of attack or in setting up operation’s base would only help terrorists by dragging a crisis situation and prolonging its termination. A hostage rescue force, therefore, ought to be always alert, ready to march and assault. This is the only factor that we control, for politics is beyond us. Readiness of a hostage rescue force to carry out a rescue operation inside a complex terrorist stronghold depends on the readiness of its men and materiel in its base at the time of terrorist attack, its ability to swiftly move all men and materiel to the place of attack, and on a realisation that such attack has occurred and a complex terrorist crisis has formed in the first place. These five factors of readiness, namely, men, materiel, movement, time, and realisation determine the actual readiness of force to rescue hostages at any given time. Training only builds capacity to operate, not readiness for operation, for that is a matter of culture and leadership. A culture of readiness habitually keeps people and organisation ready physically, mentally, and materially to conduct a rescue operation anytime. A leadership ready for operation sees through ambiguous events and realises early on that time has come to mobilise resources for an operation. A force that has such a culture and leadership is always ready for resolving the worst-case scenario. Conversely, a hostage rescue force cannot be fully ready to operate without a cultural habit of keeping everyone and everything ready all the time for operation and a shared organisational mindset of realising by reading the early signs of evolving situation, which are ambiguous, uncertain, incomplete, contradictory, and misleading, that a complex terrorist crisis has indeed taken place. Napoleon Bonaparte once cited a maxim and wrote, “An army must be ready every day, every night, and every hour to mount all the resistance of which it is capable. It requires that soldiers constantly have their weapons and munitions; that the infantry constantly has with it its artillery, cavalry, and generals; that the various divisions of the army are constantly in a position to support, back up, and protect one another.” It also requires that soldiers

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are fit to fight. For rapid rescue, we need our men to be quick and sharp, not slow and sluggish. Only a man who is fully alert and attentive, active and energetic to perceive, judge, decide, and act accurately and instantly is one who is fully ready to rescue. A hostage rescue unit is unlike a large infantry unit where a few men do not matter much and they could be operationally dispensable. It is a small and compact group instead in which every single man matters and remains indispensable at all times. Every man counts but not everyone counts really. A motivated, trained, skilled, and experienced man is just as ready for action as he actually is at the time when he is called out to act. Training and practice only builds a man’s capacity to operate; his actual readiness to operate when he is called upon for action is determined more by the state of body and mind a man happens to be in at the time. A man who is sick and injured, fatigued and stressed cannot operate effectively, irrespective of skills and experience he has. Minor physiological troubles such as headache, body pain, sprain, soreness, cold, sleepiness, tiredness, lethargy or transient psychological states such as feeling low, inexplicable sadness or melancholy, unable to concentrate, under stress are common; such states of mind and body occur all too often and experienced by everyone. We usually ignore such states, experiences, and swings and let them disappear naturally without seeking expert advice. While these could be nothing more than the minor and natural fluctuations of rhythms of body and mind, they do affect our performance nonetheless. In our context, thus, a voluntary disclosure of the internal states of body and mind which fall in oft-neglected grey area between sickness and fitness is indeed more important than we might usually think. For we are men, not supermen, some propensity for and chances of falling sick and getting injured shall always remain and we cannot do anything about it. But there must be conscious efforts made in all sincerity in a hostage rescue force to create conditions conducive for leading a healthy and happy life and training scientifically and safely in order to keep the minds and bodies of its men always ready for action. On the other hand, organisation must also be aware of the exact state of readiness of force which might vary each day. For this, it is suggested that those who do not call in sick and instead report for duty or take authorised rest, including those who are on leave, file a daily self-report within a specified period of time in forenoon or afternoon as decided by organisation. This information is collected and collated every day, including on holidays to maintain a combat



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readiness log of force and it is considered valid for twenty-four hours unless someone reports otherwise afterwards, which is then processed to show a revised state of current readiness. Following parameters could be considered: 1. Stressor: No. Yes. 2. Sleep: Good. Bad. 3. Fatigue: No. Low. High. 4. Injury: No. Yes. 5. Fitness: High. Medium. Low. High fitness individuals are considered good for constituting striking, rescue, holding, and reserve elements and they are also deployed as snipers and marksmen. Medium fitness individuals constitute evacuation force and security cordons and they are also used for operation’s base activities and logistic jobs. Low fitness individuals are left behind to manage regular base operations after everyone else has left. A purpose-built software programme is used for collecting information, crunching data, and presenting it in various meaningful ways to commanders and their staff officers for further actions such as enquiries, interventions, and planning. Self-reports could be filed by logging in to the terminals of operations and training zones and also by telephone, intercom, or secure email. Since operations branch is responsible for manpower management and mobilisation, combat readiness log is maintained and necessary interventions are made by it but information is also available to logistics branch which is responsible for force assembly and movement. A rescuer who is on leave is also accounted for and used variously, depending on his location from base and the place of attack—if he cannot report back before the departure of forces, he could be asked to report directly at the place of operation or he could be asked to report at base for managing regular affairs there. III Stress-free life, injury-free practice, good rest, and good sleep are necessary for high fitness level. Culture takes care of stress and scientific approach averts training-induced injuries. We have also addressed the problem of fatigue in chapter fourteen; fatigue is a feeling of lack of energy and its solution is rest and nutrition. Here, we will specifically discuss the problem of sleep, its numerous harmful consequences, and easy solutions for good sleep-wake habits.

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Sleep is produced by circadian rhythm which schedules a sleep-wake cycle. Circadian rhythm is a general property of life, not an exclusive possession of human beings. It is a biological rhythm clock based on sunlight and twentyfour hour day-night cycle that regulates many bodily functions other than sleep, including body temperature, heart rate, growth hormone for repairing and building body, and urine production for removing toxins from body. Light regulates circadian rhythm, so light can disturb it too by resetting biological clock. Sleep is a structured phenomenon. British neuroscientist and psychologist Matthew Walker who specialises in sleep science writes, “Sleep is not the absence of wakefulness. It is far more than that. . . . Our nighttime sleep is an exquisitely complex, metabolically active, and deliberately ordered series of unique stages.” Scientists prefer to divide sleep in five distinct stages but a simpler three-phase framework makes it easy to understand sleep mechanics, which I will employ here. Transition from wakefulness to sleep begins with light sleep which is a bridge through which a healthy person passes from vigilance to sleep, and vice versa. Light sleep is a state in which one is neither fully awake nor fully asleep. In sleep, light sleep also mediates deep sleep or slow-wave sleep or non-rapid eye movement sleep and dream sleep or rapid eye movement sleep. All three phases of sleep together constitute a sleep cycle that runs throughout the period of sleep. Deep sleep predominates in the first half of sleep and dream sleep in the second half of sleep towards early morning hours. An amazing fact about dream sleep is that brain functions as it does in wakefulness but the demands of survival necessitate that individual is effectively disabled and rendered unable to act upon the experiences of dream. To achieve this highly functional end, the onset of dreaming happens with the onset of full body paralysis. Different stages of sleep perform different tasks and deliver different benefits and that explains why sleep has different stages. Role of light sleep is quite important in leading a healthy life, for it reduces sleepiness, promotes vigilance and alertness, enhances concentration, facilitates motor learning, and makes you feel good. But in and of itself, light sleep is not helpful in physical restoration or memory formation. What is currently known is that deep sleep prevents sleepiness by rejuvenating body which then powers arousal, readies us to learn by increasing vigilance and attention and also by clearing useless information and creating storage space, consolidates what we learn by shifting information from temporary storage to permanent storage and strengthening specific neuronal connections, and forms useful and usable memories by building an efficient network of recall. It does this for both information



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and motor learning. Besides, it repairs tissues, builds bodies, reduces anxiety and stress, and restores homeostasis, which means it brings body’s system back to its natural balance or restores the equilibrium of body. Dream sleep is known to randomly forge deeper neuronal connections inside our entire cache of knowledge, thereby generating novel ideas, crystallising creative imagination, and purveying astonishing insights. It is also known to form emotional memories, promote higher-order learning by developing complex information associations, and improves perceptual and sensory processing. Nutrition, exercise, and sleep are the main pillars of good health that we can control but sleep is even more important than nutrition and exercise in maintaining good health. Walker asserts, “A balanced diet and exercise are of vital importance, yes. But we now see sleep as the preeminent force in this health trinity.” Unfortunately, sleep is the most neglected of all health issues and it is the biggest casualty of our busy life—so much so that it has become a taboo and a stigma of sorts, even when sleep science is full of evidence to prove that “sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day.” Sleep not only keeps us healthy and functional but it also keeps us alive—so much so that those who cannot sleep truly die surely; no one can survive its absolute deprivation for long. Among the innumerable benefits of sleep, Walker recounts some, “Within the brain, sleep enriches a diversity of functions, including our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions and choices. Benevolently servicing our psychological health, sleep recalibrates our emotional brain circuits, allowing us to navigate next-day social and psychological challenges with cool-headed composure.” Further, dreaming provides “a consoling neurochemical bath that mollifies painful memories and a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge, inspiring creativity.” Within the realm of physiology, sleep provides numerous critical health benefits and its dysfunction inflicts severe harm to body. Walker writes, “Downstairs in the body, sleep restocks the armory of our immune system, helping fight malignancy, preventing infection, and warding off all manner of sickness. Sleep reforms the body’s metabolic state by fine-tuning the balance of insulin and circulating glucose. Sleep further regulates our appetite, helping control body weight through healthy food selection rather than rash impulsivity. Plentiful sleep maintains a flourishing microbiome within your gut from which we know so much of our nutritional health begins. Adequate sleep is intimately tied to the fitness of our cardiovascular system, lowering blood pressure while keeping our hearts in fine condition.”

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As we have discussed in chapter fourteen, sleep plays a crucial role in learning. Walker explains, “Sleep before learning refreshes our ability to initially make new memories. It does so each and every night.” It restores our learning ability by “shifting fact-based memories from the temporary storage depot (the hippocampus) to a long-term secure vault (the cortex),” thus making room for new memories by “replenishing this short-term information repository with plentiful free space. . . . The cycle repeats each day and night, clearing out the cache of short-term memory for the new imprinting of facts, while accumulating an ever-updated catalog of past memories. . . . The second benefit of sleep for memory comes after learning, one that effectively clicks the ‘save’ button on those newly created files. In doing so, sleep protects newly acquired information, affording immunity against forgetting: an operation called consolidation.” Sleep is truly wondrous, in that it not only helps new learning as well as retaining what has been learned all day long but also in forgetting what is learned but not useful, thus making our memory ever so efficient and us successful in the complex world. Walker writes, “Sleep is able to offer a far more discerning hand in memory improvement: one that preferentially picks and chooses what information is, and is not, ultimately strengthened.” By doing so, “sleep helps you retain everything you need and nothing that you don’t, improving the ease of memory recollection.” Sleep also improves motor skills, most wondrously without repetitions. Walker reveals, “Your brain will continue to improve skill memories in the absence of any further practice. It is really quite magical. Yet, that delayed, ‘offline’ learning occurs exclusively across a period of sleep, and not across equivalent time periods spent awake, regardless of whether the time awake or time asleep comes first. Practice does not make perfect. It is practice, followed by a night of sleep, that leads to perfection.” In sum, sleep is so very critical that “memories formed without sleep are weaker memories, evaporating rapidly,” says Walker. Sleep deprivation caused by inadequate sleep and sleep dysfunction caused by fragmented sleep—a period of sleep that is interrupted by the intervals of wakefulness—are among the most common problems of humanity at this juncture, which are only becoming worse. A lack of good sleep most visibly and proximately generates an untimely desire to sleep called sleepiness that occurs when you intend to remain awake and active. And, just imagine the grave consequences of chronically impaired sleep if the benefits of sleep listed



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above are all lost. But it would not stop just there, for chronic sleeplessness causes a myriad of functional degradations and physiological pathologies in a person who has lost it, which I will not discuss because my focus here is on maintaining the readiness of rescuers to operate, not to fight sickness. The bottom line is that you cannot live healthy and work properly if your sleep does not work properly. Quality, sufficiency, and adequacy of sleep is not determined by time spent in bed but total time spent in sleep especially deep sleep and dream sleep and it is measured by sleep efficiency. Inadequate sleep leads to sleep intrusion. Sleep intrusion is the unwanted, unintended, and uncontrollable periods of sleep. Sleep does not come in long spells alone when it intrudes; it can also come in very short spells which we might not even be aware of at times. Briefest period of sleep is microsleep, which lasts only for a few seconds. Sleep is inevitable; we cannot fight sleep and must eventually surrender to it because we cannot avert sleep pressure. Sleep pressure is the build-up of urge for sleep which increases as time passes after waking; it is a neurochemical mechanism not in our conscious control. Insufficient sleep impairs people’s abilities in insidious ways because it bypasses the subjective sense of impairment. Sleep deprived people do not know how much sleep deprived they are and fail to realise their performance disability before their degraded performance becomes all too obvious, which in certain situations might be too late and too costly. Inadequate sleep also increases aggression and encourages sensation-seeking and risk-taking behaviours. The moral is that sleep must be valued in hostage rescue force and rescuers must sleep every day in full. Sleep originates in brain and it is controlled by brain. Anxiety and stress are disruptive forces which reside in brain too and, hence, they interrupt and impair sleep and cause insomnia if they persist. Basic conditions for a good sleep, then, are a good physical health and a healthy social and occupational life that does not generate worry, stress, and anxiety. Sleep should be scheduled with fixed sleep and wake times giving at least eight hours for sleep and sleep schedule should be adhered to if there is no pressing reason that cannot wait until after your sleep. A good sleep is remarkably facilitated by what I call sleep engineering and sleep discipline. I use these terms to communicate the ways in which you can modify your bedroom environment and personal habits to make it most

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conducive for sleeping. It is fashionably called sleep hygiene but, to my mind, this term does not exactly encapsulate interventions made and steps taken to practice it by altering physical environment and changing human behaviour. Although monophasic sleep—a single sleep period in a twenty-four hour day—is fashionable and even valued in our busy civilisation, for a maximum alertness, cognitive efficiency, and improved performance of rescuers, biphasic sleep—two sleep periods in a twenty-four hour day, one brief period in daytime called nap followed by a long night-time sleep—is recommended. It might seem odd but nap is natural and truly transformational. It is not an aspect of culture alone as it seems just because in some societies people are used to napping. Walker indicates the origins of biphasic sleep, “The practice of biphasic sleep is not cultural in origin, however. It is deeply biological. All humans, irrespective of culture or geographical location, have a genetically hardwired dip in alertness that occurs in the midafternoon hours.” There is a consensus among sleep scientists now, write American sleep researcher Sara Mednick and journalist Mark Ehrman, “that not only is napping beneficial for alertness, mental ability and overall health, but our brains are actually programmed for it.” Walker informs that “even daytime naps as short as twenty minutes can offer a memory consolidation advantage, so long as they contain enough NREM sleep” or deep sleep. Mednick and Ehrman list the following benefits of napping, having a direct bearing on the operational effectiveness of a rescuer besides many other health and wellness advantages that I have excluded. 1. Increases alertness. 2. Speeds up motor performance. 3. Improves accuracy. 4. Improves decisions. 5. Improves perception. 6. Improves stamina. 7. Elevates mood. 8. Boosts creativity. 9. Reduces stress.



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10. Helps memory. 11. Improves the ease and quality of nocturnal sleep. 12. Feels good. Being the mother of nap, needless to say, all these benefits are delivered in abundance by a plentiful night sleep as we have read above. Given its tremendous benefits, I recommend that there should be a culture of everyday napping in hostage rescue force both at home and office. A thirty minute post-lunch afternoon nap schedule between one and three o’clock is recommended. Workplace nap room is a quiet, dark, cool, and comfortable place with its light, sound, and time protocols. A soothing symphony could be played lightly for creating a relaxing atmosphere; I prefer the sound of violin over other instruments. Comfortable recliners with leg rests, soft pillows, and soft and light blankets or comforters are also recommended. After a night shift, rescuers should get sufficient time to get sleep and another night shift should be scheduled for them only after a sufficient interval so that their circadian rhythm is not disrupted. During an operation, especially if it seems a long-drawn one or launched at night time, drugs such as Modafinil could be prescribed for wakefulness which does so without elevating mood or bending mind. All this is easier said than done because in the communities of ambitious, dynamic, competitive, productive, progressive, and successful people, sleep is generally viewed negatively and often treated with disapproval as something which is just a primitive burden and a waste of time. How unfortunate and how very untrue! It is natural to get sleep—a thing known to us all but little do people realise today that it is indeed a wondrous thing which should be experienced, embraced, and enjoyed in abundance each day. In such unfavourably disposed larger sociocultural milieu towards sleep, rescuers can appreciate, accept, pursue, and enjoy sleep only if they know what is sleep, what benefits it brings to them, and what harms it can inflict on them if disrupted and lost. For this reason, sleep education, covering the science and art of sleep is absolutely essential in a hostage rescue force and it should be provided as a part of training. Also, routine conversation and experience sharing on sleep should be a part of culture. Sleep must be viewed as functional, productive, and desirable by all members of hostage rescue force because only then, we can have well rested and fully alert rescuers available all the time to operate.

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IV Needless to say, we cannot afford to field and make do with incoherent, under responsive, or unsober men. Alcohol, then, must be proscribed as much as sleep is prescribed for the perpetual operational readiness of rescuers of a hostage rescue force. Alcohol is a problem because unlike drugs, it is openly embraced and enjoyed, socially and individually. Evidenced on a sophisticated and detailed analysis of drug harms, British neuropsychopharmacologist and psychiatrist David Nutt concludes that alcohol is the most harmful drug although it is not classified as a drug. He writes, “Alcohol is a toxic substance. If it were discovered today, it would be illegal as a foodstuff. The safe limit of alcohol, if you applied food standards criteria, would be one glass of wine a year.” Unbelievable but true! On how alcohol works and affects brain, Nutt writes, “Each message travels along the neurone via electricity, but the connection that bridges the gap between neurones – called the synapse – is chemical. The chemicals that bridge those gaps are called neurotransmitters. . . . It – like other drugs – works at the level of this chemical connection. . . . The two neurotransmitters that are the most common and the most powerful, because they are effectively the on–off switch of the brain, are gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glutamate. . . . Glutamate turns on the brain and GABA turns it off. . . . In essence these two neurotransmitters are the core of the brain. They do all the basic work such as sleeping, laying down memories and thinking.” He further explains, “All the various drugs and mind-altering substances that human beings take work on different combinations of neurotransmitter and neuromodulator systems. Alcohol is one of the most promiscuous of drugs, in that it affects a lot of different types of receptors and hence the majority, if not all, of the neurones. Which is why it can give us so many different kinds of effects and experiences. . . . The first thing alcohol does is to turn on the calming GABA system, so you start to feel relaxed. . . . However, if you turn the GABA system on too much, it can switch off parts of the brain you don’t want switched off, for example your judgement or even your consciousness.” Your judgement is impaired first and alongside, your attention, memory, and psychomotor skills too because “the part of the brain that tells you to stay in control – the frontal cortex – is the first part that’s switched off by alcohol.” Another danger of alcohol is that its “tolerance builds up very fast because your brain quickly learns to expect alcohol” and withstand it. So, you go on drinking and end up with a hangover. Nutt explains, “The definition



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of an alcohol hangover is the experience of various unpleasant physiological and psychological effects that follow the medium-to-high consumption of alcohol. . . . The hangover state is a multifactorial event caused by a variety of biochemical and neurochemical changes as well as your personal genetic make-up.” Its cost in hostage rescue context is absolutely unacceptable, for “hangovers can last from a few hours to over 24. And as alcohol affects so many systems in your body and brain, hangover is equally complex, hence the myriad of possible ways to suffer.” He lists forty-seven symptoms of hangover and clarifies that “you’re likely to get your own personal selection of them.” Most worrying symptoms of hangover in our operational context are fatigue, drowsiness, sleepiness, headache, nausea, weakness, reduced alertness, concentration problems, apathy, increased reaction time, clumsiness, agitation, vertigo, memory problems, gastrointestinal complaints, dizziness, stomach pain, tremor, balance problems, restlessness, shivering, disorientation, audio-sensitivity, photosensitivity, muscle pain, confusion, impulsivity, heart pounding, palpitations, tinnitus, nystagmus or involuntary repetitive eye movements, anger, respiratory problems, and anxiety—and, even more worrying is that they are so many of them. In the light of scientific facts enumerated above, there should be no doubt that alcohol is not meant for rescuers and they must find other ways to relax and entertain themselves. Nutt cautions us, “What you drink is as full of psychoactive substances – chemicals that change your brain chemistry – as any other drug.” Motivation to save lives should be so overwhelming and overriding that the addiction discipline of rescuers remains supreme. No alcohol is served in organisational setting and it should not be consumed by members in their private and social lives. For I have presumed that the possession and consumption of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances is illegal, I have left them out of our discussion. Suffice to say, any such drug, illegal or otherwise, must be prohibited and if something is prescribed medically to any member that impairs judgement and performance, then, it must be known to operations and logistics branches. V Logistics is the science and art of moving men and materiel from permanent base to operation’s base. Responsibility of logistics branch, then, is to manage and provide everything that is required for rescue operations. But you can move only what you have and what you control. Therefore, the scope of its activities is quite broad and encompasses all matters concerning equipments, hardware, transportation, accommodation, and supplies, including sourcing and storing,

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maintaining and repairing. In other words, its responsibilities include the management, maintenance, and provision of transport, equipments, hardware, housing, and supplies required for the administration, training, and operations of force. Although it is responsible for assembling and moving men too, their recruitment is carried out by administration branch, their management is supervised by operations branch, and their preparedness is handled by training branch. All major branches have interlinked responsibilities, thus. Provisioning and procurement of everything needed by a hostage rescue organisation is the job of logistics branch. How much of what is required could be calculated by how much of it we would need for normal functioning, training, and operations—but only for a part of inventory and to an extent, for I agree with Edward Tenner that “what appears to be a technological question—how much of anything we really need—is in the end a social one.” Two things are quite important, though. Replacement plan based on certain ‘end of life’ suggested by manufacturer or calculated by some other means should be followed but overused and out of order equipments should be immediately replaced before their standard ‘end of life’ due to excessive wear and tear or accidental damage, which demands a reserve stock of equipments. Machines and devices wear off with use but they also behave, in the words of Tenner, “as though they want to be used” and become still worse when not used. Use it or lose it rule is as much applicable to equipment management as it is to skill and memory retention, therefore, and logistics branch should not fall for a quartermaster mentality of saving regularly and sharing reluctantly. Instead, it must circulate everything routinely for use to keep things ready for operations in good working order. Although military equipments are designed and manufactured to provide extreme environmental performance and tolerances, we must follow scientific care and maintenance routines and store them in moderate and safe environmental conditions for maximum readiness. For safety, explosives are stored in a separate blast resistant structure and ammunition is stored in a separate fireproof magazine. Explosives and detonators as well as grenade bodies and fuses are stored and transported separately. It is critical for operational readiness that ammunition and explosives and other inflammable items are stored in two separate and isolated places each so that the whole stock is not destroyed by an accident. All storage buildings are well lighted and well ventilated. Moisture control and ventilation are necessary means for prolonging the shelf life of stored equipments and for the health of people working in logistics branch. To



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deal with fire hazard, automatic fire detection and suppression infrastructure and adequate firefighting equipments are provided and inspected annually; a professional firefighting plan designed in consultation with and approved by a reputed firefighting agency is necessary too; all rescuers are trained in confidently and competently operating firefighting equipments deployed and systems installed in buildings; firefighting drills are practiced routinely and mock fire exercises are carried out every month. But to prevent fire and its spread in the first place, fire separation method is used in planning the layout of buildings; buildings are contiguous but isolated, in that buildings have open and clear spaces between them for fire separation. Also, fire retardant low smoke zero halogen electrical cables are used with fire rated electrical fittings and fixtures and explosion proof lights in all buildings. Circuit integrity fireproofing to maintain power supply in fire could also be done where required but I do not see a pressing need for it in our context other than, perhaps, to protect emergency siren system. It is highly desirable, however, that fire rated materials are used in constructing, fitting, and furnishing all buildings. Anti-skid and anti-static industrial flooring is recommended to eliminate the hazards of slip and fall and electrostatic discharge in workshops and warehouses. I will prefer a high safety factor of buildings and overengineered safety solutions with redundancies. For a quick and simultaneous exit and entry by multiple teams, warehouses should have multiple wide span doors opened and closed by electric roller shutters having backup cranks for raising and lowering them manually if power or motor fails. Building should be erected on a raised plinth to provide docking bays flush with the floor of transport vehicles to load and unload goods rapidly by simply walking in and out of them without having to lift or lower goods or use a ramp or steps to climb up and down. For coordinating the retrieval of hardware effectively and for immediately eliminating any uncertainty that arises in identifying and counting what must be transferred, all logistics buildings have carefully planned fixed two-way communication system. For a total readiness by keeping things in working order, a routine maintenance of equipments and constant intensive care is absolutely essential. Logistics branch should create a culture of maintenance by documenting and practicing standard technical inspection and preventive maintenance routines for all equipments, prescribing both field cleaning and workshop cleaning protocols and procedures. Post-maintenance testing and function check too is essential in each case which is similarly prescribed and practiced. Maintenance and management of batteries is especially crucial for operations. Maintenance of rechargeable batteries should follow charge cycle recommended by

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manufacturer for long life. Batteries should be recharged in a planned way in order to make a predefined number of fully charged batteries available for operations at any given time. It requires scientific logs, routine testing, and charging infrastructure. Old dry cells or dry batteries should be replaced with new batteries before an operation. But batteries have a limited shelf life and they constantly self-discharge too. Therefore, it is not enough to replace a non-rechargeable battery; it must be replaced with a new battery of latest production batch or manufacturing lot available; replacement, of course, could be done during transit if issued to rescuers before departure. For the cleaning and maintenance of equipments and more besides, logistics branch would need a mechanical workshop, a firearm workshop, an electrical workshop with adequate charging bays, an optoelectronic workshop, and a carpentry workshop. Garages and workshop for motor vehicles are located separately. It has a separate cleaning and decontamination unit with ozone chambers for cleaning personal items and equipments that cannot be washed easily; ultraviolet cabinets could also be used for decontaminating and sterilising certain items. It also has a full range of equipments and dependable capacity for compound cleaning and maintenance. Location of warehouses and workshops should be contiguous. A force should possess technical know-how to fix most troubles of most equipments. Sufficient numbers of tools, gauges, fixtures, trolleys, and work tables should be available in each workshop for carrying out inspection, cleaning, maintenance, repair, and fabrication jobs efficiently. Sufficient racks, cabinets, drawers, and trolleys should be provided for organised storage and smooth transportation. Pneumatic tools for various purposes, including compressed air for cleaning, blowing, and drying tasks are suggested. Investment in good tools is a good investment. In workshops, hand tools should be stored in wheeled trolleys with shape coded foam inserts set in drawers for a neat arrangement, quick retrieval, and easy access. Some portable mechanical and electrical toolkits should also be available for use in operation’s base and for training outdoors. I have used tools manufactured by FACOM, France and found them quite good. For cleaning firearms, I insist that a rescue force uses quality tools and consumables especially one piece cleaning rods with protective sleeves and rotating handles in appropriate bores and lengths. I have used and found equipments made by Parker-Hale, UK, J. Dewey, USA, and Tipton, USA quite good. But I reiterate here that innovation and technology, design and construction in each field and profession keep improving with time, resulting in better products and services. Therefore, you might choose to keep my product recommendations in mind but a decision to buy something should



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be taken carefully and responsibly only after surveying market and comparing all solutions available at the time. Everything in warehouses and workshops should be neat and tidy, methodical and organised everywhere. There should be no mess and clutter anywhere. All cases, boxes, drawers, racks, sections, rooms, and pathways should be methodically coded and information should be displayed on readable and visible labels for easy and fast access. Organisation of information should be such that even a layperson is able to retrieve anything without wasting time or seeking assistance. Hard transport cases of various sizes such as those manufactured by Pelican-Hardigg, USA and Explorer, Italy are very useful and highly recommended. Equipments are kept ready for transfer in these protective cases and all you have to do is to move them from permanent base to operation’s base. Logistics branch must create a culture of safety and make sure that safety procedures are followed without dilution. First aid box is essential and it must be available everywhere; it must also be inspected and replenished regularly. Personal protective equipments to avert injuries, major or minor, shall be used everywhere and safety protocols and guidelines must be observed by all in its premises and operations. VI Any emergency deployment of hostage rescue force with its entire wherewithal might involve three legs of movement—from base to airfield, from there to landing port, and from here to operation’s base, necessitating ground transport at both ends of air transport. Air transport and ground transport at destination port is provided by other agencies; hostage rescue force has its own transport vehicles for marching troops with goods from its base to airfield. For airlifting forces and supplies, both military and commercial aircrafts should be used, depending on what could be flown at the earliest. Logistics and operations branches must have the actual location and condition of every rescuer with them and should be able to call out and assemble entire force effortlessly when needed through control room. When mobilised, all men carry their arms and ammunition which are issued to them permanently and kept ready in backpacks placed in individual lockers along with a standard kit of personal equipments, gears, boots, uniforms, undergarments, sleeping bag, floor mat, mosquito repellent in tropical countries, and more besides. All lockers used to store arms and ammunition have padlocks with unique individual keys given to rescuers and logistics branch has a common master

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key for opening all these locks when contingency arises; I have used such a mechanical padlock system made by Abloy, Finland and found it very useful. Backpacks of rescuers who are asked to report directly at operation’s base are thus taken out and carried by logistics branch. Everything required for staying out of station is kept in operations zone and nothing is required to be fetched from home or marketplace; all that rescuers need to do is to just reach there when mobilised and march for operation’s base after donning uniform and collecting equipments. In fact, individual preparatory actions such as donning uniforms, fitting gears, and preparing equipments could be done while transiting from permanent base to operation’s base; many things are best done during transit to save time. After transit preparation, double-check each other in operation’s base again for ensuring complete operational readiness. All equipments and supplies are carried while training at a distance from permanent base for immediate response so that forces could be deployed from training site itself if called out for operation. Because all men carry their arms and ammunition, a dedicated element for march security or force protection is not required until all men get involved in and occupied with certain tasks. All firearms are stored in ready to fire state. For this, we must clean bore and chamber dry and there should be no lubrication in there after maintenance. Oiling and greasing is better avoided where it could become a problem. Robert Rinker cautions, “Grease in the chamber, regardless of how it got there, takes up space and decreases the volume. It can prevent the case neck from expanding and releasing the bullet until there is a dangerous build-up of pressure.” Like all machines, our guns might as well develop problems and stop working at any time and that is why a backup pistol is carried by each rescuer. But a handgun is no match to a shoulder fired gun. For there is no time to repair and only an exchange is possible at best, my advice is that a couple of submachine guns or compact assault rifles used by assaulters with a sufficient stock of fully charged magazines is kept in a colour coded and labelled backpack and one such pack is placed in all forward reserve posts inside terrorist stronghold. Spare batteries, sights, and flashlights should also be similarly stocked and kept at forward reserve posts. A hostage rescue force would need to figure out how its striking squads would carry a large quantity of hand grenades and breaching charges with them and whether they would be self-reliant or need the replenishment of supplies from operation’s base or stronghold itself, for one cannot carry so



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many hand grenades and explosive charges on load bearing vests as required to operationalise seek and fix strategy. For quick replenishment, my advice is that primed hand grenades and breaching supplies are stored in separate backpacks and kept at reserve posts. All such emergency supply packs are prepared by specialists and provided by logistics branch. They are colour coded and labelled for quick identification. To avoid crowding of stairway, packs are lined and stacked along walls and in corners and should not become tripping hazard. All men at forward reserve posts too place themselves methodically to make sure that stairways are not crowded and clogged and the lines of operation remain always clear for rapid movement. Standard operating procedure describes the details of logistic support provided inside stronghold for contingencies. Site selection for setting up operation’s base is done by a team of logistics branch which moves out first along with forward detachment as soon as it is realised that a mass hostage crisis might be taking place. Logistics branch organises places to stay, rest, stage, and operate from. It coordinates all other matters including medical support at operation’s base—both pre-hospital treatment and casualty evacuation to definitive care hospital. National mandate and legal framework make sure that the active and fullest cooperation of all government agencies and departments is extended to hostage rescue force for conducting rescue operations. Nonetheless, hostage rescue organisation is prepared to become the least burden on others who are already much strained in a crisis. Food and water is sourced locally but it is always good to carry some packaged food and water for immediate consumption; sufficient cash is available too for procuring supplies and arranging accommodation in case local administration and authorities due to any reason cannot provide desired support. Standard list of items and scale is used for sourcing supplies locally. Alongside operational and general equipments, logistics branch maintains a stock of equipments required for setting up operation’s base such as foldable tables and chairs, ropes, barrier or barricade tapes, traffic cones, rapidly deployable modular field tents, portable lighting systems, and more besides. Portable and versatile fire extinguishers are essential safety equipment and must be stocked and made available in operation’s base; based on my experience of testing and using it, I recommend water mist technology. These equipments are useful for training outdoors as well. VII Operations branch is the official time keeper of hostage rescue organisation. It is responsible for synchronising all public timepieces installed in all zones

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and encouraging all members to habitually follow official time at all times. I recommend an Ethernet based digital clock system which connects all clocks through local area network to a personal computer loaded with time synchronising software and a Global Positioning System receiver for uniform time synchronisation based on Global Positioning System time. Global Positioning System is a true time source and its receiver makes your computer a local network time server. Your system, then, becomes independent of internet and its time servers for obtaining actual time, thereby keeping your local area network truly local and totally secure. Also, the actions and events of power off and power failure do not affect this system because slave clocks are also real time clocks which keep ticking inside and instantly display exact time after the resumption of power supply and they all get uniformly synchronised after master computer is turned on. This clock system should have total area coverage inside the compound of hostage rescue unit, which means that clocks are prominently displayed in all places where people are present individually and collectively to work, train, and socialise in all three zones. These clocks could be deployed outdoors in weatherproof housing; double-sided clocks mounted on poles could also be used in open spaces. Time server could be placed in control room but it must perpetually remain offline as all other computers of local area network are; for additional safety, computer hardware could be configured by physically disabling all ports to foreclose any interaction and exchange with the external world. VIII The moment it is discerned by leadership that a complex terrorist crisis has occurred, standard operating procedure for emergency force mobilisation is activated. Control room activates call out procedure; operations branch mobilises entire force and despatches forward detachment; logistics branch assembles forces and equipments and organises ground transport and air transport, covering all three legs of movement of forward detachment followed by main rescue force. Honestly, coordinating many different activities and actions within and, more importantly, with various supporting outside agencies and authorities for the mobilisation and translocation of force is the most challenging and difficult part of operation; operation itself is not as uncertain, for seek and fix strategy is independent of variables not controlled by rescue force inside stronghold and, hence, it could be operationalised immediately after a go ahead is given by political command. In order to efficiently and smoothly manage these first intricate and elaborate sets of multifarious actions, control room as well as the offices of chief commander and deputy commander with their staffs are contiguous and creatively divided



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by stackable acoustic partition walls. When these partitions are collapsed, it becomes a one big joint action centre with a large round table at the centre of this space with all communications facilities including hotlines already installed and available on it and control room, staffs, and offices located around it for coordinating many and various actions related to operations and logistics branches simultaneously. Control room is responsible for emergency call out by sounding alarm and sending alert. Alarm is sounded by activating a siren system and alert is sent by employing a mobile application. I wish paging technology still existed and we had good old pagers but we can make do with a purpose-built emergency use friendly mobile application created for an exclusive use of hostage rescue force to alert all members in an emergency. All members have this application installed on each mobile connection and handset used by them. On receiving an alert, a rescuer instantly leaves for base from wherever he might be—if he is not sick or attending someone seriously sick in family; his leave stands cancelled in other cases. Information regarding his receiving call out message and departing for base too is transmitted back to control room. Besides relying on call out application, the alternative means of contacting a rescuer are also catalogued in advance and used if required such as landline number, intercom number, and the mobile numbers of family members and neighbours. Before leave of a rescuer is sanctioned, his return schedule is entered in system and his emergency recall plan is worked out based on this information as discussed in section two above. When leaving base temporarily, intimation must be given by rescuers to control room with information on the nature of work, errand, or engagement, places planned for visit, the expected time of arrival, and the mobiles of people accompanying and meeting who could be contacted in case direct contact with rescuer is not established. Also, such short-term absence from base is regulated by certain rules and norms. Control room is operated by operations branch and it is functional all the time, day and night. Its main responsibility is to observe any signs of crisis happening anywhere which might become a mass hostage situation and to take immediate actions as detailed in standard operating procedure and guided by personal judgement. It is a general coordination hub of organisation too which supports all kinds of routine and contingent jobs and functions. Also, it operates warning and alert systems for emergency call out. Security surveillance terminals and other information monitoring systems that require a constant watch too are installed here for detecting events and initiating actions.

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In control room, two persons are always present to receive phone calls, watch television news, and monitor mobile news applications for alerts in case any emergency is reported anywhere which might involve hostage rescue organisation sooner or later. They also monitor internal information and surveillance systems. In night shift, though, by taking turns one person sleeps and the other remains awake and keeps a constant vigil; sleeping mate is woken up for taking necessary actions if something interesting is noticed by his vigilant partner. A compound security detail is always present in a separate security room adjacent to control room for emergency response; its vehicles are parked outside, loaded and ready for combat. Its members randomly patrol and always remain on call; at night they sleep together in a dormitory located besides their duty room for quick response; they are allowed to sleep at night as no one is required until a security breach is reported. A day shift in control room should not be too long as operators are required to be fully alert and attentive throughout; a six-hour day shift is ideal while a twelve-hour night shift is doable. Shift change in control room is a crucial event and transition from old shift to new shift should be smooth. Outgoing shift should brief incoming shift elaborately, about everything for maintaining a continuity of ongoing, pending, and upcoming tasks; important developments that happened earlier should also be informed, even if no more action is required. Such briefing makes sure that handover is indeed complete; it is essential for an effective and uninterruptible functioning of control room. IX When called out for operation, each man knows exactly where to go and what to do and acts in accord with standard operating procedure on operational mobilisation and experience gained from dry drills and mock rehearsals carried out in peacetime. It all ensues from one action taken by control room. Everything, then, boils down to a decision taken by force commander and a go ahead given to control room for a call out. This remains the most important problem of rapid response in a complex terrorist crisis, even if everything else is lined up and ready to respond at any time. The reality in human context is not what it is but its realisation that it is; anything that is not known, for all practical purposes, is nothing and does not exist. But there is a vast difference between sensing and realising, for it is possible that we hear and see things but fail to realise at the time the true nature of events, pace with which a situation is evolving, and the



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extent and implications of crisis that is building up. Without and before a correct realisation of complex terrorist crisis, it is not possible to make correct decisions and take right actions to deal with it. Early realisation is unquestionably crucial for success but how do we do it? Let us revise what we have already discussed abundantly. After acquiring information from environment mediated by sensory organs, brain processes it by comparing with the stored information of past experience and constructs a reality model in mind by pattern match to make sense of the world, its past, present, and future. Our decisions and actions are based on this imagined view of the world that we construct in our consciousness to understand, interpret, and intervene in the real world that exists outside us. Our success in building the right mental model of the reality is the basis of correct realisation of a situation we are facing. The moment our mental algorithms truly match with the real world is the point at which we correctly realise as to what exactly is happening out there. This is the most critical event at our end for resolving a crisis early because past this point, we are in sync with the real world and in a much better position to make correct predictions, take right decisions, and initiate effective actions. There is a problem, however, because the first, initial, and preliminary information of complex crisis is always incomplete, incorrect, fictitious, and full of contradictions. It must be treated with the utmost caution and recipient must assume that contents are not correct and accurate and our sense of the world would change as information develops with time. This is how you can deal with it: Doubt you must at this stage but do not discard information entirely as it might be conveying some part of the reality too, which is unknown at the time. Instead, strip it down to its bare essence to grasp a central message it is communicating, that is, an incident like this or that has happened whose actual details might be very different from what is being told now. Ask for more information and seek specific details regarding incident and also about the sources of information and give directions on efforts and resources required to be mobilised for getting more reliable and accurate information. Be a sceptic and imagine various possibilities in the context of incident that early information is indicating. Formulate your response plan soon after first information is received and refine it as you get more information. In early stages, all information, plans, and preparations are tentative and treated as provisional. Keep things flexible and adapt rapidly with time and new facts. Do not treat anything with certainty and do not blame anyone for misguiding or misleading; it happens always and it happens everywhere. If you try to ascertain the facts and

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obtain accurate information, you might be late in your response. Accuracy of information cannot be given a greater importance over the rapidity and speed of information flow. Let it flow, unhindered and freely; filters could be applied at receiving end and directions could be given from command to field to gather more reliable and accurate information. At command level, it is better to share only essential information with higher formations without many details, for facts would change with time. If you are required to file a written report amidst uncertainty, use this template: This is provisional information known at the time. A part of it might change with time as more information trickles in. Active efforts are being made to solicit and develop accurate information. Next paragraph gives incident report. If each level of chain of command has this basic understanding of fictitious nature of preliminary information of crisis, it would control a runaway confusion that often occurs and eclipses a decisive response due to a constant bombardment of incorrect and incomplete, conflicting and contradictory information in the early stages of a complex crisis. Even if you are always aware that the first information of incident is more likely to be incomplete and incorrect than not, you cannot do anything about it other than being sceptical, asking questions, demanding more information, generating alternative hypotheses, and preparing for the worst. One way to deal with the problem of information creatively is by consciously and habitually aligning our view of the world with our occupational roles and responsibilities. In our case, for instance, if you see a shadow moving in darkness, think it is a man, not an animal; if there is an explosion, assume it is a blast of grenade or bomb, not of tyre or transformer; if you hear a crackling sound resembling gunfire, presume it is a terrorist shooting, not a gang war being fought on the streets, and certainly not some firecrackers set off by naughty children. Such gross initial assumptions and hypersensitive presumptions dictated by our occupational bias might and would be mostly wrong but by relying on them, we would make an error of caution and complexity, which is a choiceworthy error to make in a crisis than committing a grave error of credulity and simplicity. You can never prepare for contingency with a presumption that it is not likely to happen. You can only prepare when you believe that it is going to happen. And, a quick false start is better than and preferable to a late correct start when dealing with a complex crisis. A hostage rescue organisation should also undertake a research project to study all complex terrorist crises in early phases from the first sign of crisis to the final realisation of crisis in order to map a tree of events and the



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timeline of progression of situation to learn lessons by identifying missed signals and overlooked points where a realisation of crisis could have occurred and decision for operational mobilisation could have been taken. This critical aspect of failure of early anticipation, recognition, and decision is either not discussed at all or mentioned in passing without much investigation and analysis when crises are studied later. It is crucial because ambiguity and uncertainty shall remain the hallmark of complex terrorist crises and what has happened in past crises will happen in future crises too. For realising early on that a complex terrorist crisis is developing, I suggest three simple rules: 1. If attack or fighting or explosion is reported from a place of mass gathering which is ideal for mass killing or mass hostage-taking such as school, college, university, hostel, theatre, shopping mall, industrial compound, big hospital, large hotel or resort, and more besides, consider it a complex terrorist crisis. 2. If attack or fighting or explosion is reported from multiple places in a city, consider it a complex terrorist crisis. 3. If attack or fighting or explosion is reported from multiple cities, consider it a complex terrorist crisis. You do not need confirmed intelligence from any agency or confirmation from any authority; television, internet, and social media news is good enough to give you information necessary to make up your mind. Building a right mental model of the reality early on would always remain a challenge in every situation and the probability of making an error would always be high, thus. But it is not enough as problem does not end with the formation of right mental model. It is in order to restate what we have discussed at length that things could and would go wrong beyond this point too. We must, then, update our mental model by constantly matching our predicted line of future events with the actual line of ongoing events and strive to constantly compensate, adjust, and fine-tune our mental model to be with the reality, failing which our course of action would increasingly diverge from the real course of evolving situation that we are trying to control. X In a complex terrorist crisis, two things in the control of hostage rescue organisation are half the battle: If organisational leadership is able to realise

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that a mass hostage crisis has occurred by correctly deciphering early signs and signals coming from the place of occurrence which are invariably incorrect and incomplete, ambiguous and misleading. And, acting upon the foresight of its leadership, if logistics branch is able to successfully and rapidly mobilise and transfer all organisational resources to the place of occurrence. Rest would depend on what kind of men were selected by administrative branch and how they were prepared to execute seek and fix strategy inside a complex terrorist stronghold by training branch and leadership. Leaders of organisation, then, become a decisive factor in the success of a hostage rescue force and the role of these few men is what we will discuss in the next chapter.

Chapter 17 Leadership

I Leaders are there to lead their followers. They inspire, motivate, and guide their followers to achieve certain goals. But I have laid great emphasis on the overarching role of self throughout and continually argued that a self-regulated man needs no extrinsic motivation or any external source of inspiration to excel and achieve. This raises an obvious question: Do self-regulated men still need a leader and if yes, for what? I have also argued that it is the culture of organisation that turns ordinary men into exceptional rescuers, possessing necessary moral virtues that generate an unstoppable intrinsic drive to save life. This raises another relevant question: Who creates such a culture? In this chapter, we will dwell upon these questions in some detail and more besides. II I will answer second question first. Culture of organisation is created by a few men at the helm, both founders and successors, who build and nurture a hostage rescue force. Let us call them all leaders for now. We will first discuss the type of leadership appropriate for a hostage rescue force and the qualities of man at the helm. Leadership model for a hostage rescue force is best described by a paradigm of formal organisational theory which segregates leadership into two types called transactional and transformational. Transactional leadership is defined by a reciprocal relationship between leader and followers, which involves the exchange of something with another. It is based on some sort of give and take arrangement in which leader distributes reward and punishment for the actions and omissions of followers. Nature of such leadership is formal and impersonal and the culture of such organisation is bureaucratic. Transformational 665

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leadership, on the other hand, is motivational and inspirational in nature. Through their personal touch and charismatic personality, transformational leaders empower their followers and turn them into creative, responsible, and proactive individuals who are able to discern and realise their true potential and go on to deliver exceptional performance individually and achieve extraordinary outcomes collectively. American organisational theorists Bernard Bass and Ronald Riggio argue that transformational leaders possess four qualities and describe them as follows: 1. Transformational leaders behave in ways that allow them to serve as role models for their followers. The leaders are admired, respected, and trusted. Followers identify with the leaders and want to emulate them; leaders are endowed by their followers as having extraordinary capabilities, persistence, and determination. 2. Transformational leaders behave in ways that motivate and inspire those around them by providing meaning and challenge to their followers’ work. Team spirit is aroused. Enthusiasm and optimism are displayed. Leaders get followers involved in envisioning attractive future states; they create clearly communicated expectations that followers want to meet and also demonstrate commitment to goals and the shared vision. 3. Transformational leaders stimulate their followers’ efforts to be innovative and creative by questioning assumptions, reframing problems, and approaching old situations in new ways. Creativity is encouraged. There is no public criticism of individual members’ mistakes. New ideas and creative problem solutions are solicited from followers, who are included in the process of addressing problems and finding solutions. Followers are encouraged to try new approaches, and their ideas are not criticized because they differ from the leaders’ ideas. 4. Transformational leaders pay special attention to each individual follower’s needs for achievement and growth by acting as a coach or mentor. Followers and colleagues are developed to successively higher levels of potential. Individualized consideration is practiced when new learning opportunities are created along with a supportive climate. Individual differences in terms of needs and desires are recognized. The leader’s behavior demonstrates acceptance of individual differences (e.g., some employees receive more encouragement, some more autonomy, others firmer standards, and still others more task structure). A twoway exchange in communication is encouraged, and “management by walking around” workspaces is practiced. Interactions with followers



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are personalized (e.g., the leader remembers previous conversations, is aware of individual concerns, and sees the individual as a whole person rather than as just an employee). The individually considerate leader listens effectively. The leader delegates tasks as a means of developing followers. Delegated tasks are monitored to see if the followers need additional direction or support and to assess progress; ideally, followers do not feel they are being checked on. It goes without saying that we need transformational leaders to raise and run a hostage rescue force. Here is, then, the answer to first question: Even though self-regulated rescuers can do without him, a good leader is always useful to hostage rescue force but, more importantly, no such self-regulated force can come into existence in the first place and survive as such afterwards without good leadership—hence a leader. III The above theory clarifies many points but leaves some questions unanswered. In organisational context where a group of people is defined by a purpose and governed by a system, we should conceive leaders and leadership clearly and use these terms carefully to avoid semantic contamination and consequent confusion. For example, could there be a transactional leader; should we call all heads and chiefs of organisations leaders only because they occupy a position at the top; how a commander is different from a leader. I will make an attempt below to answer these and some such confounding questions for the sake of clarity. A leader is not a commander. A leader leads his followers; a commander controls his subordinates. A commander needs to have just subordinates but a leader must have followers. Followership is the other side of leadership as subordination is the other side of command. Matter of choice, free will, and belief make these two notions different from each other. Leading requires belief and agreement while commanding requires obedience and conformity. Actions of followers are unforced and voluntary, not forced and compulsory, and they emanate from free will. Subordinates have no such choice; the will of commander is imposed on them by authority and power vested in commanding position. Commanding is positional whereas leading is personal. It is understood that there cannot be leadership without followership but a relevant question to ask is: Where does a leader take his followers to? A leader leads his followers in a direction where they might not have gone if left on their own. In this sense, leadership is essential for changing an

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organisation in a fundamental way where internal or external forces to such change are absent or weak. Conversely, it can be argued that leadership is also required to resisting and averting a fundamental change where internal or external forces to change are strong and active and if left unchecked, would bring about such a change. A leader could be transformative or toxic. Whether a leader is transformative or toxic is determined jointly by the purpose of organisation and by the effects of change brought about by leadership on the wider world beyond organisation. Transformative leaders bring about good, desirable, and right changes and resist bad, undesirable, and wrong changes. Toxic leaders are the exact opposite of transformative leaders and their leadership is invariably disastrous, full of pain and suffering for many. Toxic or transformative and, irrespective of his urge and ability to change, a leader has to have enough time in organisation to bring his will to bear upon the world; a short term at the helm of organisation is not enough for a leader to realise his potential for change. While commanders can do with and thrive on the uncritical conformity and concurrence seeking behaviours of their subordinates, leaders cannot if they are not toxic. Transformative leadership is born out of such conviction of followers that arises from a total clarity of mind for which doubting and questioning are absolutely essential. Not all organisational chiefs are leaders nor all chiefs are required to be leaders. To put it differently, not all organisations need a leader especially mature and developed organisations do not need them at all. When a fundamental change is not required to be realised or resisted, an organisation needs a manager instead, not a leader. A good manager continues to steer organisation ably by maintaining its general health and keeping it on a defined track and desirable course. Such managers, however, are not ineffectual, inactive, or indifferent persons, in that they do generate, inject, and channel energies continually to keep organisation on its ideal trajectory. And, for this, they do introduce incremental changes here and there, every now and then without altering and affecting the basic structure and underlying rationale of organisation, for a change that affects and alters the basic structure, foundational principles, and core values of organisation is a fundamental and radical change which is not needed there. Leadership is a potential that remains inside a person and flows only on a right occasion when it is desirable to change radically or resist a radical change.



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It is a quality which is essential in a person heading an organisation but it is equally desirable that this personal quality is activated and tapped only when essential. Sagacity, wisdom, foresight, control, and morality, then, are the hallmark of a leader and in the absence of these strengths of character, a leader becomes toxic and introduces pathological change. It is the past of a man that reveals his leadership potential or its absence, not always the present where it manifests only when a need for change is felt personally. A manager in this case could be a leader and should have leadership potential. Irrespective of type, transformative or toxic, a leader is characterised by creativity and confidence, energy and enthusiasm, and drive and desire for change. A leader need not necessarily possess imagination and vision for change. Ideas and impetus for change could be generated by any insider or outsider but only a man at the top of organisation can take decisions which bring these ideas to bear upon the world. For this reason, such persons who act as think tank and powerhouse, inspiration and engine and play an undeniably critical and catalytic role in bringing about organisational change cannot be called organisational leaders, their instrumental and pivotal role in organisational decisions and change management notwithstanding. Because of their positional constraints, they can only spur and navigate, not lead an organisation, for authority and power are essential prerequisites for leading. In their case, it could be forcefully argued that a change is not possible without the catalytic presence of such agents but it is also entirely inconceivable here that they could change without there being a leader to change. At this juncture, such persons are clearly not leaders but they do unmistakably display their potential for leadership by their imagination and actions and could as well become future leaders if they are propelled by favourable circumstances to the top of an organisation where they also feel a need and necessity for change and get enough time to change. IV To have a complete social influence, a leader of hostage rescue force should be the embodiment of all moral virtues and occupational competencies we have discussed in this book and he should be a model rescuer himself in every sense of the word. Having said that, I must qualify that expertise takes time to become and could be acquired no sooner than it takes to emerge. It comes to be when a man by means of his immense experience in a field

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of knowledge and activity has crystallised a rich bank of useful insights to solve unstructured problems and is able to bring such insightful suggestions to his awareness rather reflexively from his vast unconscious memory at any point of time. It is, thus, more probable than not that a leader might not become a genuine expert in every field of activity he is concerned with, in that he might not be able to readily offer useful solutions to all novel problems which organisation might face. But his knowledge base in each field of concern must be such that he is able to confer with and understand genuine experts fully and cannot be misled by inappropriately motivated or short-sighted experts in taking certain decisions which might not be in the best interests of his organisation as a whole in that situation. Acquisition of such credible knowledge and dependable far-sightedness in all fields of specialisation concerning his organisation shored up by a sharp overview of organisation and its purpose is what would make him what I call a general expert who may not have expert-level insights in each field but who still seems like an expert, is able to see the big picture more clearly and completely than others, has a foresight far broader and more distant than others, and remains the most capable man to lead a rescue organisation as envisaged here. This requirement also highlights that a long and extended period of serving in various positions in hostage rescue organisation before reaching the top is utterly imperative for developing a transformative leadership needed there. We cannot parachute people into the position of leadership from outside for a few years and replace them in a bureaucratic fashion every now and again and still expect them to lead or manage an organisation in ways they must. It is impossible for a passing outsider. While a sharp intellect and a large knowledge base are a must for a leader, equally important are youthful vigour, boundless energy, and tireless efforts displayed consistently in his behaviour. Similarly, hopefulness, decisiveness, and determination are the essential traits of his character. These qualities are required in all rescuers equally but they have far greater impact when the infectious personality of a leader reflects them. An abundant and unbounded life force of a leader extraordinaire has a profound transformative power which not only enlivens spirits, enlightens minds, and vitalises bodies of his men but also electrifies environment in ways that even outsiders do unmistakably feel some kind of positive energy flowing all around in space there. Such a man need not make long eloquent speeches to motivate his men, for a few simple words spoken by him are enough to inspire them all. Though such an accomplished man would have no paucity of words to speak, he still needs to be cautious about what he speaks and for how long. Harangues laced



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with repetitiousness not only have little effect on his men, they could in fact be damaging for his impression on them and might even give ammunition to belittling him behind his back or in their minds at least. Rescue is a serious business where sanguine leaders are useful. A rescue organisation is not a place for demagoguery and rescuers need no rabble-rousing. Rescuers are intrinsically motivated individuals and their leaders and managers must keep this in mind while speaking to them. On this, I would suggest that every leader and manager heeds the advice of Napoleon Bonaparte: “It is not harangues that make them brave in the midst of the shooting: old soldiers scarcely listen to them; young ones forget them at the first cannon shot. . . . A deed by a beloved general, who is esteemed by his troops, is worth as much as the best harangue.” V In hostage rescue, leadership is actually required before a complex terrorist crisis occurs. In fact, far more important is the role of leaders and managers in creating, arming, equipping, training, preparing, and managing a hostage rescue force before and after the occurrence of a complex terrorist crisis rather than during it. In actual operations during crisis, the primary role of superior commanders who sit in operation’s base is the mobilisation of men and materiel and the coordination of various activities carried out by many different agencies and authorities which are necessitated to support a rescue operation. In addition to mobilising force, managing logistic operations, and coordinating inter-agency affairs, they manage operation’s base, plan operations, and reinforce and reorganise active elements deployed inside stronghold from time to time as required during action. But nothing is more important for commanders than a quick realisation that a complex terrorist crisis has indeed occurred, for only such realisation would make use of all preparations done painstakingly before a crisis and impart meaning to the very existence of a hostage rescue force. Leaders and managers must be fully aware and accept the fact that their command and control function in a theatre of operation is limited in space by a glass wall that exists at release point which is the point of no return for rescuers. Beyond this point, all active elements and squads operate rather autonomously on the strength of their members’ selfregulated decisions and self-controlled actions. Combat and rescue remain and must be spontaneous and autonomous; rescuers do not and must not need command intervention. However hard everyone might try in organisations, leaders and managers included, mistakes will happen nonetheless. The only effective way to deal

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with errors, mistakes, and failures, then, is to collectively learn correct lessons from them and strive not to repeat the same again. American organisational theorist Amy Edmondson, however, cautions that learning from mistakes is easier said than done unless there is a culture of learning in organisations. She advises, “Given that human error will never disappear from organizational life, an important management issue thus becomes the design and nurturance of work environments in which it is possible to learn from mistakes and collectively to avoid making the same ones in the future.” Organising is a highly energy intensive activity. Leaders and managers must know that with time order degrades and entropy rises. It happens everywhere in the world and their organisations are no exception to this rule. Right initial conditions and a constant inflow of energy thereafter are essential for realising and maintaining the state of high degree of order and, failing that, an organisation would degrade to a state of equilibrium where it survives by delivering minimum necessary performance with minimum efforts and energy, which is determined by specific occupational and social contexts it exists in. This state could be visualised as the maximum entropy available to an organisation. An organisation starts to degrade at the first opportunity of energy deficit created by relented efforts, shifting baselines, and normalised deviance. It continues to slide down and degrade and is naturally attracted towards mediocrity, inertia, and complacency. Easy ways and shortcuts of doing things then become a way of life. When it happens, in just a decade or so, an organisation becomes so far removed from its origins that its past successes count for nothing. Standards achieved once could be sustained afterwards only by a continuous supply of certain amount of energy that brought such order into existence. And, you would need to pour more energy to improve it and supply more afterwards to sustain a higher state of order and organisation achieved. Organising, then, is a continuous and unending process and leaders and managers must be always watchful of the state of order and zealously guard the fundamental principles of organisation that brought it into existence. In the light of this fact, my advice to the leaders and managers of hostage rescue organisation is that they should devote their major time and attention to moral values and valued notions practiced by members as well as to the culture and environment of organisation and minimal time and attention to administration, which usually keeps them occupied and busy most of the time. Crisis, crisis realisation, and crisis decision-making as well as expertise and expert team building along with errors and failures should get their good time and attention while strategy and tactics besides learning and readiness should also be given sufficient time and attention. It is schematically shown in figure 17.1.

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A Moral Values and Valued Notions Culture and Environment B Crisis, Crisis Realisation, and Crisis Decision Expertise and Expert Team Building Errors and Failures C Strategy and Tactics Learning and Readiness D Administration D

C

A B

Time and Energy Distribution of Leaders and Managers Figure 17.1

VI Leaders and managers of hostage rescue force might like to additionally consider following suggestions. Teach morality and organisational culture as well as the recommended writings of Stanley Milgram, Philip Zimbardo, and Irving Janis personally so as to have the profoundest impact on newcomers. Regulate discussions and deliberations creatively and positively to manage both time and objective without curtailing free and frank opinions. A culture of morality notwithstanding, always be mindful of the possibility of social discord that might arise clandestinely from undisclosed interpersonal matters such as sexual desires, indecent advances, and extramarital relations in the community of rescuers.

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Avoid giving an operation a military style name: Operation this or that. It is always one and the same thing: Hostage rescue operation. All temptations that glamorise or trivialise the moral value of rescue ought to be avoided. Exploit your intuition. It comes not from nowhere but from information and knowledge stored in your brain. It might be erroneous but it might also be relevant, even critical. This is important for every rescuer but all the more so for leaders and managers whose personal decisions have wider implications and impact too many individuals. You need not follow your intuition each time but do not discard an intuitive suggestion either without giving it a careful thought and consideration. Sometimes, you might not have empirical evidence, factual data, or scientific explanation to prove your point and you might still feel strongly and negatively about something. In such a situation, do not reject or set aside your apprehensions brusquely, for it might be your intuitive knowledge gained from a lifetime of experience cautioning you. When it happens, frankly share your feelings and apprehensions with colleagues and make decisions only after consulting other experts and carrying out risk analysis jointly. VII About ants, Deborah Gordon writes: Because ants are separate beings that move around freely, they attract attention as individuals. But nothing ants do makes sense except in the context of the colony. The basic mystery about ant colonies is that there is no management. A functioning organization with no one in charge is so unlike the way humans operate as to be virtually inconceivable. There is no central control. No insect issues commands to another or instructs it to do things in a certain way. No individual is aware of what must be done to complete any colony task. Each ant scratches and prods its way through the tiny world of its immediate surroundings. Ants meet each other, separate, go about their business. Somehow these small events create a pattern that drives the coordinated behavior of colonies.

This must be the vision of all leaders and managers of hostage rescue organisation. In an adaptive organisation, the locally rational actions of individual members cause and create a successful global behaviour, which can solve complex problems much more efficiently and spontaneously than a central command-based organisation that monitors, controls, directs, and coordinates the actions of individuals through dedicated resources located



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remotely to achieve a goal. Though inconceivable, it is not impossible to achieve an adaptive state of human organisation if certain fundamental ingredients are arranged carefully at the very beginning and time and energy are supplied thereafter to let them interact, build on themselves, and emerge into a complex adaptive system. Goal clarity, moral values, and valued notions together with seek and fix strategy and fighting tactics needed to effectuate it could constitute those few simple rules that would create an adaptive hostage rescue unit ready for resolving a complex terrorist crisis with minimal loss. Expert teams of such force would, then, be no different from the flocks of birds, the schools of fish, the swarms and colonies of insects, and the packs of wolves which self-regulate and self-organise and remain resilient and functional in a continually changing environment by rapidly, spontaneously, and locally responding and adapting to external stimuli. Through endless feedback loops that reverberate and travel throughout system without a central control and plan, such collectives come to possess a kind of intelligence that no individual can and acquire a degree of resilience that no component can. A faithful and repeated application of some simple rules by all individuals makes them behave like a superintelligent superorganism. It is indeed conceivable and achievable in human organisation.

Chapter 18 Human Communication

I In several previous chapters, we have discussed different aspects of human communication and communications technology. In this chapter, we will recap some of that and briefly discuss operational communication in crisis. For human communication to occur, a message must be exchanged between two individuals. In this process, someone first conceptualises and generates a message which is then transmitted to reach someone else who in turn receives and interprets received message. Communication, thus, involves a sender or originator or speaker or writer at one end and a receiver or listener or reader and interpreter at the other end and the means, method, and medium of transmission in between. A clear, complete, and correct communication of intent and message forms the basis for expected and appropriate action from others. Probability of things going wrong after the event of miscommunication and consequent misunderstanding is very high and then, only a quirk of fate or the intelligence and initiative of receiver or agent can prevent error and failure from occurring. Probability of miscommunication between human beings is fairly high because communication process is quite complex in itself and prone to errors due to the play of technological and environmental factors, experiences and expectations, as well as cultures, beliefs, and emotions while linguistic and lexical intricacies further add to confusion in our formal and informal communication. Our communication, therefore, is unlikely to be perfect in most situations and we must be aware of this fact all the time. To make it good, along with words spoken or written by a person, the context of communication as well as the role, responsibility, and personality of speaker or writer should be borne in mind by a listener or reader, particularly 677

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in interpersonal communication; it is still better if listener or reader is also aware of his own internal states and biases emanating from his beliefs and moods at the same time. It is the responsibility of listener or reader to seek clarification from speaker or writer as regards words and sentences spoken and heard, written and read, and intent and message sent and received so that there is no distortion, confusion, and doubt anywhere, there is no gap between the understanding and comprehension of both persons at both ends, and the purpose of communication is served well. On the other hand, it is the responsibility of communicator to make his intent and message quite clear by elaborating the context of communication, choosing his words carefully and constructing sentences thoughtfully, transmitting his message correctly and clearly, repeating the same message in different words and sentences especially if message is delivered in oral form, and encouraging receiver to ask questions and clarify doubts all along. Q uestions, however, should not be allowed to derail the context and purpose of communication. Communicator should always bear in mind that receiver has no access to his mind and there is a good chance that his message is misunderstood and intent distorted at receiving end. Without such awareness, he might not realise that there exist gaps and holes in his message as to his mind where message is conceived, it would always appear quite clear in both meaning and intent. This strategy is especially productive in organisational and social settings where verbal communication is directed towards multiple receivers. In both interpersonal and social or organisational communication, however, a planned and rehearsed communication is invariably superior to a spontaneous and extempore communication. Similarly, a written communication is generally better and more efficient than a verbal communication if it is drafted with due care and edited well before delivery. A planned and prepared communication which is to be delivered verbally would be more organised and, arguably, more effective too if speaker relies on written notes to guide and direct his speech. In contrast, a spontaneous oral communication is most difficult and vulnerable because a speaker in this situation does not give enough thought to what he speaks and flows naturally as he talks; it becomes all the more risky if it is a dialogue because then, conversation can proceed in any direction and even swerve from the agenda of discussion. We should, therefore, be most careful in such situations. Besides spoken words, voice modulation, its tone and tenor, facial expressions, gestures, and the other aspects of body language and physical appearance are also involved significantly in face-to-face communication and to be more effective, they should be consistent and aligned with a message being delivered. All told, the purpose of communication always has primacy over the optics of delivery and the



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success of communication as well as the competence of communicator should be measured as such. II Crisis communication can be divided into three phases, that is, pre-action, in-action, and post-action communication. In-action phase of communication commences when forces begin to move from release point to stronghold and culminates when search and destroy and search and rescue operations are concluded. Pre-action phase of communication is concerned with mobilisation and staging operations and post-action phase with clearance and withdrawal operations. Purpose of operational communication is to coordinate the actions of numerous rescuers deployed in a theatre of operation in order to achieve immediate tactical objectives and ultimate operational goal, which is saving the lives of hostages. To avert casualties by friendly fire is also a crucial objective of communication in any dynamic armed conflict. A freestyle communication is more susceptible to causing confusion by a misrepresentation and misinterpretation of message at both ends. Therefore, operational communication must be structured, in that all foreseen, anticipated, and probable events and actions have standardised descriptions known to all. But the complexity of world cannot be catalogued and unexpected and novel events would require unstructured and spontaneous communication about which we cannot do much. A good rule of thumb is that most communication done in pre-action and post-action phases is structured and standardised. Also, pre-action and post-action communication should largely be closed loop type in which a message is acknowledged and repeated by receiver before action is initiated for uncertainty reduction. In contrast, in-action messages cannot be communicated in closed loop, for usually there is no time for acknowledging and repeating it; instead, the reception of message is directly followed by action, not follow-up communication, mostly. Main guiding principles for designing operational communication protocols are simplicity, brevity, directness, specificity, and uniformity. For example, to avert friendly fire by alerting snipers, marksmen, and operation’s base before exiting stronghold, announce “All Outside Elements. Coming Out.” Similarly, before entering stronghold, staircase, floor, or room occupied by holding and reserve forces, striking and rescue squads, announce “All Inside Elements. Coming In.” Broadcast on radio as well as sound off loudly twice

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to preclude injury or death by friendly fire due to identification mistake. Avoid using codes which are so fashionable in the military world. While it is difficult, well-nigh impossible in fact, to standardise the full extent of in-action communication, by collective imagination and repeated practice, we can strive to make our communication decisive and definitive, crisp and clear, short and brief and endeavour to standardise it too so that it conveys the same meaning and purpose to all listeners as it is in the mind of speaker. Message should be spoken clearly, correctly, and loudly and should be heard clearly, correctly, and completely by all concerned. What is spoken should be sensitive and relevant to context people are in at that time. In an ongoing and evolving operational situation, the integrity of communication should be maintained by the originator of message, which requires updating it immediately after the reality communicated earlier has altered and receiver might lose touch with the reality if the previous communication is trusted and relied upon and forms the basis for decisions and actions. It is quite possible to communicate effectively especially during action phase if constructive efforts are made jointly to visualise all operational situations beforehand and phrases constructed to communicate them are standardised, documented, catalogued, and rehearsed well by all concerned for actual operations. Each phrase should be critically vetted and validated by imagining and examining all aspects of its usage and context carefully and adversarially before approving it for operational use. For example, “Plate Armour” announced by a rescuer should communicate to all squad members that their target is protected by an armour plate and they should engage his head and pelvis instead of torso. But it is a relevant phrase in combat only if rescuers are using such cartridges as 5.7 × 28 mm, 4.6 × 30 mm, or 5.56 × 45 mm which are able to defeat soft armour but stopped by plate armour. If they are using 9 × 19 mm rounds that are stopped by basic body armour without a plate insert, it becomes wholly useless and irrelevant; it should then be just “Body Armour” for commanding an action of switching the point of aim from torso to head and pelvis. Conversely, “Body Armour” becomes a misleading and risky command in a context where rescuers are employing calibres that pierce soft armour; a terrorist wearing a soft body armour, even a load bearing vest, can confuse and provoke a rescuer to announce “Body Armour” and he might not be wrong in doing that, just that it was not necessary and the consequences of diversion could be dangerous too.



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III It is quite a challenge to understand other person’s mind and intent from his position and perspective in everyday life. It becomes all the more challenging and intractable to understand others in a rapidly evolving and largely fluid situation where there is little time to talk at length. And, to make matters worse, complex situations demand team action while no team work is possible without coordinating the actions of different team members, which is not possible without good communication between them. Is there, then, no way out if communication is the only vehicle for sharing and processing information at team level and making a collection of individuals to behave like a single organism by eliciting cooperation from all agents and effectively coordinating their independent actions? Spontaneous, fluid, and rapid team action with minimal verbal communication is indeed possible and achievable if a reality model is shared by all team members in their minds. All members then would have the same or similar and shared interpretation and understanding of events and situation. It would enable each team member to perceive and read a situation in the same or similar manner and if that occurs and continues with ongoing events, the actions of all men would be in sync with what is desirable in that situation and team action would remain fluid throughout operation, well coordinated and fully synchronised. Such team would fail very rarely if it ever would. This state of shared reality, goal, strategy, and tactics would do away with command element that directs the actions of group members for achieving a goal in an orderly fashion. It would also do away with hypercommunication between team members for coordinating their actions. It would deliver with greatest rapidity and minimal communication because most things would be self-understood by all. This is, then, an ideal state which hostage rescue force, particularly its striking and rescue squads operating in stronghold, should strive for. Shared goal, a shared set of beliefs, a shared view of the world, a shared mental model of situation, shared training, strategy, and tactics, and shared language are the effective means of responding to all non-routine, non-standard, and non-structured situations. Also, there must be no subcultural context of language type and communication style which is used and understood exclusively by a particular group within organisation. IV On the problem of human communication, David Woods and co-authors write, “Attempts to eliminate all sources of ambiguity are fundamentally

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misguided. Examination of language use in human-human communication reveals that language is inherently underspecified, requires the listener (or reader) to fill in gaps based on world knowledge, and to assess and act on the speaker’s (writer’s) intended goals rather than his literal requests. Second, a fundamental competency in human-human communication is the detection and repair of communication breakdowns. Again, error recovery is a key process.” Charles Perrow too comments on the problem of human communication in plain English, “If we stopped to notice, we would observe that our daily life is full of missed or misunderstood signals and faulty information. A great deal of our speech is devoted to redundancy—saying the same thing over and over, or repeating it in a slightly different way. We know from experience that the person we are talking to may be in a different cognitive framework, framing our remarks to ‘hear’ that which he expects to hear, not what he is being told. The listener suppresses such words as ‘not’ or ‘no’ because he doesn’t expect to hear them. Indeed, he does not ‘hear’ them, in the literal sense of processing in his brain the sounds that enter the ear. All sorts of trivial misunderstandings, and some quite serious ones, occur in normal conversation.” What is true for listening is true for reading, even viewing, and this is how our world works. Like everything else in the world, communication too can never be perfect, however hard we might strive. It is a better strategy, then, to learn to react fast and control the consequences of miscommunication than to allocate a disproportionately large amount of resources on making communication perfect.

Chapter 19 A Primer for Politicians

I This is, in fact, the last chapter of book, for what comes next is just an extension of a previous chapter. It is unusual in a sense that it is written not for rescuers but for their political masters in whose hands the power of State is actually centred. Let us recap what is power and State. Power is what allows one to impose one’s will over others and alter the world as one wills. State is what monopolises violence within a defined territory. It is power that gets things done and it is the power of State alone that can create a hostage rescue force as envisioned in this book. In other words, it is only the political rulers of country who can raise such a force and build a credible military capacity to resolve complex terrorist crises with minimal loss. Any politician who resolves to create such a hostage rescue force, however, needs to bear certain things in mind and be absolutely clear-headed before starting the process of building it, which are discussed below. II While the power of State is formally concentrated in the positions held by politicians, for all practical purposes, it is actually exercised by career bureaucrats. They do so by manoeuvring and manipulating the minds of politicians on the strength of arbitrary rules made by bureaucracy itself. All but few politicians are ever able to effectively break free from the web of rules spun continuously around them by bureaucratic rationale and a clerical way of doing things. In the end, thus, politicians paradoxically remain miserably powerless in most spheres of governance in spite of having all the power of State in their hands. So, do not be a prisoner of bureaucracy; all rules are made by men; do use your power to make exception or change rules, 683

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where required. Ignore bureaucratic objections because bureaucracy is more adept in not letting things happen than otherwise; its expertise actually lies in creating problems and placing hurdles than resolving issues and removing obstacles. Nothing is impossible. Recognise and exercise your power to create a new system by new rules and the new ways of doing things for a hostage rescue organisation. It does not cost a fortune to raise and run a hostage rescue force. Even the poorest of States can afford it. So, do not starve it for money because that would tie its limbs and clip its wings. Be as generous as you are in those areas and ideas that interest and fascinate you. Either do it or do not do it but never do it half-heartedly or leave it just a halfway through. If you cannot do it all the way and in its entirety, let it exist as an idea yet to be realised and let someone else do it who really believes in doing it the right way. Entrust the job of raising a rescue force to a man who you trust. Thereafter, do not interfere and let him realise your dream independently. You should be far more wary of choosing people for this responsibility than exercising control over them. Choose your man very carefully if you really want this hostage rescue force to resolve complex crises with minimal loss; you will easily get any number of yes-men but rarely find a ‘no-man’ you need for this job. Among other qualities that he must have as discussed in chapter seventeen, find a man who has courage to say no to your face. Heed the advice of Napoleon Bonaparte on the character of force commander: “Any supreme commander who takes responsibility for executing a plan that he considers bad and disastrous is criminal; he must make representations, insist that it be changed, and, ultimately, offer his resignation rather than be the instrument of the ruin of his own people.” Give the man of your choice full and complete financial and administrative control over organisational affairs and create such administrative structures that make all-encompassing autonomy reside permanently in this organisation and its leadership. Freedom and autonomy in making occupational decisions and allocating required resources for implementing and effectuating professional decisions is absolutely essential for desired outcomes. Remember what Napoleon said on this: “If you handicap me with obstacles of all kinds; if I have to refer every one of my steps to government commissioners; if they have the right to alter my movements, to deprive me of troops or to send me them, do not expect any good to come of it. . . . The government must have complete confidence in its general, allow him great latitude, and simply present him with the objective it wishes to be accomplished.”



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Give your man of choice enough time—a decade at least—to create and perpetuate its unique values, culture, and environment, to standardise, stabilise, and internalise its doctrine and strategy, tactics, techniques, and procedures, and training and teaching methods. Be fully aware that it will take time— ten years at a minimum—to operationalise a hostage rescue force from the time of recruitment of new members. Do have patience, then, for you will not see the ripe fruits of your radical decision to create a hostage rescue force for quite many years. Also, it will take as many more years as wasted in political indecision and bureaucratic wrangling. So, if you really want to do it, you must know that all decisions ought to be taken quickly and a durable autonomous framework of hostage rescue organisation ought to be put in place immediately after it is decided that State must have such capability. Those who do not have tough resolve and strong will to do it should not aspire or attempt it and leave it to someone else instead; given enough time, all crises get resolved anyway, so why worry and go to great pains for it. Do not blow trumpet and beat drum about your hostage rescue force. Resist your temptation for using rescue force as a tool for propaganda in order to gain some political mileage; let it thrive in secrecy and lurk in the shadows where it best flourishes. You should know that terrorists would want to drag a hostage crisis for as long as they could. For hysterical media drama that ensues after a large-scale hostage crisis is as valuable to terrorists as death and destruction done by them, they not only strive to kill as many hostages as they can but also prolong the duration of crisis as much as they can. If you have a mass hostage rescue capacity as imagined in this book at your disposal, do not waste time in unproductive deliberations whether to act or not and when to act. Negotiations in such situations, we know, are out of question. A quick authorisation for using military force is a choiceworthy option than delaying it on account of wasteful and impotent bureaucratic and political discussions. There is another point to it—if you truly believe as you might assert publicly that you do not trade with terrorists, you should have no problem in authorising military force against terrorists. You should also know that after reaching their operation’s base, your forces are fully ready for a rescue operation and they would commence their assault immediately after your clearance; unlike conventional forces, they do not much depend on specific information, intelligence, and planning activities done around a terrorist stronghold which consume time. They employ a unique seek and fix strategy that works everywhere and they are always organised to effectuate it.

Chapter 20 On Sniping

I Not all countries can claim that they have accomplished snipers in their military and police forces and one reason for this is that people there do not conceive and comprehend sniping correctly and completely. There is also an interesting correlation: Countries that do not have developed sniping capability are countries that do not have advanced special operations capability. I decided to write a chapter on sniping because countries for which I wrote this book decidedly lack expertise in sniping. But sniping in itself is a book-length subject and its nuts and bolts are beyond the scope of this book. For this reason, my discussion here is not intended to teach sniping but to tell about it what you need to know before embarking on a journey to build and acquire this remarkable capability. Basic information provided here is crucial because your experience with pistols, submachine guns, assault rifles, and machine guns is not useful in the world of sniping, which is an entirely different and distinct field of knowledge and practice within the family of small arms. In chapter thirteen, we have discussed a few things about sniper rifle and precision ammunition and I have recommended certain calibres for sniping and long range purposes too. We have covered firearm safety in chapter fourteen. In this chapter, we will discuss a few more things about sniper equipments, ammunition, and accessories along with the science and art of sniping in brief for its conceptual understanding. II Who is a sniper? We can answer this question in several ways. If a trained shooter is analogous to an undergraduate student, then, a marksman is one 687

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who has successfully graduated with distinction and a sniper is one who is pursuing his doctoral research. For greater clarity, let us compare a marksman with a sniper. A marksman is consistently accurate at a distance at which his rifle is zeroed. He can also smartly manipulate his rifle system by holdover based on his experience and able to achieve a workable accuracy in a limited region around his zero range, which is not significantly greater than pointblank range where bullet’s trajectory remains within a defined target area or it does not drop enough to leave the given area of target. A sniper, on the other hand, is a master of shooting with a far greater accuracy at unknown distances within the capability of his rifle system. He achieves such precision by employing the measurements and estimations of different variables influencing bullet’s trajectory, doing mathematical calculations based on a vast experience in the field of ballistics, and adjusting his sighting scope scientifically for definitive target engagement. While a marksman has learned the fundamentals of precision shooting, he can consistently shoot precise or tight groups, and he is accurate at his zero range, he cannot model and predict the trajectory of bullet and, resultantly, cannot manipulate his point of aim to accurately engage targets at unknown distances especially at longer ranges by compensating for gravity-induced bullet drop and making corrections for atmospheric effects on bullet during flight, particularly wind. A sniper, however, is able to do precisely what a marksman cannot. A marksman, then, is reliable at short ranges only while a sniper is reliable at all ranges, near or far, short or long. A sniper is also able to engage a moving target with a greater certainty by leading it calculably. Unsurprisingly, a sniper can call his shot by a follow-through of his reticle after fire and he is able to judge correctly as to where did his bullet go based on this feedback. III If I have to tell you one most important thing on which your entire performance as a sniper depends, then, I must tell you what everyone else in this field would: Consistency. Precision of sniper is a result of consistency. For consistency, everything that you do should have a method of doing and everything that you do should be done exactly the same way every time, following its method. The whole process of shooting is rigorously and stringently standardised and ritually repeated whenever you fire, dry or live. In fact, process standardisation includes every single thing that you do as a sniper—positioning, placing, loading, holding, viewing, aiming, breathing, triggering, unloading, reloading, and also cleaning. Call it the general principle of consistency and do remember to follow it at all times.



On Sniping 689

Precision does not like and tolerate variability; shooter is the biggest variable in the system of sniping; he is the weakest link in the chain of consistency. So, pick the best practice followed in every task, standardise the whole series of tasks, and stabilise and memorise your actions by repeated dry and live practice done exactly the same way each time together with a regular visualisation of actions as you do them in the physical world. Everything, then, will gradually fall into place to make you, your rifle, and ammunition as one system. This, in short, is the essence of sniping; everything else is a matter of time and effort invested in the art of sniping and the science of ballistics. IV We cannot conceive a sniper without a sighting scope that allows him to accurately reset his zero as required by the distance of target and atmospheric conditions which bullet would encounter in its flight to target. There are different types of riflescopes. In terms of magnification, a scope is designed to have a fixed or a variable optical system. A variable magnification scope allows you to magnify your target according to your needs and preferences within its lower and upper power limits and also allows you to engage targets at greater distances. It has a more complex optical system and such optics is more expensive too—so much so that a good telescopic sight is even more expensive than rifle and it is worth every penny. A reticle set in first focal plane, that is, between objective lens assembly and image erector lens assembly, expands or shrinks in size as target is enlarged or contracted by changing magnification and it does so by maintaining the same relationship to target, that is, without altering subtension. A reticle positioned in second focal plane, that is, between image erector lens assembly and ocular lens assembly, is calibrated for a particular magnification only and its relationship to target changes as magnification varies, thereby altering subtension. For a shooter, it translates into this—the points of aim and impact do not shift ever in relation to each other in a variable power scope with first focal plane reticle while the point of impact may shift vis-à-vis the point of aim as power varies in a scope with second focal plane reticle; the measurements of first focal plane reticle remain the same when magnification varies while the measurements of second focal plane reticle change when magnification varies. Obviously, a first focal plane optics is more accurate through its range of magnification; it is a superior optical device and more expensive too.

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Elevation and windage turrets and scope’s reticle are constructed to measure in different units, milliradian or minute of angle, and you may choose any unit for adjusting your scope but a simple rule is to follow the standard system of measurement used in your country which you are more familiar with. For example, I would prefer milliradian or mrad turrets and reticle over minute of angle or moa as I use metric system for all measurements and reflexively understand centimetres and metres better than inches and yards. Both are the same as far as shooting is concerned; just use a system that you have been using always. First, mount your scope on your rifle carefully and set it to fit you perfectly before you fire. Oft-neglected ocular focus should be properly adjusted on reticle. Turrets of your scope should track accurately as advertised and told in manual; verify it on range. Scope should also have a parallax adjustment dial to correct parallax error. You get a clear and crisp sight picture when both reticle and target image are focussed at the same point. You get a parallax error which does not let you see a crisp, clear, and stable sight picture when they are focussed at different points. Sun shade, filters, and lens caps are useful scope accessories. For long-range shooting, sight level is also an important accessory to maintain a hold without cant. So, use sight level for cant correction but do verify if your level itself is correct or not. When using a variable power scope, use only as much magnification as necessary to see a target clearly because the lower the magnification, the better it is for a stable sight picture. With magnification, minor body movements and small sighting errors are also magnified and at higher magnification, reticle appears wobbly and unstable all the time. It leads to unnecessary corrections in aiming and provokes shooter to pull trigger with a jerk when for a moment his fleeting reticle is aligned with aim point. A jerky pull of trigger shifts the point of aim before bullet exits barrel and kills accuracy. It is good to co-mount a unit power red dot miniature sight at an angle or atop your scope and zero it for 100 m for emergency use. It also helps acquire a distant target quickly when your scope is set at higher magnification because the higher the magnification, the lesser the field of view. V Prone position is the most stable and preferred position for precision shooting. Assume a comfortable position behind your rifle—in line with rifle—and



On Sniping 691

acquire your natural point of aim. In the natural point of aim, your body remains relaxed so that the effect of your body movements caused by muscular tension on your rifle are neutralised or minimised. Sight picture is crisp and clear and rifle remains at or near the point of aim without muscular control; reticle either does not shift or its shift is negligible after you close your eyes, breathe, or pull trigger; reticle moves up and down naturally with the rhythm of your breathing as you inhale and exhale. For this, your body should not fit your weapon system by adjusting itself to accommodate it. Instead, your rifle and scope should be configured such that they fit and accommodate your body naturally. Scope, stock, cheek rest—all should be mounted and adjusted in a way that rifle system fits your body and allows you to shoot comfortably without unduly straining your muscles. You have found your natural point of aim when all this happens. We can derive certain principles from this most stable position for general application to all standard and expedient field positions. Body should be firmly supported and remain stable; rifle should be correctly and fully bedded in shoulder pocket so as to remain in good contact with body and it should behave as its natural extension; rifle should be controlled with minimal muscular contraction or effort; shooter should be comfortable and his muscles relaxed; shooter should have acquired the natural point of aim; rifle should be steady and supported firmly; barrel should remain free floating, that is, it does not touch or contact any object anywhere. Learn to shoot from various standard and unconventional shooting positions in addition to the most stable and preferred prone position because in a theatre of operation, you might not be able to use prone position for engaging terrorists; in fact, it is more likely than not that you would use some other shooting position in rescue operations. Make sure that your barrel is not resting on or touching anything ever because that will change its harmonics and, in turn, kill its accuracy. Use of tripod is suggested where it could be deployed to give you a stable rifle platform; it is quite possible to carry and deploy one in hostage rescue operation. VI Pull your trigger straight back with a steady force applied in the line of bore for a clean and crisp break of trigger without shifting sight and hold it there for a while, at its rearmost position, after fire without moving rifle or shifting reticle for a feedback by follow-through; do not release and reset trigger before you know and announce to your spotting partner in training as to where you actually hit based on this feedback, that is, before you call

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your shot. Do not push or pull your rifle sideways when pulling trigger by changing the vector of force; it would change your points of aim and impact too. A lot of dry and live fire is required for correct trigger manipulation done consistently. VII We do not do it for other small arms but it is good to break in a new barrel of sniper rifle. There are several ways you can do it. For example, an American barrel manufacturer recommends that you clean barrel before and after firing each round for first five rounds and then clean after every five rounds fired for the next fifty rounds. Cleaning is done each time to remove both carbon fouling and copper fouling. Do not fire aimlessly when breaking in a barrel, though; do use five-round groups for sighting your rifle. But set your zero only after barrel is broken in. Barrel break in is done for smoothing out bore and your zero might change slightly if you set it before breaking in your barrel. Do not approach sniping with a tolerant mindset for slight deviations because at greater distances, even tiny changes magnify and kill accuracy by a long shot. VIII Zero is your reference setting against which you make all adjustments for shooting at various distances and in variable atmospheric conditions. You may call it the first fundamental of sniping, thus. On the critical importance of zero, American ballistician and long-range competitive shooter Bryan Litz writes, “The most fundamental requirement for good accuracy is having a reliable zero. . . . In fact, as with many fundamentals, a reliable zero is something you simply cannot be successful without.” Zeroing of a sniper rifle is the process of finding a baseline setting of rifle and scope at a distance of 100 m at which the points of aim and impact are the same and turrets are set at zero. Your system, however, could be zeroed at any distance if you so wish but 100 m zero is recommended for rescuers. It is not just a personal or contextual preference, moreover, because 100 m zero is also the most stable baseline setting. Litz clarifies it, “100 yards is such a short distance that you can traverse many 1000’s of feet altitude and shoot in dramatically different conditions without affecting your 100 yard zero/baseline.” Given the absolute importance of zero, you need to know certain things about it and following suggestions might be useful.



On Sniping 693

While zeroing your rifle, you should verify if your turret adjustments are actually as you are told in scope manual, that is, if one increment or one click or .1 mrad is 1 cm or lesser or greater at 100 m. If there is some variation in scope’s setting from its mathematical value, decide what you would want to do with this scope; at a minimum, you become aware of it and make your adjustments keeping in mind the actual value of turret rotation. After zeroing your rifle, confirm zero at different power settings of scope too. Every rifle, scope, and man is different from others and so is their system when all three come together and combine to shoot. Do collect your own data by repeated range shooting to accurately adjust your scope for elevation or bullet drop at various distances up to 1000 m with reference to your zero setting. Use the same ammunition always and do not rely on any other dataset. Similarly, collect data vis-à-vis your zero for distances below zero range as well. At close ranges, mechanical offset between bore line and sight line lowers the point of impact. Mechanical offset becomes irrelevant at first point where the trajectory of bullet crosses the line of sight. Collect data against zero setting at various distances in different seasons and atmospheric conditions too. If you intend to use a sound suppressor, confirm your zero with it after zeroing your rifle and find out how consistently it varies the point of impact at various distances for future adjustments. Also verify your cold bore shot—the first round of day fired from your rifle when your barrel is cold—against zero setting and note the deviations of point of impact at various distances. If it varies consistently, this data could be very useful because in an operation, it is your cold bore shot that matters. A sniper always strives to maximise the chances of first shot or cold bore hit. It is desirable that a sniper consistently keeps a log of his practice for deducing meaningful values and organising ready to use data for quick scope adjustments at various distances and variable atmospheric conditions. It is also a good habit to log total rounds fired on a particular day and update total rounds fired till that day, which keeps a track of barrel’s life. It is good to validate your zero first when you go to range for practice before doing other exercises. Do note weather conditions or atmospheric variables on the day of zeroing as a significant change in these factors might be visible in your precision on a particular day. Compare your current atmospheric

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measurements with your zero data and make necessary adjustments in your scope for controlling these factors and revalidate your zero before doing other exercises. This is how you learn—by trial and error, by doing it yourself. Never forget to bring your scope turrets back to your zero settings after a training session; make it a habit. Zero is your baseline setting and all adjustments are made with reference to your zero. If you do not do it, you might make a mistake of setting your turrets wrongly. It is also good to store rifle with scope set at the lowest magnification. IX Cleaning of sniper rifle is done much more carefully and methodically than other small arms. A rifle is cleaned to get rid of carbon fouling and copper fouling deposited inside bore. Different solvents are required to dissolve and dislodge different types of fouling. Tools and supplies are also needed to apply and clean solvent. Maintenance also includes lubricating such parts and surfaces that are subjected to friction. Work out a method that dependably cleans your rifle and follow it always for consistency. One way is to apply carbon solvent to bore with the help of a patch soaked in solvent. Then, use bronze brush to scrub bore for removing carbon fouling; pour or spray some solvent on brush too to lubricate and run it all the way through bore and back several times; do not pull it back half way through and do not run a dry brush into a dry bore. Wipe cleaning rod before and after cleaning and also after each run through. Do not put your cleaning rod on the ground or in dirt. Apply a thin coat of oil on exterior metal surfaces for preservation after cleaning and wipe it off; microscopic pores on metal surface retain the amount of oil required for preservation. We know that you should do routine cleaning every day after firing for the removal of carbon fouling. But when should you deep-clean your bore for the removal of copper fouling? Unlike large calibres such as 8.6 × 70 mm and 12.7 × 99 mm, 7.62 × 51 mm cartridge does not cause excessive copper fouling, so one thing is certain that you do not have to clean it frequently. There are different opinions on how often, though, for example, some shooters do it after every five hundred rounds fired while some do it when they no longer remember when they did it last time. In my view, it is time to deep-clean your bore when everything else is good but somehow accuracy is not. Conversely, so long as your accuracy is good, you need not worry about copper fouling. First, clean your bore to remove carbon fouling and dry it before you apply copper solvent. Follow manufacturer’s instruction



On Sniping 695

on application time and safety but whatever method and time you decide in agreement with manufacturer’s guidelines, keep it the same every time. Dry bore completely by running dry patches through it so that solvent does not remain there. Clean only in a place which has good ventilation because the vapours of solvent could be harmful. After deep-cleaning bore, verify your zero and reset it if required. Large-calibre sniper rifles could be deep-cleaned more frequently and there is no harm if it is done each day after firing; just remember to be consistent. As noted above, the key to cleaning a sniper rifle is consistency. Clean your rifle by following a method and follow the same method every time you clean it. Always use a bore guide for cleaning to protect chamber. Always push a cleaning patch out of bore from chamber to muzzle and do not pull a dirty patch back into bore; jags do not let you pull a patch back into bore. Always use quality equipments and supplies. Always store your rifle in a state of rest; the striker of bolt action rifle should be released to make sure that it is not loaded, that is, firing pin is not under spring tension; the hammer of semi-automatic rifle should be similarly released. For care and cleaning of your scope, use tools and consumables used by photographers for their cameras and follow their maintenance routine too; find a good photographer and consult him. And, always keep your lens caps closed and scope covered when not using it. X Physical environment influences the trajectory of bullet in many different ways. Some of these variables are temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, and wind. At long ranges, the effect of minor deviation gets magnified and, therefore, long-range shooting is a complex affair which has sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Wind, which causes a projectile to drift by pushing it sideways, is the most difficult environmental variable to control— so much so that it is mastery over wind that makes a sniper a great sniper. On wind, Litz writes, “I believe that studying the nature of wind deflection should be the highest priority for long range shooters. It’s not easy, but those who have the best understanding of the most challenging aspect of shooting are those who enjoy the greatest success.” Beginners can ignore other factors such as temperature and barometric pressure and focus on gravity drop and wind deflection instead. On humidity, you may like to follow the advice of Litz, “Humidity is the least important atmospheric variable, and can be neglected in most cases.”

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XI Angled shooting is also a challenge at long distances. When shooting not horizontally but at an inclining or declining angle to engage a distant target located uphill or downhill, bullet traverses on a less curved trajectory due to a reduced effect of gravity on it. Because its drop is lesser, it hits higher at the same distance as compared to flat land surface. Its science is simple. For the same distance, the effect of gravitational pull on a projectile varies with the direction of flight. Drop of projectile towards earth surface is minimum when its flight path is vertical and maximum when it is horizontal. At an angle it varies between these two extremes. As a result, bullet drops less when fired low to high or high to low and it requires less compensation as compared to its flat or level or horizontal trajectory. Its value is calculated by angular measurement and trigonometric function. XII Actual meaning of our action is mostly not absolute but it is imparted by a context. Things stop making sense and do not remain relevant when taken out of context. It is as much applicable to sniping as it is elsewhere. A military or police sniper trains to kill a man in action while a competitive sport shooter trains to hit the centre of a paper target to score points. Everything that competitive shooters do on ranges to score marks does not apply to snipers who must successfully engage their targets in various theatres of operation. They accomplish their mission by killing men and men get killed by bullets rupturing their vital organs, which is not a specific point on human body as it is for long-range shooters on printed paper. While a pinpoint accuracy is necessary for long-range competitive shooters for scoring high, a workable accuracy in real life is good enough for snipers to do their job in challenging conditions. Training and targets for snipers should be designed as such. But the influence of the reality on practice should not be such that ignores the fundamentals of shooting either. We must find the right balance of accuracy and speed, of range and the reality—our own Goldilocks zone of operational performance. A few examples are discussed below. We know that a sniper must follow a pattern of breathing consistently when he pulls trigger. But unlike on range, you cannot control your breath every time you are required to shoot in a rescue operation; your target will decide when you must fire. Learn to shoot while breathing normally, therefore. But as a beginner, you should follow a comfortable pattern of breathing and



On Sniping 697

holding your breath when you pull trigger. As you graduate to advanced stages, you begin practicing challenging real-life scenarios with pop-up and turning targets for quick target engagement practice. For a sniper does not have all the time to organise, he must set up quickly in a theatre of operation; he would be able to do so only if he has practiced for it on range and in mock exercises. All that you need or might need while in shooting position should be within reach; you cannot be rummaging through your backpack each time you need something. In a theatre of operation, a sniper should also be aware of what happens after his bullet misses a target or when it hits a target and exists too or if it has to defeat a barrier such as window pane first before hitting target. This is the realm of terminal ballistics and situation awareness. Mindset of a sniper is oriented for operating in a theatre of armed conflict, not shooting on a range or hunting in a forest. On a range you might be blissfully unaware of it but in a theatre of operation, make sure that the path of bullet which is curved and passes from below and above the line of sight seen from scope is clear of obstacles. If you shoot with both eyes open, it is more likely that you are aware of such objects that are falling in the path of bullet. In any case, it is a question of your situation awareness which should always be current and maximal in combat. Police snipers are mostly required to shoot across the street; their ranges of engagement are below 100 m. At these ranges, wind and other atmospheric variables have negligible effect and could be confidently ignored. Nonetheless, snipers must train to shoot accurately at great distances. Even though our engagement distance in all probability is going to be less than 100 m, a sniper would be extremely confident in engaging targets in a theatre of operation if he is able to engage a target, let us say, as far away as 800 m—hence long-range practice. Additionally, rescue force would be prepared for unexpected scenarios too. While a sniper should be fully proficient in using multiple ranging methods, for measuring a quick and accurate distance, quality laser rangefinder is certainly a better option. So, learn to range intuitively but use rangefinder for bullet drop calculation. There need not be a dedicated spotter besides a shooter in the sniper team of hostage rescue force when deployed on operation but a team of two is constituted nonetheless for the purpose of training where both act as spotter

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and shooter by taking turns. Such team organisation facilitates learning. In a theatre of operation, every sniper is deployed as a sniper and not as a sniper team. Arming and equipping of hostage rescue sniper unit should be done keeping this in mind. XIII On the basis of my personal experience, I can make certain credible product recommendations here with a caveat that what is good today might become outdated tomorrow if innovation does not upgrade it and also, newer and better products might be available from other sources as time passes. So, do your own market research and use your independent judgement when you plan to procure your equipments. Buy only military-grade products which are sturdy and non-reflective. For quality bolt action precision rifles, I recommend the products of Accuracy International, UK and Sako, Finland. Some snipers of hostage rescue force should have added tactical capability especially for rapidly engaging moving and multiple targets and for such select group, I recommend 7.62 × 51 mm SCAR-H TPR with 20 inch barrel made by FN Herstal, Belgium. For marksmen, I recommend 5.56 × 45 mm HK416 with 20 inch barrel made by Heckler and Koch, Germany. Both of them are semi-automatic rifles. For precision ammunition, I recommend the SWISS P family of cartridges made by RUAG, Switzerland. Its open tip or meplat round is recommended for general-purpose application both in training and combat. Open tip round is also strangely called ‘hollow point boat tail’ but in reality, it is not a hollow point design but a bullet which for a more consistent flight is jacketed from bottom up and meplat is necessary for inserting ejector pin to dislodge and expel it from point forming die. You may also use its special purpose tactical cartridge having a monolithic machined bullet made of special alloy which is designed for defeating a glass barrier without break-up or fragmentation and deflection and its armour piercing round which is designed for engaging targets shielded by steel or ceramic barriers. Their manufacturing process is designed to match the trajectories of all these cartridges but snipers should verify each lot by firing if they indeed have identical trajectories at different operational ranges. For sighting, I recommend a variable magnification scope with mildot reticle on first focal plane such as 4–16 × 56 telescopic sight made by Hensoldt, Germany; it is a high quality precision optics housed in a compact tube



On Sniping 699

due to its short optical system; its turrets are self-locking to preclude the possibility of unintentional reticle adjustment. You may also consider a more versatile 3.5–26 × 56 scope of Hensoldt for snipers. For marksmen, Hensoldt’s 3–12 × 56 scope is recommended. Besides Hensoldt, Schmidt and Bender, Germany also makes quality scopes and you may consider them too. You may also consider a clip-on night vision optics made by Vectronix, Switzerland or Hensoldt. For mounting a telescopic sight on rifle, I suggest Ideal Scope Mount System made by Spuhr, Sweden. A quality torque wrench is recommended for scope mounting and screw tightening. Use of Loctite 243 medium strength generalpurpose thread locking adhesive is also suggested for locking screws in their place. For observation, I recommend Hensoldt Spotter 45 tactical spotting scope which could be used both in training and operations; for cold climates, a higher magnification Spotter 60 could also be used. You may also consider STR 80 made by Swarovski, Austria. For ranging and general observation, I recommend Vector IV binocular rangefinder made by Vectronix; do not forget to set up your binoculars properly especially its dioptre setting as recommended in its manual. My choice for tripod is Gitzo Systematic carbon fibre tripod made in Italy. For angled shooting, you may use a small tool called Angle Cosine Indicator made by Sniper Tools, USA; it gives cosine value for a particular angle which can be used for calculating compensation for actual gravity drop. You should employ a credible offline ballistics software programme developed and used by professionals such as Point Mass Ballistics Solver developed by Applied Ballistics. Be aware that newer programmes and newer versions are available with time. Do not run your software on a mobile phone; I recommend Nomad handheld computer made by Trimble, USA or other such military-grade handheld computer for operating your ballistics programme. For atmospheric measurements, I recommend Kestrel, USA which makes good handheld weather meter for military application. For cleaning carbon fouling, lubrication, and preservation, I recommend NYCOLUBE 127 CLP BIO made by NYCO, France. For removing copper fouling, Sweet’s 7.62 solvent manufactured by Sweet’s, Australia is very popular among long-range shooters worldwide. Sweet’s 7.62 is an ammonia-based solvent and you have to be quite careful while using it. Alternatively, you

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can use KG-12 Big Bore Cleaner made by KG Industries, USA which does not contain ammonia. One piece cleaning rod with protective sleeve and rotating handle is absolutely essential and so is bore guide, jag, and bronze brush; I recommend cleaning tools and supplies made by Parker-Hale, UK, J. Dewey, USA, and Tipton, USA. For transportation, hard case made by Pelican-Hardigg, USA or Explorer, Italy is recommended. While it is always better to carry your weapon system in a hard case, a drag bag might be useful for carrying your rifle at heights where you need both hands free for climbing. Sling is similarly useful for carrying your rifle behind your back in addition to supporting and stabilising rifle in certain shooting positions. A backpack is also required for carrying accessories and supplies. Shooting mat of sniper used in prone position should be comfortable; I have used one made by Blackhawk, USA and found it good. A rear bag is also essential for adjusting reticle by raising or lowering the stock of rifle. This is pretty much all you need for your sniper unit. XIV Sniping is a highly evolved and skilled field of shooting which is contingent as much upon the quality of hardware and software as on the competence of shooter. Interestingly, the same underlying principle causes and determines both quality and competence. Good equipment is that which is built to give you consistency and which maintains its consistent performance for a greater part of its life. Good sniper is one who is consistent and who always executes all tasks with consistency. Over and above the fundamentals of shooting, you have to learn some mathematical functions and carry out some calculations based on these formulas in order to become a sniper. This might appear daunting in the beginning but gradually you would learn it and after a while you would find it rather easy. Do not lose heart by seeing some graphs, dials, tables, charts, and equations given in books and manuals on sniping; these might seem intimidating but they are actually easy and doable. Ballistics software programmes would give you more power and make your life easy but they would also render you semi-literate in sniping science. So, use it only after you have learned all about ballistics equations on paper. That said, it is indeed very difficult to master the full extent of sniper craft, its science and art, unassisted. As there is no tradition of sniping



On Sniping 701

in most countries, my advice to them is to hire a couple of excellent and experienced American or European sniping instructors from police and military background with long-range competitive shooting credentials and invite them to your country to train your prospective snipers on your equipments. Make a shooting range of at least one kilometre available for training and practice. It would be better if you keep hiring a new set of instructors each year in different seasons for a few years in a row until your snipers become fully self-reliant and confident of doing on their own. But do not depend entirely on these instructors, particularly for what they would want and choose to teach you. You should have a total clarity in your mind as to what do you want from them; your training syllabus should be prepared after extensive reading and researching on sniping and knowing as to what it takes to become a competent sniper and what all he can do with his weapon system; it should be this document which sets the terms of contract for instructors. For conceptually acquainting your aspiring snipers with sniping and also for preparing a training syllabus, I recommend these books to be read in the same order: Long Range Shooting Handbook by Ryan Cleckner, Police Sniper Science by Klint Anderson, and Applied Ballistics for Long Range Shooting by Bryan Litz. Buying right sniping equipments is not difficult if you do your research carefully and trust only the most reputed brands of military hardware; you do not need to consult a trainer for that; I too have suggested some of these names here for your benefit. It is highly desirable to procure your full range of equipments before training course commences to get maximum benefits from your visiting expert instructors; you can also share with them your inventory after signing contract so that they come prepared. If you follow this roadmap, you will arrive there sooner or later. Trust me.

Epilogue

About ten years ago when I started writing this book, war between States seemed improbable and the world seemed a stable place. Although United States and Western European countries were bombing, invading, and occupying countries in Africa, Middle East, and Asia with impunity, their victims were weak or failed States and they were no match to the military might of aggressors. As a result, they were unable to wage war in a sense we had read in history. Ostensible reason for American and European aggression was terrorism and as a non-State source of violence, terrorism unquestionably seemed then a bigger immediate challenge to States than States seemed to each other. After a decade when I am finishing my book, I am not so sure about war between States being such an improbability and even a big war involving many powerful States does not seem impossible today. Rapid rise of nationalism, intolerance, and demagoguery in democracies and the consolidation of power where autocrats and dictators rule have dramatically changed the world all of a sudden. A decade is indeed a long period of time when the world is in turmoil. This book, however, still remains relevant, even if terrorism may not steal the limelight it used to do before, for terrorism still poses a significant challenge to States. Even if States begin to wage wars again, terrorism will remain relevant as a military strategy for them as it has always been. It will also remain relevant to politically dissenting and disadvantaged groups within States who, if not heard by peaceable means, can challenge State militarily by resorting to terrorism.

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Index

372nd Military Police Company of US Army 212 9/11 attacks  303 9/11 Commission  302, 304, 311, 313

A A A A A A A

Conspiracy So Immense 381 Continent Erupts 145 Dream of John Ball 371 Dry White Season 124 People’s History of Science  xiii, 335 People’s History of the United States 145 A People’s Tragedy 145 Aarons, Mark  206, 393 Abernethy, Bruce  90, 607 Accident, definition of  285 Ackerman, Jennifer  426 Ackerman, Spencer  146 ACSM’s Advanced Exercise Physiology 608 Action T-4, Nazi  109, 110 Action time, definition of (ballistics) 538 Action, definition of (firearm)  540 Active listening  633 Adams, Gabrielle  461 Agentic state  219 Aggression, human  416 Aggression, inimical  416 Aggression, instrumental  417

Aggressiveness, definition of  503-504 Agility, definition of  604 Alcohol hangover  651 Alcohol, dangers of  650-651 Allsop, D. F.  534, 536 Allsop, Derek  547 Altruism 192 Aly, Götz  111, 145 Amistad 381 Ammunition, definition of  537 Amnesty International  383 Amrhein, Valentin  331 An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States 145 An Intimate History of Killing 145 Andersen, Kurt  146, 381 Anderson, Benedict  418 Anderson, Bob  608 Anderson, Carol  146 Anderson, Klint  701 Angell, Marcia  336 Angewandte Chemie International Editionm 330 Angled shooting  696 Animal Farm 370 Animal Intelligence 426 Animal Liberation 146 Animal Liberation Now 146 Animal Wise 426 Animalkind 426 Anthropoarrogance 425 721

722

Dignity of Life

Anthropocene  140, 141 Anthropocentrism 425 Antonakis, John  95 Apocalypse: The Second World War 146 Apollo 13  283, 284 Applebaum, Anne  145 Applied Ballistics for Long Range Shooting 701 Appraisal, problem of ‘metric fixation’ 592-593 Appraisal, problem of  591 Appraisal, problem of instrumentation 592 Appraisal, purpose of  591 Appraisal, types of  592 Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? 426 Arendt, Hannah  146, 207, 208, 210, 381, 383, 384 Armstrong, Karen  145 Asch Conformity Experiment 234 Asch, Solomon  212, 231, 234 Askenasy, Jean  578 Assange, Julian  383 Assaulter, definition of  453 Asynchronous evolution  289, 323 Attention, gradient model of  570 Attention, spotlight model of  291, 570 Attention, widened span of  92, 93 Attentional failures  289 Automaticity  71, 78, 93, 94, 98, 104, 106, 563, 564, 567, 603 Automuscular relaxation technique  607 Autonomy  116, 134, 190, 191, 219, 221, 231, 232, 247, 261, 262, 263, 265, 266, 276, 491, 498, 590, 684 Avatar 149

B

Babel 361 Backstabbing for Beginners 146 Bad Pharma 336 Bahr, Ronald  608 Bak, Per  48

Balance, definition of (postural)  604 Balcombe, Jonathan  426 Balla, Jiří  547 Ballistics 535 Ballistics software programme  699, 700 Ballistics, science of  535-536 Banality of evil, hypothesis of  207-208, 210 Bandura, Albert  268, 269, 272, 273, 416, 422 Barnes, Michael  608 Barnett, Victoria  110 Baron, Robert  416 Barrel life, definition of  537 Barrel, definition of  537 Barrett, Louise  484, 485, 613 Barshi, Immanuel  613 Base reserve force, definition of  463 Bass, Bernard  666 Baumeister, Roy  505 Because We Say So 146 Becoming Wild 214 Behaviour modification  595 Behaviour, deadlock  615 Behaviour, freezing  615 Behaviour, livelock  615 Behaviour, panic  615 Behavioural appraisal  130 Behnke, Robert  608 Bekoff, Marc  426 Benatar, David  143, 147 Bending Science 336 Ben-Ghiat, Ruth  146 Berger, Peter  195 Berns, Gregory  232 Bernstein, Jake  146 Beyond Belief 146 Beyond Words 426 Bhopal gas tragedy  372 Bias 626-627 Bias, additive  461 Bias, confirmation  293 Bias, hindsight  409, 627

Biases, consistency and change  627 Biases, egocentric  627 Big Dirty Money 146 Big Science 336 Bilsky, Wolfgang  502 Biomechanics of Sport and Exercise 607 Bishop, Dorothy  332 Bjork, Robert  575, 576 Black Earth  145 Blind Eye to Murder  206, 380 Blind, definition of (explosive charge) 552 Blood and Ruins 145 Bloodlands 145 Bloxham, Donald  145 Blume, Lesley  380 Boisjoly, Roger  383 Bok, Derek  336 Boltzmann, Ludwig  175 Booby trap  555 Bore, definition of  537 Boswell, John  435 Bourke, Joanna  145 Bovair, Susan  289 Bower, Tom  206, 380 Boyd Cycle  474 Boyd, John  474 Boyle, Michael  608 Brannen, Peter  428, 429, 434, 435 Bratslavsky, Ellen  505 Bravery 121-122 Breacher, definition of  453 Breaching device, definition of  538 Breaker Morant 378 Breakwell, Glynis  58 Breath 613 Breuilly, John  417 Briskness, definition of  506 Brown, Lee  608 Browning, Christopher  145, 275 Bryan, William Lowe  81 Buckwalter, Art  630, 631, 632, 633, 634, 635, 636

Index 723 Bureaucracy 683 Burnham, Margaret  146 Bush, George W.  333 Butterfly effect  47 By Hands Now Known 146 Byrne, Michael  289 Bystanders 110

C

Calderwood, Roberta  59 Caldicott, Helen  336 Calibre, definition of  537 Calvo, Paco  426 Campbell, Scott  349 Carlucci, Donald  536 Carson, Rachel  335 Cassidy, John  346 Caste 146 Castro, Carl Andrew  124 Casualties of War 191 Čech, Vladimír  547 Cellular 361 Cepeda, Nicholas  576 Chabris, Christopher  291, 292, 624, 625, 626, 628 Chalk, Frank  145 Cham, Jorge  433 Character cube  173 Charness, Neil  512 Chemistry World 330 Chen, Kan  48 Chernobyl nuclear disaster  314 Chomsky, Noam  146, 326 Chu, Donald  608 Cigrang, Jeff  519 Cioffoletti, Martin  339 Circadian rhythm  644 Cissik, John  608 Clausewitz, Carl von  442, 444, 448, 449, 450, 451, 458, 473, 496, 616 Cleckner, Ryan  701 Climate Cover-Up 146 Clinical Guide to Sports Injuries 608 Clinton-Cirocco, Anne  59

724

Dignity of Life

Coburn, Noriko  576 Coevolution  48, 49 Coexistence  48, 149, 246, 249, 419 Cognitive dissonance  626 Cognitive revolution  141, 196 Cohen, Adam  146 Collapse, definition of  365 Collins, Joseph  144 Colson, Bruno  443, 449 Columbia Accident Investigation Board  299, 304, 320, 324, 340, 343, 357, 364, 372, 395 Combat fitness, components of  604 Combat readiness log  643 Combat, close  473 Combat, mechanics of  473, 474 Communication, basic theory of  306 Communication, problem of freestyle 679 Complex hostage crisis  20, 22, 175 Complex hostage rescue  561, 566 Complex system  48, 49, 50, 52, 70, 79, 82, 91, 140, 161, 284, 294, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365, 367, 368, 369, 386, 405, 406, 408, 411, 413, 458, 523, 619, 620 Complex system, sensitive dependence on initial conditions  47 Complex system, stable-state attractors 363 Complex terrorist crisis, Beslan  3 Complex terrorist crisis, Chibok  3, 20 Complex terrorist crisis, definition of 20 Complex terrorist crisis, Kankara  3, 20 Complex terrorist crisis, Moscow  3 Complex terrorist crisis, Mumbai  3, 22 Complex terrorist crisis, Nord-Ost  480 Complex terrorist crisis, rules for realisation 663 Complexity  6, 22, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 40, 41, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 63, 65, 67, 79, 81, 82, 98, 99, 101, 103, 201, 240, 241, 242, 243, 247,

253, 275, 294, 295, 307, 309, 356, 361, 362, 363, 365, 368, 369, 370, 379, 392, 399, 401, 403, 406, 407, 409, 411, 413, 426, 431, 449, 455, 462, 488, 513, 524, 525, 529, 603, 662, 679 Complexity bending  40 Complexity constant  31 Complexity curve  40 Complexity factor  44 Conformity dynamics  234 Conner, Clifford  xiii, 335, 336 Conquest, Robert  145 Conscience, definition of  113-114 Converse, Benjamin  461 Conway, Erik  336 Cook off, definition of  540 Cooney, Philip  334 Cordon, definition of  451 Cosmos 435 Counterterrorist forces  23, 507, 511 Courage, holistic  127 Courage, holistic sacrificial  127 Courage, sacrificial  126 Crisis decision-maker  60, 64 Crisis decision-making  56, 57, 60, 89, 672 Crisis resolution spectrum  28 Crisis resolution, time in  42 Culture 195

D

Darby, Joseph  212 Dark Money 146 Darley, John  270 Davis, Mike  145 Dawes, Jay  608 Dawkins, Richard  365, 386, 388, 389 Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime 336 Deceit and Denial 336 Deci, Edward  263, 264, 265, 589 Decision by arms, definition of  453 Decision, analytical  55, 59, 60

Decision, intuitive  55 Decision, naturalistic  59 Decision, rational  55 Decision, realistic  59 Decisive points of theatre, definition of 452 Deep structure  60, 67, 195, 405, 406 Defensive position, definition of  451 Deflagration, definition of  552 Dehaene, Stanislas  568, 569, 570, 571, 572, 573, 574, 577, 578, 612 Dekker, Sidney  324, 361, 369, 386, 390, 394 Delforge, Gary  608 Demagogue 381 Detonation, definition of  552 Detonator, definition of  552 Deutsch, M.  190 Developing Agility and Quickness 608 Diagne, Mbaye  225 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 501 Diamond, Jared  145, 162 Dignity 137-138 Dikötter, Frank  145 Dillon, Robin  138 Dirk Moses, Anthony  145 Disaster, definition of  285 Disobedience to authority, analysis of 224-225 Disobedience, negative  225 Disobedience, positive  225 Disruptor, definition of  552-553 Does Altruism Exist? 203 Dollard, J.  176, 185 Domination of State over humanity  17 Dörner, Dietrich  294, 314, 369, 408, 619, 620 Double bind, definition of  322 Doubt is Their Product 336 Dower, John  145 Draper, Robert  146

Index 725 Driving Techniques 596 Dud, definition of (explosive charge) 552 Duff, I.  176 Duggan, Christopher  184 Dunbar, Robin  483, 484, 485, 613 Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne  145 Dwyer, Philip G.  145 Dźwiarek, Marek  530

E

Earthlings 146 Easter Island, collapse of society in  162 Eberhardt, Jennifer  293, 562 Echevarria, Antulio  439 Edmondson, Amy  672 Effective range, definition of  453 Ego depletion, definition of  505-506 Ehrman, Mark  648 Eichmann in Jerusalem  207, 210 Eichmann, Adolf  205, 206, 207, 208, 210 Eisenhower, Dwight  593 Ejection, definition of  540 Ekroll, Vebjørn  291 Elder, Linda  246, 633 Elkins, Caroline  145 Ellsberg, Daniel  376, 382 Elon, Amos  207 Emergence  39, 40, 49, 52, 79, 80, 82, 91, 94, 103, 200, 202, 241, 249, 365, 366, 367, 404, 490, 514 Empire, Colony, Genocide 145 Encounter battle, definition of  452 Endurance, definition of  604 Entry charge  554 Equilibrium yaw, definition of  539 Ericsson, Anders  562, 563, 564, 565, 566 Error, definition of  285 Esparza, Luis  144 Eternal Treblinka 146 Europe Against the Jews 145

726

Dignity of Life

Evacuation force, definition of  455 Evans, Richard  109, 110, 111, 275 Evil Geniuses 146 Expansion factor, definition of  538 Expansion ratio, definition of  538 Experimenter 225 Expert (aspiring), goal setting strategies of 85-86 Expert (aspiring), unconscious goal pursuit  88, 94 Expert rescuers, formation and future of 514 Expert team  68, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 191, 234, 512, 672, 673, 675 Expert team model, adaptive selforganising properties  101 Expert team model, cognitive model of situation 101 Expert team model, domain expertise 101 Expert team model, dual expertise  102 Expert team model, expert tool  101 Expert team model, external domain environment 101 Expert team model, interactive general functions 99 Expert team model, internal team environment 102 Expert team model, isolated special functions 99 Expert team model, metacognitive model of team  101 Expert team model, shared situation models 102 Expert team model, situation awareness 101 Expert team model, super situation model 103 Expert team model, team awareness 101 Expert team model, team expertise  102 Expert team model, team tool  102 Expert team model/theory  98-105 Expert team, adaptive  101, 102, 104,

106, 191 Expert team, rules and protocols of communication 100 Expert, aspiring  82, 85, 86, 88, 563, 564, 565, 566, 567, 590, 592 Expert, definition of  69, 561 Expert, general  670 Expert, genuine  670 Expert, skilled anticipation of  89, 92, 96 Expertise 561 Expertise research  82 Expertise, role of deliberate practice in  96, 512, 561, 563, 564, 565, 566, 589, 593, 614 Expertise, ten-year rule of  81, 88, 512, 513 Experts, decentralised problem-solving strategy and distributed processing in brain of  94 Experts, limitations and vulnerabilities of  96-98, 406-407 Experts, problem-solving strategies of  90, 91, 92, 94 Experts, solution to limitations and vulnerabilities of  98-99, 407-408 Explosive breaching  467, 468, 551, 554, 556, 611 Explosive charge  465, 467, 468, 469, 470, 551, 552, 657 Explosive device  555 Extensivity, definition of  504 Exterior ballistics, definition of  539 External ballistics, definition of  539 Exteroception 614 Extraction, definition of  540

F

Factor of volatility  32, 34, 36 Failed State  14, 703 Failed States 146 Failure of foresight  286, 311 Failure, collective  285 Failure, complexity of  359-370

Failure, definition of  285 Failure, institutional  285 Failure, morality of  370-393 Failure, personal  285 Failure, psychology of  287-295 Failure, sociology of  295-359 Failure, solution to  393-411 Failure, systemic  285 Fallout 380 Fantasyland 381 Farrar, C. L.  536 Fear  118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 126, 177, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190, 222, 233, 236, 244, 415, 416, 448, 455, 501, 601, 613, 617, 620, 621 Fear and Courage 176 Fear of failure  56, 100, 256 Fear, three-system model of  119 Feedback  48, 84, 86, 88, 91, 105, 201, 240, 264, 265, 354, 356, 362, 406, 409, 414, 529, 530, 549, 569, 573, 574, 575, 582, 587, 591, 592, 675, 688, 691 Feedback, principle of design  529 Felin, Teppo  292 Felt recoil, definition of  539 Fernbach, Philip  295 Ferrigno, Vance  608 Feynman, Richard  319, 321, 324, 337, 338, 433 Fields of Blood  145 Figes, Orlando  145 Final Solution, Nazi  205 Finding the Mother Tree 426 Finer, Samuel E.  12, 13 Firearms, definition of  537 Fire-manoeuvre-cover cycle  474 Firepower, definition of  547 Fixings, definition of  553 Flanagan, J.  176 Flash hider, definition of  538 Flash suppressor, definition of  538 Flash, definition of  538

Index 727 Flirting with Disaster 376 Flook, Helen  596 Flores, Fernando  522 Flying Blind  350 Forbidden Ground  183 Forcing cone  537 Forcing function, principle of design 530 Forward detachment, definition of  452 Forward reserve force, definition of  463 Frank, Adam  328 Frederick II  177 Free will  198 Freed, Jamie  348 Freudenburg, William  306, 311, 312, 313, 317, 318, 319, 325, 368, 375 Fry, Andrew  608 Functional reliability  404 Functional Training for Sports 608 Fury 185

G

Gaia  140, 161, 361, 390 Galison, Peter  336 Gandhi, Mahatma  126, 150 Garb, Howard  519 Gat, Azar  145 Gates, Dominic  346, 347 Gelles, David  345, 348 Gellner, Ernest  13, 14, 418 Genocide of minority Tutsis in Rwanda 225 Genocide: A World History 143 Geronimo 192 Gerstein, Marc  373, 376, 382 Gerwarth, Robert  145 Giddens, Anthony  12, 13 GIGO 293 Gleick, James  47 Global Positioning System  658 Goldacre, Ben  336 Golden Holocaust 336 Good Night, And Good Luck 381

728

Dignity of Life

Goodall, Jane  426 Gordon, Deborah  403, 495, 674 Gore, Al  319 Gossip, negative  254 Gossip, positive  254 Gøtzsche, Peter  336 Gould, Stephen Jay  332, 403, 411 Goulson, Dave  142 Govaerts, Rafaël  427 Graeber, David  xiii, 138 Grand illusion  291 Gravelle, Karen  596 Graves, Michael  522 Gray, Colin  439 Greenberg, Daniel  336 Greene, Brian  436, 437 Greenland, Sander  331 Gribbin, John  362, 363, 368, 461 Grinker, R.  176, 189 Grounds, Trish  608 Groupthink 234 Groupthink, definition of  233, 234 Guilt  127, 131, 132, 136, 150, 175, 266, 267, 430, 574 Gun, definition of  537 Guns, Germs, and Steel 145 Guru Gobind Singh  486 Gustavus 177 Gypsies 205

H

Hales, Andrew  461 Half squad, definition of  462 Hall, Robert  332 Hallam, Anthony  429 Hämäläinen, Pekka  145 Haney, Craig  211 Hannibal 177 Hanrahan, Stephanie  607 Hanson, Victor  177, 178 Harari, Yuval Noah  141, 195, 274 Hardiness, definition of  504 Harper, Kyle  425

Harter, Noble  81 Hartfield, Brad  522 Hastings, D.  176 Hautier, Geoffroy  330, 331 Hearts and Minds 381 Heaviside, Oliver  367 Hedlund, Jennifer  95 Hegemony or Survival 146 Herman, Edward  326 Hevly, Bruce  336 Heydrich, Reinhardt  205, 275 Hidden Agenda 421 Hiroshima 147 Hitchens, Christopher  381 Hitler, Adolf  110, 111, 177, 188, 205, 218 Hitler’s American Model 146 Hitler’s Beneficiaries 111 Hobsbawm, Eric  418 Hoggan, James  146 Holding force, definition of  454 Holocaust, Nazi  205, 207, 209, 225 Holocene 140 Hoplite  179, 180, 181, 182 Horizons  xiii Horn, John  502, 512 Horton Hears a Who! 436 Horton, Richard  336 Hosenfeld, Wilm  111 Hossenfelder, Sabine  327 Hostage crisis, pressure of time  56, 57 Hostage crisis, problem of coordination 57-58 Hostage crisis, problem of information 57 Hostage rescue force, primary job of 639 Hostage rescue force, sole purpose of 639 Hostages, control of  614-616 House Committee on Transport and Infrastructure 348 How Animals Grieve 426



Index 729

How Not to Network a Nation 336 How the World Works 146 Hughes, Nick  435 Human Biology 607 Human civilisation  296, 297, 333, 378, 379, 380, 391, 413, 427, 435 Human error  30, 98, 259, 279, 282, 287, 310, 314, 354, 355, 393, 411, 412, 523, 595, 672 Human exceptionalism  425 Hunt, Linda  380 Hypervigilance 586

I

Ideal type  174 Ihering, Rudolph von  13 Imagery in Sport 619 Imperial Ambitions 146 In the Closet of the Vatican  381, 393 In the Shadow of Man 426 Inattention  77, 245, 256, 288, 289, 325, 475, 570 Inattentional blindness  291, 292, 293, 570 Incident, definition of  285 India Untouched: Stories of a People Apart 146 Indigenous Continent 145 Information, problem of  300-313 Initiation, definition of  552 Initiator, definition of  552 Instinct, sacrificial  613 Instinct, survival  613 Intelligence in Nature 426 Intelligence, emotional  506 Intelligence, practical  95 Interahamwe, Hutu militia  225 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services  139 Interior ballistics, definition of  538 Intermediate ballistics, definition of  538 Internal ballistics, definition of  538 Interventions 146

Interview, cross-examination phase  630 Interview, narration phase  630 Interview, resolution phase  630 Intrinsic motivation  83, 187, 189, 263, 264, 265, 266, 497, 565, 589, 590, 591, 592 Intuition  76, 404, 405, 674 Iron Curtain 145 Isserson, Georgii  446, 447, 458 Iyengar, B. K. S.  608, 613

J

Jacobsen, Annie  381 Jacobson, Sidney  536 James, William  572 Jane’s Ammunition Handbook 534 Janis, Irving  212, 232, 233, 234, 673 Janowitz, M.  176, 177, 185, 187 Johnson, Addie  568, 569, 570, 571, 584, 614 Joint rescue command  492 Jomini 442 Jonassohn, Kurt  145 Jones, Jim  197 Jonestown commune  197 Jowett, Benjamin  246 Jump, definition of  539 Jumping into Plyometrics 608 Jureidini, Jon  336

K

Kahneman, Daniel  292 Kandel, Eric  70 Kang, Sean  576 Kant, Immanuel  138 Kaplan, Carol  503 Karni, Avi  578 Kean, Sam  336 Keeley, Lawrence  145 Kelman, Ilan  320 Kennedy, Robert F.  124 Kershaw, Ian  145 Key Dismukes, Robert  613 Keyhole view  291, 293, 353

730

Dignity of Life

Kinetic Anatomy  607-608 King, Barbara  426 King, Martin Luther  126, 150 Kippers, Vaughan  607 Kitroeff, Natalie  345 KL 145 Klein, Gary  59, 68 Klein, Naomi  146 Klemperer, Victor  145 Klotz, Leidy  461 Knoll, Andrew  427 Kochanski, Halik  167 Koestler, Arthur  218 Kolbert, Elizabeth  145, 333 Korchin 190 Krampe, Ralf  512 Kreider, Richard  608 Kreyssig, Lothar  110, 111 Krimsky, Sheldon  336 Kuhn, Thomas  327

L

Laches 117 Lamb, Christina  145 Land 145 Land and Freedom  185 Langmuir, Irving  331 Lappé, Frances Moore  144 Lapse, definition of  287, 288 Latané, Bibb  270 Late Victorian Holocausts 145 Latent errors  300 Latent failure  300 Latent failure, resident pathogens  300 Law of survival of the stable  386 Lawrence, Natalie  426 Leach, John  250, 615, 616 Leader, toxic  668 Leader, transformative  668 Leadership, transactional  665 Leadership, transformational  665-666 League 111 Learning, crammed continuous practice for 577

Learning, distributed shuffled practice for 577 Learning, purpose of  575 Learning, role of active engagement in 572-573 Learning, role of attention in  569-572 Learning, role of consolidation in 575‑578 Learning, role of error feedback in 573-575 Learning, role of sleep in  577-578, 646 Ledford, Heidi  427 Lee, Timothy  588, 589, 614 Leeming, D. W.  536 Legacy of Violence 145 Lepley, W.  176 Less Than Human 145 Lessons from Plants 426 Levene, Mark  145 Lewin, Roger  362 Lewis, Anthony  427 Lewis, Jori  147 Lichtblau, Eric  380 Liddell Hart, Basil  439, 441, 450 Lidz, T.  176 Life on a Young Planet 427 Light on Pranayama 613 Light on Yoga 608 Lind, William  474 Lindsey, Robert  576 Line of operation, definition of  452 Linguistic transparency  255 Lippmann, Walter  293 Lipstadt, Deborah  146 Little Science, Big Science, and Beyond 336 Littlemore, Richard  146 Litz, Bryan  692, 695, 701 Living Planet Report 2020 427 Locke, John  153 Loftus, John  206, 393 Logistics  468, 470, 488, 515, 516, 517, 531, 551, 639, 640, 643, 651, 652,



Index 731

653, 654, 655, 656, 657, 658, 659, 664 Long Range Shooting Handbook 701 Looking for the Good War 146 Lorenz, Edward  363 Lori, Marino  144 Losing Earth 145 Loukopoulos, Loukia  613 Lovelock, James  361 Luckmann, Thomas  195 Lycett, John  484, 485, 613 Lynn, John  178, 179, 182

M

Mack, Katie  432 Mackinnon, Laurel  607 Maddi, Salvatore  504 Mæhlum, Sverre  608 Magill, Richard  589 Mama’s Last Hug 426 Mandela, Nelson  126, 150 Manhattan, Avro  393 Man-made Disasters  300, 403 Manufacturing Consent 326 Mao’s Great Famine 145 Markowitz, Gerald  336 Marksman, definition of  453, 687-688 Marlborough 177 Marshall, S. L. A.  176 Martel, Frédéric  381, 393 Mass extinction  141, 161, 366, 390 Mass hostage crisis  xiv, 5, 6, 23, 57, 441, 615, 657, 664 Mass hostage rescue  xiv, xv, 5, 22, 186, 191, 237, 439, 451, 468, 488, 490, 492, 493, 551, 559, 561, 604, 685 Mass hostage situation  3, 57, 659 Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff  426 Masters of Mankind 146 Masunaga, Hiromi  502, 512 Mayer, Jane  146, 379 Mayer, John  506 McCarthy, Susan  426 McGarity, Thomas O.  336

McGinnis, Peter  607 McHenry, Leemon  336 McMillan, Beverley  607 McShane, Blake  331 Mednick, Sara  648 Meeting engagement, definition of  452 Memory formation, mechanism of  625 Memory, anatomy and structure of  71‑73 Memory, declarative  70 Memory, expanded working  92, 93, 94, 500, 565 Memory, illusion of  624 Memory, long-term  77, 287, 565 Memory, muscle  70 Memory, nondeclarative  70 Memory, problem of  76-77 Memory, role of cues in recall  75-76 Memory, short-term  77, 565, 646 Memory, working  74, 75, 80, 88, 92, 93, 94, 287, 288, 289, 291, 394, 500, 565, 588 Memory: From Mind to Molecules 70 Mental model  62, 90, 91, 97, 101, 290, 291, 405, 406, 564, 565, 566, 567, 568, 572, 573, 575, 624, 661, 663, 681 Mental simulation  62, 63, 408, 617, 619 Merchants of Doubt 336 Metacognition 87 Metacomponents of thinking  87 Metaknowledge  84, 102 Metalearning 84 Metavirtue 156 Method, definition of  595 Metric fixation  592 Meyer, Sylke Rene  370 Michaels, David  336 Mickens, Robert Carl  381 Milgram Experiment  208, 209, 210 Milgram, Stanley  208, 209, 210, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 230, 673 Military organisation, conventional  51,

732

Dignity of Life

201 Military resolution of complex crisis, point of right balance  27, 28, 39, 40, 45 Military resolution of crisis, risks and cost of  29 Military resolution, exact cost of  32, 41 Military resolution, expected cost of  32, 41 Military resolution, total risk of  31, 32 Military virtue of honour  131, 175, 176, 180, 182, 183, 184, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195 Military virtue of loyalty  132, 133, 136, 137, 175, 176, 182, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 418, 419, 420, 422 Military virtues, archetypal  175 Military, definition of  8-9 Miller, William Ian  124 Milman, Oliver  142 Milov, Sarah  336 Mindfulness, definition of  504-505 Minding Animals 426 Misattribution 625-626 Miscommunication, probability of  677 Misfire, definition of  540 Missing 381 Mistake, definition of  289 Molteni, Megan  330 Moltke, Helmuth von  177, 448, 459, 462, 616 Monotony breaking  559 Montero, Barbara  561 Montgomery, Beronda  426 Moral appraisal  130, 132, 135, 136 Moral character, definition of  112 Moral choice  123, 124, 208, 224, 225, 238, 273, 391 Moral knowledge  273 Moral reasoning  112, 113, 114, 116, 122, 127, 136, 137, 160, 161, 191, 202, 218, 228, 231, 236, 269, 272, 273, 376, 390, 391, 400, 424 Moral theory of rescue, criticism and

rejoinder 175-203 Moral value, definition of  112 Moral vice, arrogance  152 Moral vice, contempt  152 Moral vice, greed  xvi, 142, 171, 172, 254, 345, 348, 352, 378, 385, 388, 391, 392, 412, 413, 424, 525, 598 Moral virtue of care  159 Moral virtue of courage  117-128 Moral virtue of humility  153-155 Moral virtue of integrity  155-157 Moral virtue of rescue  157-172 Moral virtue of respect  137-153 Moral virtue of responsibility  128-137 Moral virtue, definition of  112 Morality, definition of  112 Moran, Lord  122 Morell, Virginia  426 Morris, Tony  619 Morris, William  371 Moss, G. M.  536 Most Dangerous 382 Motor Control and Learning 588-589 Motor Learning and Control 589 Motor Learning and Performance 588 Mozer, Michael  576 Muller, Jerry  592 Multi-skilling  393, 494, 608 Multitasking  93, 98, 393, 494, 612, 613 Muraven, Mark  505 Murphy’s Law  47, 364, 368, 444 Musculoskeletal Trauma 608 Muzzle blast, definition of  538 Muzzle brake, definition of  539 My Lai massacre  218

N

Naimark, Norman  143 Naming Names 381 Napoleon  177, 442, 443, 448, 449, 450, 458, 462, 493, 496, 616, 641, 671, 684

Narby, Jeremy  426 Nation/Nationalism 417-423 Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 418 Natural design, principle of design  530 Natural point of aim  691 Nature  331, 379, 427, 461 Nature Briefing  333, 461 Navasky, Victor  381 Nazi  109, 110, 111, 114, 132, 166, 185, 188, 193, 197, 205, 206, 207, 208, 228, 378, 384 Neisser, Ulric  567, 568 Nestle, Marion  336 Nestor, James  613 Network collapse  365 Neural plasticity  73 Newkirk, Ingrid  426 Nicas, Jack  345 Nieuwenstein, Mark  571 Nolan, Cathal  142, 177 Non-experts, centralised problem-solving strategy of  94 Normal Accidents  359, 369 Normalisation of deviance  279, 314, 315, 323, 325, 386, 401, 402 Norman, Donald  524, 525, 529, 530 Norman, Elaine  503 Notional malevolence  416 Nuclear Madness 336 Nutt, David  650, 651

O

O’Neil, Cathy  336 O’Toole, Mary  608 Obedience 225 Obedience to Authority  210, 225, 230 Obedience, blind  188, 218, 276 Obermaier, Frederik  146 Obermayer, Bastian  146 Ockham’s razor  409, 461, 527 Olsthoorn, Peter  124, 135, 175, 179, 180, 187 On Fire 146

Index 733 On Growth and Form 367 On War 442 OODA Loop  474 Operability, principle of design  531 Operation Paperclip 380-381 Operation, definition of  440, 451 Operation, size constraint in  491 Operation’s base, definition of  452 Operational communication, in-action phase 679 Operational communication, post-action phase 679 Operational communication, pre-action phase 679 Operational communication, principles for designing protocols  679 Operational, definition of  451 Operations, centrality of  639 Operations, centrality of men in  522, 527 Operations, electronic support devices for 555 Ordinary Men 145 Oreskes, Naomi  336 Organisation building, consolidation phase  491, 492 Organisation building, nucleus unit  490 Organisation building, pioneer phase 490 Organisation building, population phase 491 Organisation building, replica unit  491 Organisation building, size barrier  485, 488, 490, 494 Organisation building, size constraint in organisation 489 Organisational communication, standardisation of language for 249‑250 Organisational ownership  586 Organisations, problem of structural secrecy in  307-308 Organisations, systematic censorship in 308

734

Dignity of Life

Orwell, George  370, 371 Oshinsky, David  381 Osswald, Silvia  124 Our Bodies, Their Battlefields 145 Overtraining in Sport 608 Overy, Richard  145

P

Pandy, Marcus  607 Paradigm 327 Pashler, Harold  576 Pathological science  331 Pathway engineering  393 Pattern match  61, 66, 661 Pattern recognition  61, 66, 610 Patterson, Charles  146 Patton, George  593 Paul, Richard  246, 633 Pauling, Linus  330 Penetration, definition of  540 Peoples Temple Cult Death Tape 198 Perceptual symmetry  62 Perforation, definition of  540 Permanent Record 380 Perrow, Charles  325, 350, 355, 359, 369, 373, 375, 385, 494, 682 Personal protection  557-558 Personalities on the Plate 426 Personnel selection and research cell 499 Peters, Benjamin  336 Peterson, Christopher  190 Phalanx  179, 180, 181, 182, 183 Pharma 336 Phase change  365 Phase transition  365, 366 Phayer, Michael  393 Picq, Ardant du  183, 187 Pidgeon, Nick  350, 403 Pierce, Jessica  426 Pistor, Katharina  146 Planta Sapiens 426 Plato 117

Pleasurable Kingdom 426 Poincaré, Henri  362 Point of no return  161, 278, 289, 367, 368, 411, 671 Point of no return, definition of  463 Point-blank range, definition of  540 Police quarantine, definition of  452 Police Sniper Science 701 Politics, definition of  8 Popelínský, Lubomír  547 Poskett, James  xiii Posner, Gerald  336 Post-completion error  289 Power, definition of (muscular)  604 Power, definition of (sociological)  8, 683 Pranayama 613 Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident  301, 302, 319, 338, 339, 340, 371 Price, Derek J. de Solla  336 Pride  131, 182, 221 Prigogine, Ilya  47, 49 Primacy of life  159, 163, 170 Primed charge, definition of  552 Principle of abundance of caution  457 Principle of all or nothing  115 Principle of annihilation  445 Principle of concentration  448-449 Principle of consistency in sniping  688 Principle of handover  170 Principle of irruption  446 Principle of isolation  445-446 Principle of less is more  534 Principle of minimal loss  42, 51 Principle of minimum force  611 Principle of minimum restriction  149 Principle of momentum  446-448 Principle of necessity and usefulness 495 Principle of parsimony  172, 409 Principle of professional exclusion



Index 735

and social inclusion in personal life 585 Principle of sameness  492 Principle of simplicity  443-445 Principle of territoriality  11 Principles of operation  442, 443, 450, 451, 455, 527 Problem-solving  60, 62, 64, 87, 95, 97, 105, 245, 247, 257, 284, 311, 390, 408, 443, 461, 462, 501, 516, 525, 528, 565, 566, 579, 603 Problem-solving, invisible obstacle model of 603 Problem-solving, subtractive approach of 461 Procházka, Stanislav  547 Proctor, Robert N.  336 Proctor, Robert W.  568, 569, 570, 571, 584, 614 Propaganda, definition of  8 Proprioception, definition of  614 Psychological Review 81 Push method  464

Q

Questions, closed  631 Questions, open-ended  631 Quickness, definition of  604

R

Rachman, Stanley  119, 176, 177, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190 Racing Extinction 146 Rampton, Sheldon  336 Rasmussen, Jens  314, 321 Rationality, bounded  293 Rationality, definition of  112 Rationality, local  294 Realisation, definition of  506 Reason, James  288, 291, 294, 295, 300, 394, 411 Recoil, definition of  538-539 Reconstitute, definition of  453 Red Orchestra  111

Reich Security Head Office, Nazi  275 Reich, Robert  146 Reign of Terror 146 Reinforce, definition of  453 Release point, definition of  463 Reliability, principle of design  530-531 Reorganise, definition of  453 Report of the Public Inquiry into the Accident at Hixon Level Crossing 305 Report of the Summerland Fire Commission 301 Rescue force, definition of  454-455 Rescuers, desirable attributes and positive characteristics of  500-506 Rescuers, psychobehavioural traits of  497, 500 Rescuers, psychological screening of 506 Reserve force, definition of  455 Reserve Police Battalion  101  of Nazi Germany  275 Reserve post, definition of  463 Resilience, definition of  503 Resistance 167 Responsibility, prospective  128 Responsibility, retrospective  128 Reuters 348 Review and reconstruction exercise  628 Reznikova, Zhanna  426 Rich, Nathaniel  145 Richardson, Deborah  416 Riggio, Ronald  666 Rinker, Robert  535, 550, 656 Risk analytics  43 Risk assessment by thought experiment 63 Risk assessment, probabilistic  43, 350 Risk assessor  350 Risk, definition of  58 Risks of ability of State  30, 31, 38 Risks of complexity of a crisis  29 Risks of human errors  30, 38, 39

736

Dignity of Life

Ritchie, Stuart  336 Roberts, Penny  145 Robin, Marie-Monique  336 Robison, Peter  350 Rochlin, Gene  403 Rohmer, Éric  612 Rohrer, Doug  576 Roscioli, Gianluca  431 Rosicky, Jiří  547 Rosmus, Anja  383 Rosner, David  336 Rosset, Peter  144 Rothstein, Richard  146 Rovelli, Carlo  vii, 161, 162, 175, 369, 404 Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew  432 Rubenstein, Barton  578 Ruff 190 Ruiz, Rebecca  345 Rule of life  424 Rule-based strategy  90 Rules of direct questioning  632 Rwandan Patriotic Front  225 Ryan, Lyndall  145 Ryan, Richard  263, 264, 265, 589

S

Safety, principle of design  531 Safina, Carl  426 Sagan, Carl  431, 435, 436 Sagan, Scott  373 Sagi, Dov  578 Saini, Angela  146 Salovey, Peter  506 Samet, Elizabeth  146 Sangfroid, definition of  503 Sautoy, Marcus du  433 Schachter, Stanley  232 Schacter, Daniel  626, 627 Schellhous, E. J.  326 Schema 79 Schmidt, Richard  575, 576, 588, 589, 614 Schulz, Erwin  275

Schutzstaffel (SS), Nazi  188 Schwartz, Shalom,  502 Science 431 Science Fictions 336 Science in the Private Interest 336 Science, Money, and Politics 336 Scotti, Anthony  596 Second Nature 426 Secrecy World 146 Secret Agenda 380 Secrets 382 Seek and fix operations  464, 465 Seek and fix strategy  454, 455, 456, 457, 462, 467, 471, 481, 486, 487, 488, 490, 494, 499, 515, 522, 527, 551, 559, 604, 608, 657, 658, 664, 675, 685 Selection of ammunition  540-543 Selection of firearms  543-550 Selection of men  499-500 Selective activation and disengagement of moral control  269 Selective attention  291, 292, 569, 570, 571 Selective Attention Test 292 Self-appraisal  130, 132, 174, 592 Self-concept  132, 154, 208, 228, 518, 619, 621 Self-control  86, 201, 261, 505, 590, 601, 615, 633 Self-critical  84, 85, 481 Self-determination  264, 589, 590, 591, 622 Self-discipline  87, 137, 186, 191, 192 Self-evaluation  84, 85, 86, 136, 265 Selfish gene theory  389 Selflessness 192 Self-monitoring  86, 573, 592 Self-organisation  49, 79, 80, 81, 90, 91, 94, 103, 105, 161, 200, 202, 364, 404, 489 Self-perception  87, 592 Self-reflection  87, 131, 174, 265, 272, 274, 592, 618, 619

Self-regulated learning  84, 86, 87, 88 Self-regulation  84, 87, 88, 116, 129, 191, 202, 265, 277, 489, 497, 505, 601 Self-reinforcement  592, 601 Self-report  394, 397, 507, 508, 510, 511, 642, 643 Self-respect  150, 152, 243 Self-sanction  114, 268, 269, 272 Self-talk  87, 592, 601, 613 Self-test  582, 583, 602 Seligman, Martin  190 Selma 381 Sendler, Irena  166, 167 Shaffer, L.  176, 188, 190 Shalit, Ben  503 Shame  131, 132, 149, 150, 175, 180, 191, 221, 430, 574 Shaped charge  553 Sheinkin, Steve  382 Sherif, Muzafer  212, 231 Shifting baseline  314, 672 Shifting baseline syndrome  316 Shillin, C.  176 Shils, E.  176, 177, 185, 187 Shipman, Pat  142 Shock tube  553 Siff, Mel  608 Silenced 384 Silencer, definition of  538 Silent Earth 142 Silent Spring  335, 336 Simard, Suzanne  426 SimCity 408 SimFarm 408 Simon, Herbert  293 Simons, Daniel  291, 292, 624, 625, 626, 628 Simulation  181, 617, 618, 619, 620, 623, 628, 629 Simulation-based strategy  90 Sinclair, Upton  320 Singer, Peter  146

Index 737 Situation assessment  61, 65, 104 Situation awareness  92, 101, 407, 464, 467, 501, 505, 527, 530, 548, 586, 596, 609, 697 Skill development, process of  78, 588‑589 Slack, principle of design  530 Slaves for Peanuts 146 Sleep discipline  647 Sleep education  549 Sleep efficiency  647 Sleep engineering  647 Sleep hygiene  648 Sleep intrusion  647 Sleep pressure  647 Sleep, biphasic  648 Sleep, deep  644, 647, 648 Sleep, dream  644, 645, 647 Sleep, light  644 Sleep, micro  394, 647 Sleep, monophasic  648 Sleep, non-rapid eye movement  644 Sleep, rapid eye movement  644 Sleep, slow-wave  644 Slip, definition of  288 Sloman, Steven  295 Small arms, definition of  536 Small squad, definition of  462 Smith, David Livingstone  145 Smith, M. B.  176 Sniper rifle, barrel of  546 Sniper rifle, cleaning of  694 Sniper rifle, scopes and telescopic sights of 689-690 Sniper rifle, zeroing of  692-694 Sniper scope reticle, first focal plane 689 Sniper scope reticle, second focal plane 689 Sniper, definition of  453, 688 Snowden, Edward  380, 383 Snyder, Timothy  145 Sober, Elliott  203

738

Dignity of Life

Social learning  272, 579, 598 Socrates  117, 126 Soda Politics 336 Soldier Blue 422 Song of Joe McDonnell 421 Sources of Power 68 Soussan, Michael  146 Space Shuttle Challenger 298 Space Shuttle Columbia 299 Specialised information complex  79 Spector, Ronald  145 Spiegel, J.  176, 189 Spittle, Michael  619 Sport Speed and Agility Training 608 Squad, definition of  462 Squire, Larry  70 Stand-off attachment, definition of  538 Stanford Prison Experiment  211, 226, 227, 229, 230, 231 Starr, Cecie  607 State of the World’s Plants and Fungi 432 State, definition of  13-14, 683 State’s monopoly on violence  13 Staub, Ervin  145 Stauber, John  146, 336 Stech, Frank  403 Stereotypes 627-628 Sternberg, Robert  95 Stillson, Kathy  503 Stockholm syndrome  32 Stone, Gene  426 Stouffer, S.  176, 185 Strategy, definition of  440 Streetlights and Shadows 68 Strelau, Jan  506 Stress habituation  613, 617 Stretching 608 Stretching, incrementally normalised progressive 605 Stretching, proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation 605 Striking force, definition of  454

Stronghold, definition of  451 Strongmen 146 Structure and Function of the Musculoskeletal System 608 Success, dangers of  324-325 Success, notion of  378 Suggestibility 626 Suicidal altruism  126 Supercritical mass  493 Superior  146 Supertraining 608 Supreme Inequality 146 Surprise, optional  286 Surprise, partial  286 Surprise, total  286 Survival Psychology 616 Sutcliffe, Kathleen  324, 396 Symmetry breaking  62 Sympathetic detonation, definition of 552 Synaptic plasticity  73 Systems thinking  409 Szpilman, Władysław  111

T

Tacit knowledge  80, 94, 95 Tactical, definition of  451 Tactics, definition of  440 Taheri-Mousavi, Seyedeh Mohadeseh 431 Taliban 186 Tamping, definition of  552 Tanne, David  578 Tasan, Cemal Cem  431 Taub, Jennifer  146 Taubes, Gary  332 Teacher, qualities of a good  574 Team, definition of (hostage rescue) 462 Technical rescue  164 Technocentrism 523 Technology, primacy of men  526 Technology, problem of ‘revenge



Index 739

effects’ 525-526 Technology, problem of  523-524, 526 Technology, problem of apparent simplicity 526 Technology, problem of clumsiness  524 Technology, problem of design  524 Technology, problem of featurism  524 Technology, problem of innovation  525 Technology, selection of  526-528 Technology, solution to problem of 524-525 Temporary shelter, definition of  463 Tenner, Edward  525, 526, 652 Terminal ballistics, definition of  539 Terrorism  1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 15, 16, 18, 22, 421, 493, 703 Test, computer  508, 582 Test, field  508, 510, 530, 532 Test, flash card  582 The Afghanistan Papers 383 The Allure of Battle 177 The Art of Socratic Questioning 246, 633 The Bare Essentials Guide for Martial Arts Injury Prevention and Care 608 The Biophysical Foundations of Human Movement 607 The Catholic Church and the Holocaust 393 The Challenger Launch Decision 298 The Cigarette 336 The Code of Capital 146 The Color of Law 146 The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler  124, 166 The Cultural Revolution 145 The Dawn of Everything  xiii, 138 The Dialogues of Plato 245 The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 145 The Driving Book 596 The Earth After Us 435 The Emotional Lives of Animals 426

The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The

Ends of the World 435 Genius of Birds 426 Great Terror 145 Hidden Life of Trees 426 History and Sociology of Genocide 145 Icepick Surgeon 336 Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine 336 Inner Life of Animals 426 Insect Crisis 142 Insider 137 Invaders 142 Limits to Growth 427 Logic of Failure 408 Lucifer Effect  212, 230 Massacre in History 145 Most Dangerous Animal 145 Most Dangerous Man in America 382 Most Secret Place On Earth 381 Multitasking Myth 613 Nasty Girl 383 Nazi Next Door 380 New Nuclear Danger 336 New Republic 326 New York Times  334, 345, 427 New Yorker  207, 346, 379 Origins of Totalitarianism 145-146 Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies 145 Panama Papers 146 Paperclip Conspiracy 380 Pianist 111 Planet in a Pebble 435 Post 382 Roots of Evil 145 Seattle Times 346 Second 146 Second World War 145 Shock Doctrine 146 Sixth Extinction 145 Stanford Prison Experiment 212 System 146

740

Dignity of Life

The Tillman Story 381 The Tragedy of Liberation 145 The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque 612 The Trial of Henry Kissinger 381 The Triumph of Doubt 336 The Truth About the Drug Companies 336 The Uninhabitable Earth 145 The Vanquished 145 The Vatican’s Holocaust 393 The Washington Post 382 The Whisperers 145 The Whistleblower 124 The World According to Monsanto 336 The World Without Us 435 Theatre of operation, definition of  452 Theatres of Violence 145 Third Reich, Nazi  111, 132, 205, 206 This Changes Everything 146 Thomas theorem  196 Thomas, Dorothy  196 Thomas, William  196 Thompson, D’Arcy  367 Tice, Dianne  505 Time paradox  90 Timelapse of the Future 435 Tipping point  49, 79, 103, 162, 366, 367, 368, 385, 386, 410 Tipton, Charles  608 To Hell and Back 145 To Start a War 146 Tolerance, cultural  248 Tolerance, intellectual  247 Tollefson, Jeff  379 Toomey, M. A.  534, 536 Training for knowing each other well 599-601 Training for Speed, Agility, and Quickness 608 Training, explosives  611-612 Training, field  515, 581, 586, 588 Training, firearms  608-610 Training, gaze control  614

Training, goal of  575 Training, goal setting in  589-590, 593 Training, hardware and equipment handling 588 Training, limitations of  620 Training, primary objective of  578 Training, realistic  617, 618 Training, standardised vocabulary for communication 612 Training, toolkit for practitioners, trainers, planners, and supervisors 598-603 Training, two-thirds rule of  515 Trait, behavioural  502 Trait, personality  502 Treblinka extermination camp  275 Tree thinking  635 Tree thinking, critical junctures  635 Tree thinking, decision points  635 Tree thinking, first order decisions  636 Tree thinking, second order decisions 636 Tree thinking, third order decisions 636 Tree thinking, tipping points  636 Tree thinking, turning points  635-636 Trumbo 381 Trust Us, We’re Experts 336 Trust, definition of  251 Tucholsky, Kurt  124 Turner, Barry  301, 305, 306, 309, 310, 311, 312, 315, 316, 317, 320, 323, 368, 369, 410, 412 Turner, Sandra  503 Tye, Larry  381 Typification  61, 62

U

Under a Green Sky 336 Understanding Power 146 Unholy Trinity  206, 393 United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda 225 Universal constant  46

Universities in the Marketplace 336 Unsavory Truth 336 Unto Others 203 Uprising 174

V

Valued notion of announcement of anomaly 259-260 Valued notion of confession  266-268 Valued notion of doubt  242-243 Valued notion of excellence  263-266 Valued notion of individual autonomy and independence  260-263 Valued notion of learning from mistakes 256-259 Valued notion of question  244-246 Valued notion of tolerance  246-251 Valued notion of transparency  251-256 Valued notions  239 Van Eynde, D. F.  190 Vanunu, Mordechai  383 Vaughan, Diane  298, 307, 308, 314, 315, 318, 325, 350, 351, 372, 386, 398 Versatility, principle of design  530 Vicente, Kim  523, 524, 525, 526 Violence, definition of  7-8 Visibility, principle of design  529 Visual dominance  584 Visualisation  91, 501, 506, 508, 587, 592, 610, 617, 618, 619, 621, 626, 689 Vuillard, Éric  315 Vul, Edward  576

W

Waal, Frans de  202, 426 Wachsmann, Nikolaus  145 Waffen-SS, Nazi  185 Wagner, Wendy E.  336 Waldrop, Mitchell  49 Walentynowicz, Anna  370 Walker, Matthew  644, 645, 646, 648

Index 741 Wallace-Wells, David  145 Walt, Anthony  619 Walters, Stan  634 Wannsee Conference  205 War Before Civilization 145 War Horse  157, 167 War in Human Civilization 145 War Without Mercy 145 Ward, Peter  336 Watkins, James  608 We Were Soldiers 176 Weapons of Mass Deception 146 Weapons of Math Destruction 336 Weber, Max  13, 306 Weick, Karl  324, 396 Weisman, Alan  435 Wengrow, David  xiii, 138 Wenliang, Li  384 Wer ist Anna Walentynowicz? 370 Western Way of War  177, 178, 179, 182 Westrum, Ron  377 What a Fish Knows 426 When Elephants Weep 426 White Rose  111 Whiteson, Daniel  433 Whitlock, Craig  382, 383 Whitman, James  146 Who Rules the World 146 Wickert, F.  176, 177, 185 Wiener, Norbert  524 Wilcox, Ella Wheeler  125 Wild Justice 426 Wilkerson, Isabel  146 Williams, Raymond  195 Wilson, David  203 Winchester, Simon  145 Winograd, Terry  522 Winstein, Carolee  589 Wired 330 Wixted, John  576 Wohlleben, Peter  426 Woods, David  300, 317, 318, 321, 322,

742

Dignity of Life

323, 353, 354, 356, 409, 524, 534, 681 World Hunger: 12 Myths 144 World Orders Old and New 146 World War, First  122, 157, 184 World War, Second  122, 144, 176, 185, 189, 190, 233, 302, 497 Wound ballistics, definition of  540 Wulf, Gabriele  589 Wynne, Brian  321, 351, 352

Y

Yager, Joel  503 Yanofsky, Noson  434 Yaw, definition of  539

Z

Zalasiewicz, Jan  430, 434, 435 Zawadzki, Bogdan  506 Zelaznik, Howard  589 Zimbardo, Philip  184, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 233, 234, 271, 390, 673 Zinn, Howard  145, 418 Zone of operation, definition of  462