The Home Ministry's cure for terrorism is worse than the disease

The Union Budget 2011-12 is unexceptional when it comes to supporting the Indian national security buildup. The formula adopted by the finance minister is to provide the sum asked for and add that “additional funds will be made available if required.” Such funds rarely get any public scrutiny, the parliament standing committees, do of course, examine the demands for grants, but in a normative rather than an analytical fashion.  As a result, people are unaware of the wider implications of certain decisions. One such relates to the Rs 39.75 crore appropriated for the National Intelligence Grid (Natgrid).
The challenge in the internal security area has only been seriously taken up in the wake of the Mumbai attack, even though the country has faced terrorist attacks for the past three decades. The post Mumbai efforts involve beefing up the National Security Guard to act as SWAT teams in various urban centres, creating a system of coastal and maritime security, as well as boosting internal intelligence coordination. 

Natgrid
All these are as they should be. But there are some measures which are now beginning to impinge on the rights of the average citizen. Prominent among these is the Natgrid for which some Rs 75 crore have been appropriated in the Union Budget in the last two years.  The proposal to link up all manner of individual information — tax, travel, internet and telecom usage, credit card spending, investments and so on, is the kind of thing that bureaucrats, especially national security ones, dream about. Sitting in their office, and at the press of the button, they can track everyone and everything at all times.
But this is the stuff of nightmares for the average law abiding person. Things would be fine if we had a sensitive and subtle bureaucracy. But we don’t. We have one which is already tipsy on power. While its core comprises of  dedicated and well-meaning persons, a significant proportion — much too large for comfort— are venal and not sufficiently ground in the ethics of good governance.  Trusting sensitive personal information to them is like allowing a fox to guard a hen coop.
A national grid where various intelligence agencies who collect information through various sources share their informationat various levels of classification makes for good sense and will aid  efficacious action against criminals and terrorists. But not the proposed Natgrid.
So far the principle behind the  interception of phone calls and its invasion into the privacy of a citizen is that he or she must  do something suspicious for which the authorities then seek a warrant which is signed by the Home Secretary and his equivalent. The interception  undertaken for a strictly limited period and the records subsequently destroyed.
What is being proposed now is an open ended system where as many as 11 intelligence agencies will be given a licence to trawl through the data banks of telecom and insurance companies, stock exchanges and banks, internet providers and airline booking networks to undertake  a grand fishing expedition which they hope will yield them something.
I am not being paranoid when I argue this. We have, after all, the example of the Radia tapes before us. These tapes were obtained by official sanction and were in official custody, yet they were leaked out. While there is an element of schadenfreude in the discomfort of some well known journalists being revealed as ethically challenged individuals, no crime seems to be evident, at least from the tapes so far released.
 Yes, they refer to lobbying and the craven politics of the UPA government, but that is in itself not a crime. There is considerable merit in Ratan Tata’s affidavit to the Supreme Court arguing that the indiscriminate publication of private conversations did constitute a violation of his constitutional rights.
Most of us will concede that the government needs to have the ability to tap phone conversations to take on organised crime, terrorism and money laundering. But the governments needs to assure us that its minions use the powers in a responsible way. As of now there is nothing in the law, nor the behavior of the government, to convince us that they will do so. 

NCTC
The Natgrid is the core of the grander plan of the Union Home Ministry to establish a National Counter Terrorism Centre. The scope of the NCTC, as outlined by Union Home Minister in his December 2009 Intelligence Bureau Centenary Endowment Lecture, would be truly awesome — not only would it subsume the Multi-Agency Centre, the Natgrid, National Investigation Agency and the like, but, also, more questionably,  the National Technical Research Organisation(NTRO) and the  the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).
There are two problems here. First, the existing MAC and enhanced security awareness since 26/11 have yet to break up a conspiracy in advance using all the current level of snooping that they have presumably been doing. Consider, on the other hand, the record of UK where several conspiracies have been rumbled in advance with sufficient evidence to jail the conspirators through an open trial.
In India, the intelligence agencies claim that they have disrupted several conspiracies, but none of them at the point where there was enough evidence to enable people to be fairly tried and convicted for their acts. Of course, there are always encounters, but then dead men don’t talk. Given the reputation of the police, these more often than not raise more questions than answers.

