INDIA’S DEFENCE AGAINST TERROR

INDIA’S DEFENCE AGAINST TERROR
J P Sharma
The deadly spate of terrorist blasts in Bangalore, and Ahmedabad and the timely discovery of cars laden with bomb making materials averting a repeat performance in Surat have once again turned the spotlight on the threat to the security of Indian citizens and the economic prosperity of the country. More than 500 people have lost their lives in terrorist attacks during the last three years. Not one of these cases has been successfully investigated. The media is quick to pin the blame on “Intelligence Failure”. Central and state security agencies often blame each other. The Government of India routinely issues statements condemning the attacks, praising the spirit of inhabitants of the hit town, reiterating its resolve to bring the offenders to book, announcing compensation to victims, some VIPs visit the affected areas and then it is business as usual. The same pattern keeps on being repeated with sickening regularity. Is there any hope of any better performance?

The fact that our preventive and detective agencies have not been successful in preventing terrorist attacks nor in getting adequate proof against the alleged perpetrators of the attacks makes it clear that our capabilities to prevent and detect terrorist attacks are severely inadequate. We have been facing terrorism for almost two decades now and should have known what needs to be done. Who is responsible for keeping our security agencies in such a woeful state? And what does the government propose to do beyond mouthing the usual platitudes? It is time that these questions are asked and our rulers made to answer.
KARGIL REVIEW REPORT
The GC Saxena Committee which examined the question of upgrading the intelligence capabilities of the country in the aftermath of the Kargil War had recommended quite a few measures including substantial augmentation of the manpower available to the Intelligence Bureau. Only a fraction of the required addition has materialized. Another was the creation of two new wings—a Multi Agency Centre whose job would be to collect and coordinate terrorism related information and the Joint Task Force on Intelligence which was to pass on the information to the state governments in real time. According to Dr. Ajai Sahni Executive Director of the Institute for Conflict Management “both MAC and JTFI remain under-staffed, under-equipped and ineffective, with even basic issues relating to recruitment and administration unsettled. Their principal objective, the creation of a national terrorism database, has made little progress. The JTFI was also given the responsibility of upgrading counter-terrorism capabilities in the State Police Forces, as part of its mandate to improve intelligence gathering across the country, but no actual programme of training or capacity enhancement has been initiated.” The reasons for this lackadaisical manner of dealing with a matter so vital to the security of the country are yet to be explained.
If this is the state of the premier intelligence agency of the country, the conditions prevailing in the state police forces could well be imagined. The police –population ratio in India stands at half of the UN norms. And much of the available manpower is deployed in providing protection to the VVIPS, VIPs and their relations and on making arrangements for their smooth travel. Special laws, terrorism countering agencies, training, equipment etc. can all wait.

