To Secure India , All of Us Have to do More

TO SECURE INDIA, ALL OF US HAVE TO DO MORE

Eleven or twelve attacks in one night in different parts of Mumbai and hundreds killed while the hostage crisis continues. The entire unending episode is sinister and frightening in its implications. It is a direct assault on the state of India.

Strikes of this kind require considerable logistic support. It could not have been carried out by just a group of terrorists acting on their own. More than one agency or state could be involved. There also must have been local support and this could have come from the underworld of the kind that was involved in the 1993 bomb blasts. In the 1993 blasts, terrorists at that time had also planned to follow up the bomb blast s with random killings through gun attacks but were unable to do this after the Mumbai police accidentally discovered an arms cache which revealed the bigger conspiracy. It is possible that the same masterminds have been in play in carrying what was part two of the 1993 operation. Grenades were hurled at airport and fire was opened over innocent civilians in 1993. Some TV channels are reporting that terrorists may have sneaked into Mumbai through sea route which was also used by the 1993 terrorists. In which case the same leaders –are Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon and their mentors operating from Pakistan may be beginning to haunt us again?

Possibly more than one module was used. It seems that a separate module of terrorists planted IEDs at different places to spread panic, uncertainty and confuse the Police. Maybe the terrorists were grouped as different sabotage teams and unknown to each other; where some were involved in opening direct fire and engaging security forces while other teams planted IED's to make it difficult for administration to quantify the scale and gain an early upper hand.

These strikes seem more like well organised raids carried out by specialised armed forces. It is not possible for terror groups to organize and co-ordinate such operations on their own without active guidance of some professional government or private agency. The deliberateness of action and the demeanour of the terrorists seen on TV suggests a well-trained professional force and not a rag- tag suicide squad. The Mumbai attacks are the clearest example in recent times of how terrorists of the day are better trained and better equipped. Some say the terrorists in Mumbai are armed with Heckler and Koch guns and not just AK-47’s.

It is likely that indigenous as well as imported modules are involved. Terror groups active in India have bring together geographically distant modules in many previous strikes. Once again there will be questions about intelligence failures. That too but there are larger failures too and this is a failure of the system to appreciate adequately the threat and to have the determination to carry out the reforms or improvements in a non-partisan manner.

It is easy to blame the intelligence agencies for all that occurs. They do not have any constituency in India that actively supports their cause. Globally, it has been found that despite all the State assistance for intelligence agencies, the ability to collect intelligence about non-State adversaries remains the most difficult and this includes not just the terrorist, but the mastermind, the arms smuggler, the safe house owner, the money launderer and other trans-national operatives. No single agency, no single country can provide this information and no one can still guarantee that every attack will be aborted or every terrorist cell unearthed on time. There has to be multi-level, multi-agency multinational co-operation acting in real time. We must understand that even the best intelligence can only minimise the threat or the forewarning will make the attack insurmountably difficult. And yet, all this kind of cooperation is the most difficult to achieve.

Heightened intelligence capability, sustained and built over a period of time, which is able to keep pace with the growing threat is the need today. This has to be accompanied by skilful investigation and forensics, particularly at the state level, rapid sharing of intelligence, provision of national identity cards, CCTVs at important places, speedy justice which is also seen to be fair, a system of governance that delivers what it is supposed to and a media that does not compete for TRP ratings over such issues.

The questions are why is it that we let it happen again and again and can we not do anything to win this war against an unscrupulous and invisible enemy? Why do we give the impression of being soft and confused? There is no short cut to improving the intelligence and security apparatus of the country. Spare no cost and accept no compromises on this. If the country has a well endowed and trained intelligence apparatus acting without political interference (as distinct from accountability) it could provide pre-emptive intelligence that could abort terrorist acts and lead to arrests. It would also prevent indiscriminate arrests and all that follows.

We could learn from the Americans – not completely but suitably – they tightened their laws even to extent that they were draconian, spent billions of dollars and improved intelligence collection and surveillance making them intrusive and they outsourced certain aspects of the work to maximise use of talent.

Each one of us must learn to give up some freedom to preserve that freedom.


Vikram Sood THE ASIAN AGE NOVEMBER 28, 2008