Flaws
The second issue is the scope of the NCTC. The NTRO and the JIC that Mr Chidambaram wants in the NCTC do not only deal with terrorism. Notwithstanding Mumbai, the Union Home Ministry needs to understand that terrorism is not the main threat to the country’s security. They are painful and ugly challenges, but they can hardly damage our system, in the manner an attack by an external state adversary can. The NTRO’s remit, for example, includes ballistic missile defence, or that part of it that deals with the detection of hostile incoming missiles, it also looks at, among other things, the issue of cyber security. Surely these are not subjects that can be supervised by the NCTC.
Actually, the US experience with its NCTC has not been particularly good. The obvious example is the case of Umar Farook Abdulmuttalab, the so-called underwear bomber. Information on his activities was known — the British intelligence sent a report to their American counterparts in November 2009 and his own father met and informed two CIA personnel in Abuja, Nigeria a week later about his predelictions. His name was added to the data base of the US NCTC, but was not sent to that of the FBI that  screened incoming air travelers. On December 25, Abdulmuttalab tried to detonate plastic explosives sewn into his underwear while on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.
The obvious lesson here is that the large all-encompassing bodies are not a particularly good idea. In matters of security, as well of systems in general, there is need to build redundancies. In other words, systems where a failure does not end in a  cataclysmic disaster, because there are other systems  there as backups.
 We  need to stop,  think and question the logic of  outfits like the Natgrid and the NCTC which, besides being of questionable utility in fighting terrorism, are also a major encroachment into the very liberties our Home Ministry is supposed to protect.
Terrorism, a major threat, is not the only national security challenge we confront. But it is perhaps the only one which requires discrete and subtle use of strength, rather than a sledgehammer that the Home Ministry is envisaging and the Parliament  unquestioningly funding.
Mail Today March 3, 2011

NEVER AGAIN

The United Progressive Alliance government’s recent approach to terrorism has been both muscular and active. A great deal of credit must go to the man who was appointed as the single-point counter-terrorism leader in the wake of Mumbai — Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram.
Things are still happening in a command fashion — orders going from top to down. But that is because for a long time nothing was happening. Everything was being dissolved into committees and task-forces. Hopefully, after the emergency surgery, the government will have the foresight to grow durable institutionalized arrangements.
A new National Investigation Agency has been created to deal with terrorist crime and a draconian legislative framework to deal with terrorism approved. Actions frozen for the past four years were unfrozen. In response to a question in Parliament on Wednesday, Mr. Chidambaram noted that the country’s “level of preparedness is higher than it was three months ago.” He added that “by March 31, there will be better coordination between Multi-Agency Centre and its subsidiaries, and also between MAC and special branches of state police and various data centres.”
He also spoke of better equipment for the armed forces and the paramilitary, and observed that the country had strengthened its coastal security in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Dangers

These are brave words, but necessary, given the trauma the country faced when Mumbai was attacked. For sixty hours, a gang of gunmen fought off India’s elite National Security Guard and we had to witness the agony of thousands who lost their near and dear ones in the carnage and of the hundreds who had been injured.
The NSG cannot be blamed-— neither through doctrine, training or equipment were they in a position to deal with the situation effectively. The overwhelming sense that came out of the traumatic days was of helplessness and humiliation, compounded by the fact that no one seemed to be in-charge, either in Mumbai or in New Delhi.
There is a real and present danger of a recurrence of a Mumbai-type event. A great deal depends on whether the recent steps taken to heighten our security work, and the extent to which the promised Pakistani actions against the terrorist masterminds and handlers on their soil disrupt their activities.




The transcripts of conversations between the terrorists and their handlers released by the authorities reveal the almost puppet-like control that was exercised by the handlers in Pakistan. Because this had to be done over unsecured communications networks, this could not have been a preferred situation but one mandated by the circumstances.
And what were they? The Lashkar leadership had a bold and ruthless plan, and they had a set of well-trained and motivated killers. The problem was that most of them —carefully nurtured within Pakistan for security reasons — were semi-literate and not very capable of functioning autonomously. For them to understand the layout of a modern hotel, or function in a modern city, would be difficult. Whatever independent thinking they may have had was wiped out by systematic brainwashing to make them into effective and remorseless killing machines.
If Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, Zarrar Shah & Co are truly out of commission, then it should make it difficult for the Lashkar to mount a similar operation in a hurry. If not, we can anticipate another strike. But we do not know where it will be, or what it would involve.
Having failed in their mission to provoke war between India and Pakistan in November, the masterminds will strive to carry out a more horrific attack, one that would make it difficult for the government to display the kind of restraint it did in the wake of Mumbai.
Given the Indian way of doing things, the biggest danger we confront is complacency. Having put a number of key measures to secure the county’s land and maritime boundaries, to get more effective intelligence coordination and unblocked money held up for vital defence and security needs, the government may well feel satisfied. But we are far from being home and dry.
New institutions and arrangements require time and training to become effective. The new maritime arrangements, the MAC and all the other good things the government has done have to not just be there as new signboards but must be made battle-worthy and battle-ready through training and retraining and tested on the ground.
Then, in pushing new measures Mr. Chidambaram has knocked a great number of heads. The normal tendency is that once the political ankush (goad) is withdrawn, the bureaucratic worms again crawl out of the woodwork and things soon return to normal. After Kargil and the Parliament House attack — the two defining national security disasters of the National Democratic Alliance period — the government carried out an unprecedented and long-overdue exercise to overhaul the country’s defence management system. But the incoming UPA put everything into the deep freeze.

Failure

It was declaratively allergic to stringent counter-terrorist legislation and was not particularly eager to have an NIA, and it had a somnolent Shivraj Patil as its Home Minister. Worse, with M.K. Narayanan, an old spook appointed the national security czar, all steps towards restructuring and reform died out.
The MAC should have been functioning by 2004. Narayanan did nothing about it, nor did he permit the National Technical Research Organisation to constitute itself in a manner it should have to carry out its high-tech surveillance mandate. The R&AW reached a nadir of sorts, and the government simply looked the other way.
Mr. Chidambaram’s timetable of March-end is determined either through the habit of a finance minister, or it is politically driven by the fact that the government will more or less end its term by then. But the country cannot afford to go by that timeline. An effective and agile counter-terrorist machine cannot be built in a matter of months; given our past sloth it could take years. And we need to take several other longer-term steps to be able to put up impregnable defences.

Agenda

First, reconstruct our relations with Pakistan by resolving outstanding disputes and building international pressure on Islamabad to make the paradigm shift away from using terrorism as an instrument of state policy.
Second, draw out the poison out of our inter-communal situation, especially in Gujarat and Maharashtra. This needs active intervention by the state and central government in building bridges with the Muslim community.
Third, overhaul the armed forces so that the enormous treasure we spend on their upkeep is justified by having a balanced and powerful military, one that can provide more options than were available to the government this time.
Fourth, create new centre-state compacts to promote greater synergy in the functioning of not just their intelligence agencies, and home and police departments, but in the joint working of the central and state governments as such.
Fifth, encourage inter-governmental, community and citizen participation in intelligence-gathering and analysis. Sometime bits and pieces of information are floating around at various levels, but it takes a clever intelligence service to pull all the strings together. In 1965, when the Army moved towards Lahore, they had no maps of Pakistan’s Icchhogil canal; the maps were available — with our Punjab state’s irrigation department.
Sixth, put in place a culture of leadership. Wars are fought by generals in a command fashion, and not by committee. Crisis management groups sound impressive, but they are usually ineffective.
Seventh, unlearn the “indigenous” mantra that has led to the police-bureaucracy-technocracy complex believing that they can do everything at home; they can’t. And their failure has led to countless problems ranging from the lack of a good Indian fighter and battle-tank to an inadequately equipped and trained counter-terrorist force.
Eighth, abandon belief that an announcement is tantamount to an achievement. We have announced the creation of the NIA, MAC, etc. What we now need is to make sure they work, and work well.

Everything must be subordinated to one goal: There must never be another Mumbai again.

This article appeared in Mail Today February 28, 2009

Executing Justice

Upholding the law is not just a matter of morality, but pragmatism. Extra-judicial killings by the State only promote terrorism. This article appeared in Hindustan Times May 2, 2007

On Monday in London, five men were convicted for a plot to set off a large improvised bomb. As conspiracies go in our abnormal times, the 2004 conspiracy does not appear shocking or unexpected. What was remarkable was the acquittal, after almost 27 hours of consideration by the jury, of two persons. This is a hallmark of the sophistication of the trial and its verdict. It would have been all too easy, in this era of secret prisons and fake encounters, to railroad these two as well. One of them, Sujah Mahmood, was the brother of the chief accused, Omar Khyam, and lived in the same room as him. The other, Nabeel Hussain, was charged because his debit card was used to pay for the storage unit where the fertiliser to make the bomb was stored.

British justice is not naturally just — we only have to recall the stories of the Birmingham Six, the Maguire Seven and the Guildford Four, all convicted of bombings in Britain in the 1970s, to show how justice can be perverted in the mother of democracies as well. All 17, suspected to be Irish Republican Army supporters, did time in prison before their cases were overturned after sustained campaigns and appeals.

The Irish, always ill-treated, were from across the sea. On the other hand, the July 7 bombings and other conspiracies were largely perpetrated by alienated British-born Muslims of Pakistani descent, living in the cities and towns of Britain. The country is tackling the latest threat with great care. It is not something that can, or ought to be, fought merely by a policy of blood and iron.

As it is, the case also highlights the fact that you need neither draconian laws nor an inordinate amount of time to prosecute those accused of terrorist crimes. All it requires is effort and a calculated understanding of why it is necessary to not only do justice, but to show that it is being done, more so when the violent crimes are motivated by a sense of injustice, imagined or otherwise.

These thoughts come to mind when we are confronted with evidence that Indian police officers detained three people, and gunned down one of them, Sohrabuddin Sheikh, claiming that he was plotting to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. To hide this murder, they casually bumped off the other two, including Sohrabuddin’s wife, Kausar Bi. Those who have defended Sohrabuddin’s murder with the viewpoint that he was a criminal and ‘deserved to die’, have nothing to say about why the life of another person, his wife, was cut short. They also don’t realise that the logic of arrogating to themselves the decision as to who should live and die is exactly the one used by terrorists.

One of the defining characteristics of the modern State is that it largely retains the monopoly of organised killing. In democratic countries, this right is exercised through judicial due process. Only the judiciary has the right to order an execution, not the prime minister, president or the army chief, leave alone a police officer.

In certain circumstances, the police and the army are provided special legal sanction to shoot and kill. This is not some casual convention or idiosyncrasy. It is the very root of civilised conduct and is the basis of a modern democratic society. Rogue police and security force officers, encouraged by politicians who cannot think beyond their nose, are breaking this compact by carrying out extra-judicial killings. And its consequences can be horrific.

In the last two years, there have been several major terrorist strikes, including the Mumbai train blasts of 2006. In most of them, the police found that the conspirators and the perpetrators were locals, though the explosives and their fabrication may have been aided by terrorists from Bangladesh or Pakistan.

For several years, security officials have warned that terrorist groups were growing roots in certain Indian Muslim communities, particularly those in western India. Ever since the anti-Muslim pogrom that came in the wake of the Godhra massacre, there have been a string of killings, mainly of Muslims, all allegedly on their way to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

On March 2006, four Kashmiri youth, allegedly Lashkar-e-Tayyeba men, were gunned down in the outskirts of Ahmedabad; in June 2004, four ‘terrorists’ were gunned down, including 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan Raza and her fiancé, Javed Sheikh; in January 2003, Sadiq Jamal was shot dead, allegedly while plotting to kill L.K. Advani; in October 2002, Samir Khan Pathan was killed while trying to escape, again after his arrest for a plot to kill Modi.

None of the killings appeared credible then. And now, after the Sohrabuddin revelations, there is need to probe them thoroughly. It does not take much logic to see that acts of injustice provide fertile ground for extremism to flourish. This reasoning is simple, but it does not seem to have impressed those who believe that ruthless use of force, even if it leads to ‘collateral’ casualties among innocents, will help.

Yet, the story did not begin with Modi, but much further back, in the executions of Naxalites in the 1970s, and then in the killing fields of Punjab and Kashmir in the 1980s and 1990s. In that sense, responsibility for extra-judicial killings must go all the way up to the central government. Hundreds of people disappeared in Punjab and Kashmir when they were under central rule, and the capital itself has witnessed highly suspicious ‘encounters’, such as the Ansal Plaza incident of 2002. It’s no secret that the ‘encounter killing’ of Pakistani terrorists was sanctioned after the IC-814 hijack succeeded in freeing Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh and Mushtaq Zargar. All this has been excused in the name of fighting separatism and terrorism. In such a climate, is it any wonder that some police officials have anointed themselves judge and executioner, in the name of desh bhakti or service to the nation?

The issue, as the British realise, is not one of morality and ethics alone. There are sound pragmatic reasons for the State to ensure the rule of law and enforce due process, rather than allow a vicious cycle of terrorism and illegal retribution. The logic is simple. If the State cannot protect me, I need to do it myself, or support someone who can do it for me. The same is true for retribution. If the authorities fail in their duty to punish criminals through due process, people will seek other means to satisfy their thirst for justice.

The US State Department’s annual report on terrorism says that there was a staggering 40 per cent rise in the number of those killed by terrorist violence last year. The overwhelming proportion of the increase comes from Iraq. There is a self-inflicted war against terror being fought in Iraq, and there is another real war being fought in dozens of countries against ruthless and fanatical people who think nothing of snuffing out human lives for their ‘cause’. That war cannot be won by tanks and airplanes, or police measures alone, but by patiently proving that your system and cause is more just and humane.

Terror's Twisted Turn

An attack on a train in the Indian heartland, killing mainly Pakistani passengers traveling to Lahore is a sign that terrorism is mutating into a more virulent form. This article was published in Hindustan Times February 19, 2007

On September 11, 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared that “Pakistan is also a victim of terrorism”, that terrorism was a threat to both nations and, thus, made it incumbent on them to work together to tackle the issue.

Immediately, a minor firestorm erupted in New Delhi. The BJP’s spokesman, Ravi Shankar Prasad, described the statement as “disturbing, worrisome and untimely”.

Whether or not the PM was conscious that he was speaking on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 is not clear. He was en route to Brazil and thereafter would go to Cuba and meet President Pervez Musharraf on the sidelines of the NAM summit.

Singh acknowledged that “As far as the past is concerned, Pakistan-sponsored terrorism has certainly been a fact of life.” But he pointed out that when former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and President Musharraf signed the joint statement in 2004, “[it] was in a way tacit recognition of ground realities and their solemn agreement to move forward in the reverse direction”.

The significance of his remarks became apparent in Havana where the PM and the Pakistani President agreed to “put in place an India-Pakistan anti-terrorism institutional mechanism to identify and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations”. This formulation was seen as a major development. It represented the distance moved by the two sides since the joint statement of January 2004. At the time, the onus had been on Pakistan to ensure that no part of “territory under its control” would be used for terrorist acts against India.

The Havana decision was denounced even more strongly, with a clutch of former diplomats and intelligence officials joining the BJP in terming the move as tantamount to a sellout. Yet, five months later, the logic of this arrangement is tragically apparent. The Samjhauta Express may have been an Indian train, and Sunday’s attack on it took place on Indian soil. But those who carried it out knew that the bulk of the victims would be Pakistani nationals, and Muslims. This is as clear a declaration of war on both countries by the as-yet-unnamed groups of terrorists as any. This had better be understood.

The incident has brought out three points. First, terrorists will not hesitate to attack any target, be it Pakistani, Indian, Hindu or Muslim, to achieve their aim of preventing normalisation of India-Pakistan ties. The Samjhauta Express attack is a continuation of tactics witnessed in Malegaon,when on September 8, terrorists, including a Pakistani national, triggered bombs at a Muslim congregation on the occasion of Shab-e-Barat that killed 37 people.