POTA AND ITS SUCCESSORS

The NDA Government had enacted a special law –Prevention of Terrorism Act in 2002 giving the police the authority to detain suspects upto 180 days and making confessions made to police officers admissible as evidence during trial. The law was opposed by some political parties, civil and human rights activists groups on the ground that the law had been misused against the minorities. The first act of the UPA government on coming to power in 2004 was to repeal POTA. Since then no special law calculated specifically to curb terrorism has been enacted.
In November 2006, during the conference of the police chiefs of India, the Director Intelligence Bureau had mooted a proposal to enact a special law to deal with terrorism stressing that the existing laws had been found to be inadequate to deal with the emerging situation. Although both the Home Minister and the Prime minister expressed grave concern at the multi faceted and growing threat of Terrorism, DIB’s proposal, based on inputs from the government agencies responsible for countering the threat of terrorism, was summarily rejected by the Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh saying that the existing laws were quite adequate for the purpose. The proposal was not considered fit even for being taken up for further examination. Of course the Prime Minister declared emphatically that his Government stood “firmly committed to enforcing ‘zero tolerance to terrorism’ within the framework of our existing legal system”.For good measure the Prime Minister added that “certain and swift punishment” was an effective deterrent to potential wrongdoers, and that which was why the judiciary had a vital role in ensuring that cases related to terrorism were tried “expeditiously” and offenders brought to justice without undue delay. The question one would like to ask is” Where exactly is that blessed land in which there is “the zero tolerance” to terrorism and the “certain and swift punishment” of wrong doers? Certainly not India, may be in the dream world of the PM.
In the following period, several experts have suggested the creation of a central agency to collect, coordinate and disseminate intelligence and also to investigate cases involving terrorism. Nothing has so far been done largely on the pretext that law and order was a state subject under the constitution and it is only with the consent of the states that any such agency could be created. What message does the Government’s refusal to take strong measures against terrorism send to the terrorist network?
FORMULATION OF A PROPER ANTI- TERROR MECHANISM
The first requirement for formulation of an adequate anti –terror mechanism is for the planners to have a fairly accurate idea of the problem. Our difficulty seems to lie in our failure to comprehend fully the problem facing us. Some of our experts while good at tracing the origin of the terrorist groups and their links with their local and foreign patrons and supporters seem to argue that the acts of terrorism against Indian targets are the work of a few misguided Indian Islamists seeking revenge for the perceived anti Islam actions of the Indian state e.g. maintaining close relations with Israel or supporting the anti Islam actions of USA in Afghanistan or Iraq or the biased/unfair treatment of Muslims by Indian security agencies/Courts. Of course the two unfailing sources of Muslim anger, always to be quoted , remain the demolition of Babri Masjid and the post Godhra anti Muslim riots in Gujarat. This is the line the secularist media and the NGOs, the civil libertarians, human rights activists and many other well funded quarters who hold almost a monopoly in the Indian media keep pushing. The leading foreign journals like Time also hold the majority Hindus guilty of atrocities on the poor Muslims. Blatant lies constantly repeated by politicians, print and electronic media are bound at some stage to be believed as the truth.
For understanding our problem, we have to start with understanding the reasons for the creation of Pakistan as the homeland for Muslims of undivided India, the religion of Islam and the duty it prescribes for its followers living in a state not governed according to the laws of Islam. Unless our experts invest their time and energy in acquiring a reasonably sound grounding in the teachings of the Quran, and the Hadith, the concepts of Darul Harb and Darul Islam, the obligations of Jihad and the Islamic view of treaty obligations etc. their expertise on dealing with jihadi terrorism will remain superficial. How many of our experts have seriously studied the Quran, the Hadith or Brigadier S K Malik’s book “the Quranic Concept of War” of which Gen Zia ul Haq contributed the Foreword. How many understand the implications of the verse which says “I will strike terror into the hearts of unbelievers”?

Let there be no mistake, we are in the midst of a war launched by Pakistan with the object of dismembering India. After more than fifteen years of fighting the Pakistan launched proxy war and having suffered the repeated Pakistan inspired attacks on the symbols of our state’s power,places of worship, railways and buses, markets full of shoppers, and even on our Parliament ,we declared at Havana that Pakistan too was a victim of terror and agreed to set up a joint mechanism with Pakistan to counter the problem of terrorism !!! There could be no sane explanation of such behaviour other than the obvious i.e. we were acting on the instructions of USA. We could perhaps follow USA’s advice also if it had been successful in turning Pakistan away from being the epicenter of global jihad. But after spending over 10 billions of US taxpayers’ money the US is nowhere nearer achieving its objective than it was in 2001 .
Pakistan’s undeclared war against India is being fought on several fronts. Subversion of the loyalties of Indian Muslims by heightening the feelings of victimhood, having a separate and supervening identity as members of the Umma and infiltration of foreign Muslims into India are important prongs of this war. Madrassas, mosques and maulanas who propagate that Islam is the only true religion and the entire earth belongs to Islam are all soldiers in this quiet war. The flood of petrodollars provides the wherewithal for enabling the enemies to carry on their offensive. What counter measures have we taken? We are afraid of speaking the truth for fear of damaging our secular credentials. Our government even though knocked repeatedly by Jaipur, Kabul, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Surat, Chennai still believes in carrying on the “peace process” and adding to the “Confidence Building Measures” hoping that Pakistan will become a peaceful neighbour. What else can be expected from a government composed of parties whose blinkered eyes can see nothing beyond Muslim votes as the only means of retaining power.
This nation has been quietly absorbing bloody blow after blow for the last two decades. Let our rulers understand that even a worm can sometimes turn. (The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi