Why India is an easy target for terrorists

MORE THAN two decades have passed since the first terrorist strike in India but we are yet to learn how to cope with such attacks. It is not we have not learned any lessons are good at protecting our VIPs. the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, the whole machinery state was revamped to ensure no VIP is killed. And, touch wood, have been successful in that mission — witness the Special Protection Group and the Z- category system that ensured that no “ protectee” has killed. as for the rest of the country, it different story.
It is true, as terrorism expert B. Raman said on his on Wednesday, that soft targets are used by terrorists to demonstrate the ability of the “ to operate without being detected by the intelligence and counter- terrorism agencies”. Anyway, Vikram Sood, former India’s external intelligence R& AW, notes that India is easy country to operate in”. He out that we have three virtually open borders, and a sea frontier is more or less unguarded. system of checks and controls by other countries is simply available in India, or doesn’t as it should.
According to A. K. Doval, a former director of the Intelligence Bureau expertise in operations, the years of fighting terrorism have their toll on our security “ The element of surprise and innovation are key weapons in the against terrorism, but I am we have run short of new at the tactical and strategic Counter- intelligence or counter- terrorism is a cat- and-mouse game that requires highly and innovative responses. we have instead is a tired security force, more worried about and emoluments than the grinding task it has been involved a generation.
The way our has been functioning is that only do they fail to solve a case ensure the conviction of the but they do so in a manner brutalises innocent people to point that they become potential recruits to the terrorist cause. resulting from over- reactions facilitates their [ terrorist] recruitment,” notes Raman.
In 1993, the authorities were able identify most of the perpetrators of the Mumbai blasts within a month and track their trail to Pakistan. But in the past couple of the security agencies have unable to tell us with certainty who has been behind, say, the October 2005 Delhi blasts in which people died. In February 2006, Delhi police filed a chargesheet naming Tariq Ahmed Dar of the Lashkar- e- Tayyeba, Mohammed Hussain and Mohammed Fazili has happened since. Most knowledgeable people believe that the case is a weak one.
But this is the story of most cases in recent times. So far there has been little evidence of forensic science being used to track terrorists. More often than not the nature of the device and its composition is found out by unexploded bombs rather than chemical analysis.
The procedure in other countries is quite stringent with the scene of the terrorist strike being cordoned off and a systematic search for clues which could range from fingerprints to tell- tale remnants of an explosive, timer or integrated circuit. Such data are invaluable in providing the “ signature” of a particular bomb- maker or group.
The US, for example, maintains a large facility in Baghdad which looks at every aspect of an IED — its dimensions, any possible fingerprints left by its makers on the parts, the nature of its trigger, its explosive. The police’s modus operandi at present is to arrest all suspects, which can mean all the Kashmiri shawl sellers following the Delhi blasts, or Muslims elsewhere.
After the Mumbai blasts of 2006, a Tablighi Jamaat missionary group travelling in Tripura was detained for a while.
Late last year Aftab Alam Ansari of Kolkata spent 22 days in jail because the UP police arrested him in a case of mistaken He faced torture and beatings and was not able to stand on his feet for more than 15 minutes after his release. Multiply this instance by a hundred and a thousand, if you will, and it is apparent that this is a recipe for creating rather than neutralising potential recruits.
Sood points to George W. Bush’s boast that the US homeland has not faced another terrorist attack since 9/ 11. He says the draconian action taken by the US, including tough laws and measures to check potential terrorists, has clearly had an effect. India, he points out, has no law to deal with terrorism. “ In fact we have several laws,” and this results in the slowing of the judicial process. It took more than a decade to convict those guilty of the Mumbai blasts of 1993, and the process has not quite ended. Mind you, these convicts were tried under the now defunct Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act. The slow judicial process ensures that the criminal justice system does not act as a deterrent for a potential terrorist. The bigger question is of political will.
There are critics like Doval who feel that India simply lacks the guts to respond to what he terms as Pakistani complicity in terrorist attacks on India. This is obviously a sensitive issue as it is linked to “ how far our adversaries think they can push us”. Political will, he points out, is critically linked to executive action. He says no national party today has a leader who can inspire our security forces and intelligence services, and fire them with the kind of zeal that is needed to combat terrorism.
This article appeared in Mail Today May 16, 2008

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Scarcely a day goes by when we do not hear of some or the other alarming report of police high-handedness, and indeed, criminality. But perhaps the worst crime that our custodians of law are guilty of is to concoct false cases against people. Even worse is when many of these cases concern Muslims and the charges are related to terrorism. It does not take a genius to figure out that such actions, which are undoubtedly accompanied by torture at the hands of investigators, and harassment of the families of the people in question , are the worst possible advertisement for why the secular, democratic system is superior to whatever paradise that the terrorists have on offer. Without doubt they help to widen the pool of recruits for terrorism.

India may have made great strides as an economic power and the electoral aspects of its democracy are indeed a matter of satisfaction. But when it comes to the rule of law and the manner in which it is applied, we are definitely in the Third World category. Torture is the chosen method of solving all crimes, be they big or small, and planting of evidence and concoction of false cases routine. Just how skewed the system is against the minorities is borne out by the fact that perpetrators of the Mumbai blasts of 1993 have all been tried and punished, yet those, particularly Shiv Sena members, responsible for the horrific riots that triggered the blasts have yet to be charged, leave alone punished. And it is not just Muslims because we know that those guilty of the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984 remain largely untouched.

In February 2006, the Delhi police announced the arrest of Irshad Ali and Mohammed Muarif Qamar, two alleged Al Badr terrorists, with great fanfare and spun out the usual story of how they had smuggled the RDX and the plans they had for using it. According to the Times of India the CBI found that the RDX was planted on them. The key to the CBI breakthrough was that an Intelligence Bureau official who lured Qamar to his arrest had used his own cell phone. When the authorities can frame people with such ease, we need to take all claims relating to terrorist arrests with a large dollop of salt.

A confirmation of how this works is now available in the Delhi High Court’s acquittal of six people accused of being a part of the Lashkar-e-Taiba attack on the Red Fort in 2000. While the main accused has been sentenced to death, the High Court did not mince words in questioning the prosecution’s case, as well as the judgment of the lower court in finding them guilty.

According to the Indian Express the High Court Bench observed, “We became anxious to find out as to how these six accused were found guilty by the learned trial judge when despite our digging deep we could not find sufficient evidence against them.”

The pathology of the police’s attitude does not relate merely to terrorist cases, though they are the most serious. The manner in which the Delhi police continues to harass Uma Khurana, the victim of a sting, is an indicator of its mindset. Such incidents raise serious doubts about the convictions that have already taken place using the now repealed Terrorist and Disruptive Activities(Prevention) Act (TADA) and its successor Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA).

Such serious, and perhaps routine, instances of police chicanery is the reason why India cannot get a consensus on an anti-terror law. It is common knowledge that our State governments have used TADA and POTA to railroad political opponents, and any other inconvenient person or persons. In these statutes, a confession made by the accused in police custody was considered valid evidence. Fighting terrorism without a anti-terrorism law has handicapped Indian security authorities and has paradoxically encouraged extra-judicial killings of the suspects. But the security officials are themselves to blame for this. Having been empowered by TADA and POTA, they chose to misuse them flagrantly to the detriment of the country's security. The leaders of the police forces do not realise that the short cuts they take do not get them anywhere and that is the reason why they are stumped by the series of terrorist strikes in the last three years where nameless and ruthless people have set of blasts across the country and have yet to be brought to account.

There are no easy answers to resolving the problem. But a beginning can be made by a government that understands that there is a problem in the first place. The problem of errant police or security personnel is not new. The Roman poet Juvenal, who lived 2,000 years ago, is said to have first asked Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guards?) All countries have gone through the process of getting their law officers to remain on the straight and narrow path. At the end of the day, the police needs to police itself, and the system must ensure that there are laws and procedures in place to ensure that.While there are many suggestions in police commissions about arbitrary transfers and and promotion of police officials, we think they are missing the point. There is no doubt that the system must do what is required to insulate police personnel from the vagaries of politics and politicians. But that is only one part of the problem.

There is also, more importantly, a need to institute deterrent penalties on police personnel for not doing their duty. Once such a system is in place, the police-politician nexus will come apart on its own.

My view is that the only way to police the police is a “zero tolerance” approach. While I believe that "zero tolerance" is not always the best way to fighting crime in general, I think it is the only way to deal with criminal activities of those who are are custodians of the law.

So, first, there should be be no tolerance of any wrongdoing by the police (and no means zero). Second, all cases of police high-handedness must be tried by special fast-track courts and third, and this is important, any violation of the law by police personnel must merit double the quantum of punishment that is reserved for other law breakers.

The Sum of All Their Fears

India's national security bureaucracy doesn't really have an inspired record. It seems to lack the grit to fight the country's battles abroad and wants to stay holed up in fortress India. This article was published in Hindustan Times November 29, 2006

As 2006 draws to a close, there is some satisfaction in knowing that despite turbulence — some of it caused by our own instrumentalities — India’s most important foreign relations, that with Pakistan and China, are on track. The year began with expectations of rapid movement on the Pakistan front, only to be belied by the Varanasi blasts, the blockade on Siachen, the recriminations of the Mumbai blasts, followed by postponement of the foreign secretary-level dialogue. Towards the year’s end, a throwaway remark on Arunachal Pradesh led to another kind of turmoil, one often caused by the circulation of a lot of hot air.

As is our national wont, we have been convinced that all the problems were caused by our adversaries, real and potential. Our own actions and motives are, and have always been, as pure as driven snow. However, more than anytime in the past, there were disturbing signs of a kind of dissonance being introduced into the system by what is politely called the ‘national security bureaucracy’. This comprises members from the armed forces, the intelligence agencies, police forces and the civilian babus who believe that they have the exclusive franchise on deciding what constitutes the national interest, and the best way of preserving it.

The best (worst?) example of this was the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) paper warning against investment by China into certain important sectors. This was sent out to various ministries reportedly by the principal secretary to the Prime Minister and has done a great deal to needlessly roil Sino-Indian relations. Just why this was done is a bit of a mystery.

The NSCS, comprising relatively junior officials, is meant to merely service the National Security Council. The latter body comprising the Prime Minister himself and his ministers for defence, finance, home and external affairs, take the actual decisions. To advise the NSC, two additional deliberative bodies have been provided — the National Security Advisory Board, comprising experts in various fields and a clutch of retired officials, and the Strategic Policy Group. While the former is meant to be the source of external advice to the NSC, the latter, comprising all the top secretaries to the government, the chiefs of the three services and the intelligence agencies, is the top advisory and deliberative body to the NSC. Its additional value is that it is supposed to undertake what the Americans call an ‘inter-agency process’, where the views of various important departments and ministries are put forward and reconciled before becoming official policy. A parallel system servicing the Cabinet is the committee of secretaries. In the case of the Chinese investment policy, it is well-known that the finance, surface transport and external affairs ministries disagreed with the NSCS’s view. But since a senior PMO official has fired the guns from the shoulders of the NSC secretariat, what we have is an ill-considered, hawkish policy, rather than a balanced and considered opinion of the government.

The aim no doubt was to upset the government’s China policy. As indeed was the needless furore on the Chinese envoy Sun Yuxi’s remarks. While Sun could have had a better sense of timing to reiterate Beijing’s known views on the subject, it was not particularly edifying to hear the whining and sloganeering over what is a well-known Chinese position. A country aspiring to be a global player, must have the maturity to accept that if it has a point of view, so do others.

No doubt there are similar forces at work within Pakistan and China as well. But in India, we have the benefit of living in an all-too-transparent system where manoeuvres of mendacious officialdom are easily visible. Such openness is not available in Pakistan or China. The actions of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in using jehadis as a cat’s paw are not easy to prove, even though we must cope with their impact. The Chinese system is even more opaque. But its policy is to use Pakistan as a foil against India, rather than do anything negative frontally.

Fortunately, on both Pakistan and China, the political leadership of the country has shown a strong and steady hand. They have ensured that the momentum of efforts to normalise ties with these countries have not been derailed. At every stage of improving relations with difficult neighbours, the political class has had to lead. Rajiv Gandhi had to overrule officials before his pathbreaking visit to Beijing in 1988. Manmohan Singh, who does not have Rajiv’s clout, has had to fight every step of the way against bureaucrats and ministers who claim they are the repository of Rajiv’s legacy. It was on his insistence that the Hurriyat was permitted to travel to Pakistan without visas. He has also expended personal political capital on pushing the Indo-US nuclear deal.

The PM and his team have pushed through the anti-terror mechanism with Pakistan and the result has been a distinct improvement in India-Pakistan relations. Despite uncalled for pressure by the army, they have set the resolution of the Siachen and Sir Creek issues as a benchmark for the coming months. They are keeping their eyes firmly on the capstone of the peace process — the final settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. This process is further down the road than publicly acknowledged.

Likewise, despite Chinese procrastination, the government has steadily pushed for a final settlement of the Sino-Indian border dispute. The recent visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao gives a feel of the texture of New Delhi’s global policies. The latest Sino-Indian joint communiqué talks of the “global and strategic” significance of the relations between the two countries — a factual description of the current reality. It says that the two countries do not see themselves as “rivals or competitors but [are] partners for mutual benefit”. This sounds somewhat rhetorical, but is again true in that the unmoderated rivalry and competition between two nuclear armed States in a globalised economy is tantamount to mutually assured destruction. So the statement adds that “they agree that there is enough space for them to grow together”, a practical and forward-looking formulation. While the opacity we have referred to does cloud a better understanding of Chinese policies towards India, the facts are that Beijing is shifting towards a neutral position on the India-Pakistan issues, especially on Kashmir.

The broader Indian strategy, as probably that of China, is to enhance relations with a cross-section of important countries — the US, the EU, Japan, Russia, the Asean, South Africa, Brazil, etc. Based on the values that shape our nation and its foreign policies — secularism and democracy — it is inevitable that our ties with some countries will have a flavour quite different from those of others. But this does not mean that one set of relations will be benevolent, and the other conflict-ridden.

As long as human relationships are about power, the only way to promote restraint is to maintain a balance of power. But where in the past this was seen as a zero-sum game, in today’s inter-dependent world, it requires an appreciation of the balance of interests of various nations.

In this new vision of the world, too much is at stake to allow the national security bureaucracies to decide the direction of policies. While we must heed their views with all the seriousness they deserve, because it is their task to keep track of the family silver, we cannot allow them to run away with the agenda. They have the right to be suspicious of our real and potential adversaries. But suspicion unrelieved by any effort towards amelioration usually becomes paranoia. It breeds a ‘fortress mentality’ that takes comfort in hiding behind the high walls of national security. But the threats outside will inevitably breach the walls if not countered, through flexible and innovative strategies, at some remove from the walls of our fort.