Second, terrorists remain a step ahead of the authorities in planning and executing their horrendous acts. While in the cases of Malegaon and the Mumbai train blasts, the police have caught a number of suspects, they are yet to lay their hands on any significant masterminds.

Third, terrorists have now attained a great deal of sophistication in choosing their targets and weapons. At first sight, the difference between the Samjhauta attack, and that on Mumbai’s local trains was in the sophistication of the devices used in the latter strike. However, the attackers knew what they wanted, not so much a blast, but a fire which would spread in a speeding train and achieve the end of killing people. And they achieved it by placing bottles of an inflammable liquid with a simple pipe bomb linked to a timer.

Critics of the government’s strategy of working with Pakistani counterparts have not quite kept pace with the changing dynamics of terrorist violence in its epicentre, Pakistan, or the impact on the neighbouring regions of Afghanistan, Iran, India and Bangladesh. As Singh pointed out, Pakistan has certainly played a major role in lighting the fires of terrorism in the region. There is enough evidence in the writings of courageous Pakistani journalists, which suggest that elements of the Pakistani system continue to support some groups in the name of the freedom struggle in Kashmir. Yet, fact is that Pakistan is itself teetering on a slippery slope.

Of late, there have been a spate of suicide bomber attacks in and around Islamabad. On January 26, a terrorist killed himself and a security guard at a hotel where the Indian High Commissioner was to host a reception. On February 6, a suicide attacker blew himself up in the car park of Islamabad airport, injuring 10 people. Nine days later, on February 17, two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a Quetta court, killing 17 people and wounding 37.

Ever since 9/11, the draconian US-led counter-terrorist operations have led to the mutation of Pakistani terrorist groups. Older ones like the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat-e-jihad-e-Islami have gone underground and newer ones like the Jundullah have emerged with deep links to the al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Pakistan’s biggest failure has been its inability to control the Waziristan region. American officials now say that al-Qaeda and the Taliban have been able to re-establish significant control over their worldwide network and create a new infrastructure of training camps in this tribal region. Over the past year, insurgent tactics from Iraq have migrated to Afghanistan, where suicide bombings have increased five-fold and roadside bomb attacks have doubled. Last Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry charged that on February 16 Sunni terrorists with Pakistani links had struck at the south-eastern city of Zahedan — through which logistical aid to Afghanistan is routed.

At first sight, the simplest thing would be to pressure Musharraf to attack the camps in Waziristan and elsewhere. Washington is afraid that strikes on camps, leading to civilian casualties would weaken not just his position, but also that of the Pakistan army, already battered by its de facto retreat from Waziristan last year. New Delhi is aware of the pressures on the General and would work with him rather than pillory him. The Iranians, too, have declared that they would seek to work with Pakistan to contain the problem.

In recent testimony to a Congressional committee, Ryan Crocker, US ambassador to Pakistan, acknowledged that Pakistan’s ability to address the terrorist challenge is limited. The Pakistan army has suffered substantial casualties in taking on the Taliban and Waziri tribals; Pakistani society has been battered by the continuing sectarian strife.

India’s calculation, as that of the US and other nations, has to be based on whether the situation will improve or deteriorate were Musharraf to leave. This has to be an entirely pragmatic calculation, devoid of any sentimentality, or for that matter ill-feelings about his role in Kargil, or past Pakistani support of terrorism. Yet, there are things Musharraf can and must do — get the democratic opposition in Pakistan on-board and resist the temptation to retain the ‘freedom fighter’ option in Kashmir.

Just last week, it was announced that the first meeting of the new Indo-Pakistani anti-terror mechanism will take place in Islamabad on March 6. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said that the mandate of the mechanism would be to consider counter-terrorism measures and regular and timely sharing of information.

Whatever this may mean, it’s clear that we need more cooperation rather than less. Till now the terrorists have been one step ahead of those who are seeking to check them. The countries of the region need to dramatically reduce their trust deficit in each other and enhance their efforts of tackling a phenomena which constitutes nothing less than an existential threat to them.

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.