Answer terror with open eyes

In one of its recent publications, the United States government has a map of the world that on casual glance appears to be like so much multi-coloured spaghetti strewn all over. The map actually depicts various routes of arms and narcotics smuggling, illegal money flows, human trafficking and terrorism. In many cases, the routes overlap, showing interdependence and international connectivity. It has also been calculated that this illicit and deadly trade has an economy that accounts for five per cent of the global GDP. Added to this is the fact that in this modern day and age many of the transactions and instructions flow through the Internet sent in various coded forms that are not easy to track or decipher. All such transactions can take place in real time.
Terrorism had gone global several years ago but to the affluent and overconfident West, terrorism was like poverty, a disease that afflicted only the poor while the rich and powerful had been immunised against it. So any talk of cooperation was usually brushed off disdainfully. Cooperation was not scoffed at but nor was it given any serious consideration. Some of the European agencies were more serious, others treated the Indian suggestion for international cooperation as something that arose from an exaggerated and a self-serving threat.
B. Raman often refers to an incident after the notorious Mumbai serial blasts of March 1993, when RAW had collected one of the timers used by the terrorists that had been manufactured in the US and supplied to the Pakistanis for the Afghan jihad. This was given to the Americans for forensic confirmation, but they never returned the timer on one pretext or the other and ultimately claimed it had been destroyed by mistake. Obviously, Pakistan had to be helped out of this awkward situation. It took the US 12 years to declare Dawood Ibrahim a terrorist. Other countries had been more forthcoming even on the Sikh terrorist-ISI links, but the Americans were invariably reluctant to assist Indian intelligence on this — specially when they feared there might be Pakistani involvement. US state department blinkers on Pakistan and the CIA-ISI bonds invariably led India into a dead end.
Dossiers on evidence about Pakistani involvement prepared painstakingly and presented by India were usually scoffed at; interrogation reports were considered unreliable because they were believed to have been coerced out of the suspects. One wonders what they say about the reliability of statements from victims of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Cooperation is thus not just a function of intelligence agencies but needs political support.
Post 9/11 the US, after an initial show of enthusiasm of global cooperation for a global war on terror, has reverted to form. The motto being "my terrorist is more important than your terrorist, who in fact is a freedom fighter". The definition of terrorism remains very flexible and usually something that is highly subjective and politically expedient. No wonder India, which has suffered relentless Pakistan-inspired terrorism for at least 17 years, finds no mention as one of the victims of terrorism in the US national security strategy report of 2006.
Instead, the report thoughtfully and sympathetically mentions that Pakistan was one of the places where terrorists struck last year. But then we also now consider Pakistan a victim of terrorism.
The character, reach and lethality of terrorism has changed over the last few decades. The "gentleman terrorist" who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 (and thus set off World War I) is a far cry from the ruthless cold-blooded terrorist of today. The 21st century terrorist plans his own suicide mission weeks, months, even years in advance, and thinks nothing of crashing aircraft and boats into buildings and ships, innocents and children being fair game, plans newer and better ways of killing, keeps ahead of the security agencies with his readiness to use the latest technological innovations to strike in any part of the globe. A 10-kiloton nuclear bomb in the hands of a terrorist is a never-ending nightmare for all security agencies.
Intelligence agencies are known more by their failures, their successes hidden away from public scrutiny and acclaim. Each time a terrorist attack takes place there are questions about intelligence failure. The best way a terrorist attack might be averted would be if a terrorist organisation had been penetrated by an intelligence agency and the agent was in the cell that planned the attack — not the easiest of tasks. Besides, there will always be the moral question of whether the handler of such a mole will allow a terrorist act to be committed so that the source is not exposed, or abort the terrorist act and blow his source. It is easier to collect intelligence through interception of communications — on the Internet, mobile phones and so on, backed by thorough analysis, smooth coordination between the agencies involved and rapid action by anti-terrorist forces.
Since intelligence cooperation, as an important element of general global cooperation, is necessary to tackle global terrorism, it is argued that cooperation between India and Pakistan should also make sense. It does not simply because the two countries cannot agree on a definition of the word "terrorist". Pakistan considers acts of violence in Kashmir as the handiwork of freedom fighters; when it says violence must end in Kashmir it means violence by Indian forces. Since there is no basic agreement on the ground rules, one cannot visualise any meaningful cooperation. Sharing intelligence means invariably that the recipient can work out how that intelligence was obtained, especially when he is responsible for the act in the first place, and can thus take remedial measures for the future. Besides, cooperation can work only in an atmosphere of mutual trust, and it is known the world over that intelligence agencies are reluctant to share operational intelligence even within their own country. This trust simply does not exist between the Indian and Pakistani services. It is difficult to accept the rationale of this exercise or to imagine that it will succeed.
Soon after 9/11, there was a mushrooming of joint working groups on terrorism, with different countries promising to cooperate on counter-terrorism. Actually these JWGs soon ended up as talking shops and provided junkets for the fortunate few. The exchange of information was generally nothing more than what had already been shared by intelligence agencies among themselves. These JWGs are pious political declarations of intent but achieve very little else.
As terrorist threats are now transnational, no single intelligence organisation can tackle this alone and cooperation has to be global. Mere exchange of information and data — bilateral or multilateral — is useful but it is not enough. There has to be exchange of actionable or operational intelligence between two agencies for what might become a joint operation against a common identified enemy.
Yet the fear remains that without a clear agreement about the definition of a terrorist, what constitutes an act of terrorism, the target selected and priorities assigned, some agencies may simply end up carrying suspects in torture taxis to lodge them in secret prisons. One can have any number of international and multilateral regional organisations blessing cooperation to fight terror, or even the UN Resolution 1373 of September 2001, but so long as we do not have a common definition and common targets, the terrorist will continue to win.

(The writer is a former head of the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s external intelligence agency)

Source : Asian Age 31st Dec 2006